music moots with josh salgado ("tanzania" rampa remix)
We are so very back with Music Moots™, the blogseries where I ask people I know either from the internet or real life to recommend me a song they like, and then I listen to the song and then write a little about it.
Last time I downloaded some yearning via Colin Kennedy...
Molly Mary O’Brien
...now we're back with Josh Salgado! I met Josh at the Sunday Brunch Collective party where I was 'liveblogging'; he's an audio engineer / DJ / producer (check out his DJ set in a military bunker, just normal L.A. underground dance things)...
...when I hit him up for a song recommendation, he had a good one: "Tanzania" (Rampa Remix), a rework of a breakout song by Uncle Waffles:
The first thing I would like to say about this song before all else, is that it is a bop. As with all bops, I'm enjoying it in my headphones but would really desire to hear it played loud on club speakers. I also think it would sound great in the Despacio-inspired Burnin' Chancla setup.
I had this realization about music and big public speakers probably a little too late in life, for a music enjoyer; I had probably heard the classic 1980s song "The Safety Dance" several dozen times in my life, but always on tinny radio speakers, or in snippets piped through my television while I watched VH1. Then 2manydjs dropped it at their post-LCD Soundsystem New Years' Eve 2023 set and I lost my shit. In a large room, amplified to entertain several thousand revelers, it was transcendent. Context matters...take your taste for a walk OUTSIDE!
I really would like to hear "Tanzania" (Rampa Remix) out on a dance floor near me very soon.
Now, in order to properly appreciate this song, I needed to dig into its roots...because it's a remix! I enjoy remixes and I especially love comparing remixes to their sources to better understand what the remixer had in mind when they got their hands on those precious stems.
Walk with me...
....the original song "Tanzania" is the debut single from South African amapiano DJ/producer Uncle Waffles (great name). Amapiano is a vibey genre of dance music from South Africa, which I am most familiar with via the debut album of one of my favorite new pop girls, Tyla...
...Uncle Waffles is 24 years old and she taught herself to DJ in 2020. (There's, like, an entire book to write about musical genesis during Covid lockdown but I don't know if anyone is ready for that conversation.) Here's how she broke big, according to Billboard: "In October 2021, a DJ bailed on the prime 10:30 p.m. slot at Zone 6 Venue, and she filled in. The performance reached an even larger audience when a 30-second Instagram video of Zwane whining her hips to Young Stunna’s 'Adiwele' went viral."
“People are burning 😳” pic.twitter.com/H5JRg8sXHX
— Waffles🐉 (@unclewaffffles) October 16, 2021
...an unknown DJ gets a shot at a sweet set time at the club, kills it, and the evidence gets broadcast nationwide...this is positively cinematic. I am fascinated by the strategies people shore up in order to Maximize Their Viral Moment—there are many ways to do it, and many ways to fail—and Uncle Waffles pulled it off by starting to produce her own music, eventually releasing "Tanzania" (which also features "phantom producer" Tony Duardo, and vocalists singer-songwriter Sino Msolo and BoiBizza). Uncle Waffles has officially been sent on her way...
...which leads us to the Rampa remix. Rampa is one of the four DJs involved in the Berlin electronic music label Keinemusik; to my ear, he basically scooped the central meat from the original "Tanzania," perked up the BPM, and locked the groove into something a person four white wines deep on a Balearic island dance floor could really get into (non-derogatory). The original "Tanzania" has an elusive, even sneaky sort feeling to it—it's a song for getting away with something kinda devious, you can hear it in the slightly eerie vocal harmonies—and the remix is a little more of a standard bacchanalia. I like them both! Remix: success.
Thank you Josh! Follow Josh on Instagram.
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