I’m headed back to Amsterdam this week to attend the ADE where I’m excited to be a part of the screening of a new documentary on bubbling. Check out your boy the beatboxing talking head!

the film will have English subtitles, and hopefully will be widely available before long

I can’t say how humbled and happy I am to have encouraged and abetted local Dutch efforts to tell the amazing story of bubbling, a story of global reggae’s local resonance that first grabbed my attention almost exactly 11 years ago thanks to a “random” blog comment!

I’m especially proud to have helped make the case that the story of bubbling — often dismissed as marginal, shameful, frivolous — represents an important, instructive chapter in the national narrative of the post-colonial Netherlands and, indeed, that this plucky DIY social dance culture forged by Afro-Antillean immigrants and their children indelibly shaped the globally-resonant (and lucrative) sound of Dutch house and pop, including the international hits produced by Afrojack.

While I’m thrilled to see how this narration of bubbling history plays to a local crowd this week, I’m also glad that the film serves as a tribute to the two pioneers of the genre, DJ Moortje and MC Pester. The two collaborated to throw some seminal parties in the early 90s, with Moortje bringing the bumping-but-avant DJ creativity and Pester making everything live and local (and political) with his vocals. A few recordings of these parties, such as the inaugural Bandje 48 (the first 47 were pure DJ mixtapes), would then circulate on cassette — sometimes for money, often informally — and take on an afterlife of their own. The film looks not only at the origins of bubbling in this collaboration but also examines Moortje’s and Pester’s falling out and eventual reunion, and I’m delighted to share a stage with them and hear more about the beginnings of this remarkable scene and sound.

The film is, incidentally, named after a triumphal reunion earlier this year — and a recording of it, the elusive “Bandje 64” that never came together in the good old days — showing both Moortje and Pester in classic form; the idea that I might have contributed, by insisting on the importance of this story, to finally bringing these two together again is humbling indeed:

It’s impossible for me to listen to recordings like this and not hear bubbling as kindred to other scenes that coalesced around creative, localized hybrids of reggae and hip-hop in the early-mid 90s — reggaeton, bhangra, jungle — and I guess part of what I bring to the story is an ability to place bubbling into crucial comparative and historical frameworks. (If you like Playero 38, you’ll probably like Bandje 48.)

Related to that global, historical framework, I’ll also be giving a keynote talk on Friday called “Respect the Architects: The Caribbean Roots of Modern Day Pop Music” and you can trust that I’ll be making all of these connections and more. Here’s the teaser; come by / tune in if you can!

Over the last decade, but especially in recent years, the dance rhythms of the Caribbean have become prominent–indeed, even foundational–features of pop, hip-hop, and EDM. Wayne Marshall, who teaches music history at Berklee College of Music and Harvard University, will place this phenomenon in historical context by showing how Afrodiasporic rhythms have long provided the pulse in global popular music, connecting the dots from ragtime to reggaeton, Bo Diddley to trap, and dancehall to “tropical house.”

Nuff respect to the architects, Moortje and Pester, to all the others who built on their foundations, and to everyone involved in continuing to tell the story of bubbling. So much more remains to be said, heard, witnessed, and reckoned. Here’s to all of that–