"I think ['world music'] is an outdated concept ... but I wanna be positive and constructive about it."
When Melbourne's Cumbia Cosmonauts were booked to play the David Bowie Is program at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, band leader Moses Iten was perplexed. After all, they perform tropical bass — a postmodern composite of music from South America, the Caribbean and rave culture, with a kitsch sci-fi aesthetic. It's not rock.
"At first I was like, How are we fitting into this?" Iten recalls. But he needn't have worried. "It ended up being a really awesome gig, just because it was so unusual for people to experience that kind of music there — which is, like, heavy bass, really full-on dancing music… We had people doing cartwheels and stuff. It got really crazy!" Ziggy Stardust would dig Cumbia Cosmonauts' "space bass", as might Diplo. Today, Iten feels that his group have accidentally cornered a "niche" market — they're "an avant-garde act that also makes a party happen". Indeed, Cumbia Cosmonauts previously played the NGV.
"We had people doing cartwheels and stuff. It got really crazy!"
The Switzerland-born Iten — likewise active as Saca la Mois DJ!! — developed Cumbia Cosmonauts with Thomas "Soup" Campbell, both fascinated by a new wave of the festive cumbia music that originated in Colombia. They dropped a mixtape through Melbourne's Scattermusic label blog. Cumbia Cosmonauts soon courted a fanbase across Continental Europe. They released 2013's debut, Tropical Bass Station, on Berlin's transgressively Latin Chusma Records. Late last year, Iten hit Mexico — home of cumbia sonidera — as a one-man sound system (albeit with VJ), assisted by crowdfunding. "I was really nervous initially, but I didn't have any reason to be — people knew my music. They knew Cumbia Cosmonauts." He'd do multiple shows over two months. Iten is now readying a tour doco — and Cumbia Cosmonauts are issuing a set of remixes by Mexican producers via the local Cassette Blog, following their Cumbia Sampuesana EP.
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In the interim, Cumbia Cosmonauts are cutting a second album, this time collaborating with some of Melbourne's African musicians — kora master/percussionist Amadou Kalissa and, from The Public Opinion Afro Orchestra, percussionist/vocalist Lamine Sonko and trumpeter GP Saxy (aka Olugbade Okunade). The fold previewed material at the Melbourne Festival — and Sonko and Okunade will again join Cumbia Cosmonauts at an Australasian World Music Expo (AWME) gig. Iten is excited at the prospect of their bringing together diverse rhythms of the African diaspora.
While many AWME acts are seeking the attention of international promoters, Iten's mission is to raise Cumbia Cosmonauts' domestic profile. Happily, their music was recently used in a Mimco accessories campaign.
The 'world music' category has long been challenged as a colonialist construct. There's renewed controversy since, as an Indigenous Australian artist, Gurrumul's The Gospel Album won the ARIA for 'Best World Music Album'. Iten believes that Cumbia Cosmonauts, as with the progressive "roots" fest AWME, is simultaneously celebrating, expanding and subverting notions of 'world music'. "I think ['world music'] is an outdated concept — if there was ever a place or a time for it from the beginning — but I wanna be positive and constructive about it. I remember having a conversation with [Melbourne] DJ Paz and his response was, 'But everything's world music! Of course, you're world music.' It's just a weird category. But, for me, it's always been my motivation as an artist to fight this category — or play with it. So it's not ignoring it or being negative about it, but just playing with it."