Jokkoo Collective will present their new audio-visual show at Sónar festival in Barcelona on the 15th of June, a musical work that came into fruition during an artistic residence that took place last March in Kenya with the support of the Institut Ramon Llull.
Jokkoo is a musical and artistic collective from Barcelona that was founded in 2017 to investigate and promote the most up-to-date electronic music and the avant-garde musical scene, both on the African continent and amongst the African diaspora.
Most of the residency in Kenya took place at Santuri https://santuri.org/, a particularly active space in East Africa’s alternative electronic music scene, with its headquarters in Nairobi. Santuri offers courses in musical production, studio services, exhibitions, opportunities for the development of artists, as well as carrying out activities pertaining to research and market development. During the residency, Jokkoo also stayed at the University of Kenyatta, where they carried out a short investigation in their traditional music archive. The residency concluded with a performance at The Mist, an experimental music venue.
The members of the collective are Baba Sy, Maguette Dieng (MBODJ), Oscar Tylor (Opoku), Nicolas Belliot (Mookie), Ismäel Ndiaey (B4mba) and Miriam Camara (TNTC). All the group’s members have the common objective of establishing hybrid Afro-electronic music and drawing attention to the narratives of the African diaspora in the global community. They have performed in many important venues in Barcelona, such as Razzmatazz, Apolo and Sala Vol, as well as in music festivals like NyegeNyege in Uganda, Festival Periferias in Huesca and the Archipelago Festival in Madrid. They have also collaborated with cultural institutions such as the MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art), the Convent de Sant Agustí, the Museo Reina Sofia, La Casa Encendida and the Bordeaux Museum of Contemporary Art.
As part of a round-table discussion before their concert at Sónar, Jokkoo will explain the creation process of the musical work that they will debut on Stage+D by MEDIAPRO. During the discussion, which will focus on the value of artistic residencies, the collective will be joined by David Tinning, manager of Santuari East Africa, a community enterprise in Nairobi dedicated to electronic music; the Kenyan artist and curator Monrhea and Maria Lladó, director of the Area of Creation at the Institut Ramon Llull.
