São Paulo DJ, promoter, and community figurehead, Achille (aka DJ Kontronatura) has an intimate sense of the politics of dance music. "I see the role of the DJ as being more than an entertainer, I also see a DJ as an educator, not in the sense of what 'has to be' heard or how, but rather as a channel for propagation and dialogue between artists and the public," he explains to me. "Even more because music is a non-verbal language and that physically crosses all the matter at its disposal, it is about territory, and it was one of the most powerful tools where I found my own empowerment as well."
What Achille is describing here is the way that music has a pedagogical universalism to it. Rhythm, timbre, tone. These are elements that a DJ has at their disposal to build conversations and collaboration with audiences that transcend linguistic and cultural divides. More than just mixing together records, Achille explores what happens when you begin to build narratives in and through mixing.
This is, as he tells me, a way of responding to the ongoing violence and wake of chattel slavery: "A black body, historically, was an imprisoned body." But it is also about turning that moment of violence into the possibility for restructuring the world. He continues: "The way that the slaves who came from different countries, ethnicities, languages and cultures in Africa to unite and resist the suffering and perversity of slavery was through music, dance and celebration, creating a kind of immaterial alliance and, in dance, found a way to purge colonial violence.
He continues to describe this as a practice inherited from quilombo communities, the Brazilian equivalent of maroons, the communities built by escaped slaves who thrived outside of the plantation system. It was within these communities, Achille continues, that acts of resistance materialize and which Achille sees as playing out on his own body: "My body is a document of my ancestry, even more so being a trans body that is a marginalized body." In this way, dance becomes a way to commune and communicate with this history.
And this is how he approaches music and selecting, figuring out ways to mix together music in a way that tells this story of insurgent worlds being brought into existence. "It starts with my research. When I started my career as a DJ I was part of a collective whose curatorial premise was to research and play only music by black producers. I started with soul and disco, which was the genre that reconnected me with my affective and family memories, and it was very important to expand my knowledge and understand the thread that connects all these rhythms of the African diaspora in the American continent. Folkloric music like jongo, coco and samba, jazz blues to the more contemporary genres like Rap, Techno and Funk have a common root, it's something that moves me a lot."
His mix for Refraction embodies this "common root." Moving with dexterity through his record bag, he builds lines of solidarity throughout the Black diaspora. Starting with some of the most exciting names in contemporary Brazilian club music (RHR and Evehive), the mix then expands to include angular UK bass (Ploy), storming New York techno (Shyboi), and some of the finest in sweaty, Miami club weaponry (Nick León and Bitter Babe). The mixing here is nearly breathless, as Achille stacks drum lines atop one another to build weaving and hovering Jenga towers of percussion.
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Tracklist
RHR - UNRELEASED
EVEHIVE - UNRELEASED
CIRCUITE 900 - HALITE
INVT - KILOTON
PLOY - RAYHANA
SHYBOI - RAVE DOWN BABYLON
AVERNIAN - MAADI
LITHE - ONE FOR THE RUSS (DOUBT REMIX)
BADSISTA - TESÃO
REGAL86 - MASSIVE CHORD
NAFFFTERO - VAMO'HACERLO
INVT - FOGOSO
NARA VAEZ - REFLEXXXX
DE SCHUURMAN - NU GA JE DANSEN HARD
BITTER BABE & NICK LEÓN - GØCE
CRRDR - 2 1 5
EL IRREAL VEINTEUNO - TL-DM
FIELDS - SYLVERE
SPEEDY SKANK - BURNA
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Bio
Kontronatura is the Club Music project started in 2019 by Achille, DJ and producer from São Paulo, resident of the Mamba Negra.
He started his career in the Escuro collective, which explored black and Afro-diasporic identities, where the curatorial proposal was exclusively focused on black producers. His trajectory began with the influences of disco, soul and house, before delving into more experimental paths of music. As a DJ, Kontronatura's sound moves between dense and percussive rhythms, like Jungle and Footwork, with classic beats from Techno, Baltimore, Vogue and Jersey Club.
Achille liked to break expectations and mess with the listener's imagination, believing that the dancing body is free and sees the dance floor as a power to purge colonial violence.
With 2 years of experience, it has already conquered its space and gained national and international attention with its sets in parties in latin america like ODD, KODE, Mamba Negra, Hiedrah, Batekoo and his mixes aired on notable platforms such as Resident Advisor, Boiler Room, Mutant Radio and on Radio Veneno by Tijolo Records and Raio Show accompanied by Jensen Interceptor.
Achille, who is a transmasculine person, understands that his body has a political role in response to the lack of representation in the scene, in which transvestite bodies have little or no access. He takes back to himself the raw material of his existence as the greatest tool to position himself as an artist, being one of the representatives of the transmasculine community in electronic music.
Links
https://soundcloud.com/kontronatura
Refraction and The Department of Decentralization are presenting the art programming at this year’s ETHBerlin from May 24-26. The exhibition is curated through an Open Call. Interested artists can submit their artwork from April 10th to May 10th.
We asked Brazilian-American artist Rick Silva a few questions ahead of his Refraction artwork drop—a reflection on the solar eclipse. The work is available exclusively for Refract Pass holders and exhibited for the first time at our New York event at Public Records on April 4th.
