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Published on 7/23/08
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Ghana’s first prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, espoused a philosophy called Pan-Africanism, which promoted unity among postcolonial Africans as key to the future of the continent. He hardly expected a little Pan-Africanism to take root in an upscale nightclub on Chicago Avenue, but to an extent it has...at least in the social and rhythmic sense. Once a month, Afrodisiac brings a diverse array of African club music to homesick expats and beat adventurers. It’s been going on for about three years at venues Sayat Nova and darkroom, and all along DJ TopDonn has steered the proceedings while Aurelien PV has played the host. The party moved to the first Saturday of the month at Sonotheque about six months ago, inspiring us to check in with TopDonn about how it came to be—and to find out what the heck we’ve heard him play.
Afrodisac’s resident DJ hails from Nairobi, Kenya, where he started spinning in high school. While studying at the University of Nebraska, he picked up an African-oriented radio show on community radio station KZUM. In 2000, he moved to Chicago and plunged into deejaying and party promoting. After guest sets at darkroom and hosting a show on XM Radio channel Ngoma, he found himself deejaying African hip-hop at a Hard Rock Cafe party on a bill with live Afropop and island beats. He borrowed the name Afrodisiac and launched his own all-African monthly—but not before enlisting promoter and man-about-town Aureleian PV, who “had some good connections with the Cameroonians, the Ivorians.”
Chicago’s last African-oriented club, the Equator near Broadway and Lawrence, closed about eight years ago. And while the Windy City African expat population is only a sliver of those in East Coast cities, it’s also more likely to band together. “That’s one of the reasons why people like our event. It’s really a melting pot of different people and different cultures,” TopDonn says with a degree of understatement.
A daunting number of genres make up contemporary African club music. A few compilations, such as Urban Africa Club from Germany’s African-oriented Out Here label from 2007 and the Tsotsi soundtrack, heavy on kwaito (South African’s clubby hip-hop), have tried keeping up. Syndicated radio shows like Afropop Worldwide barely scratch the surface of the new sounds.
The strength of Afrodisiac’s playlist is that it’s awesomely broad but refreshingly exclusive. TopDonn programs genge (Kenyan hip-hop) alongside genres from southern and eastern Africa, plus some cuts from English-speaking West Africa. “I’m playing South African house; we have a big following for that,” he says. He also locks in a guest DJ to play music from French-speaking West Africa: makossa (uptempo funk) from Cameroon and zouk (chilled pop) of Cape Verde, alongside the electronic dance music of Senegal, Mali, Guinea and the Ivory Coast.
It’s a lot of ground to cover, but TopDonn isn’t in a position to play classics all night—his wired audience keeps up on trends at home. “They expect you to know everything from their neck of the woods,” he says.
TopDonn says getting new material isn’t the challenge—he’s served by various African labels and record pools. “[The challenge is that] it takes a lot of time and research to know your different genres of music. And not only that, but to know which particular people in the club will respond to those types of music.”
With familiar flashes of hip-hop and house and an overall free-wheeling atmosphere, Afrodisiac—if you couldn’t guess—isn’t just for Africans. It’s just a damn good international dance party, no passport required.
TopDonn spins Afrodisiac, Saturday 5 at Sonotheque.
