Viola Klein

Exchange

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Viola Klein is the house music 'auteur' behind two beautiful and contemplative house music records on her own Viola Klein imprint. Her Bring Your Ass parties in Cologne have long been some of the most interesting and informed celebrations of house music the city has to offer. On her first outing for meakusma, Klein collaborates with musicians from Senegal and Detroit to produce two tracks centered around Senegalese percussion, spun into gentle and informed club music hypnosis. Klein works as a film editor, DJ and writer. Her origins are in jazz theory which she combines with a filmmaker's perception. The two tracks on Exchange dwell in repetition and subtle confrontation. Typical of her work, they are explorations of the social force inherent in house music. While a Senegalese sabar master is passing his sabar knowledge to his sons, Family Diop responds with drums to Whodat's alternative house music of Detroit. An exchange between Senegal and the USA, nourished by the voices of Ndongo Samba Sylla, political writer from Dakar and Kim Sherobbi, member of James and Grace Lee Boggs movement Detroit. Tone incorporates all unsaid as orientation is embodied in sound. Bringing her body to Senegal and the USA, Viola Klein is arranging this release named Exchange. Whodat is a Detroiter. The beats of Whodat lay the musical foundation for the Family Diop's sabar. The Senegalese griot family keeps the everyday tradition of sabar alive through programs in Saint-Louis' high schools; it's fresh when everyone is responding to one another on street corners and on patios. Ndongo Samba Sylla is a Senegalese development economist and a francophone Scrabble world champion. In Dakar, he equips environments for the youth. Sylla has written about social movements in West Africa as well as the definition of democracy. Kim Sherobbi is an ex-basketball player and educator at James and Grace Lee Boggs school in Detroit, where she teaches children how to be serene when things change.