Henrique J. Paris & RS Produções: Mapping Batida’s Heritage

Blood-red words speckle the photos of six faces:  “A memoria não perda ninguem” (Memory forgets no one), “Ser diferente é normal” (Being different is normal), “Sinfônia da Sobrevivencia” (Symphony of Survival). They stare out past these sanguine comments with more than a hint of defiance. “The installation comes as a response to the context of Portugal at the moment. In public settings there's this tension between who belongs and who doesn’t belong,” says artist-researcher Henrique J. Paris, who assembled these pictures as part of his installation Padrões da Polifonia. 

It forms part of a wider exhibition titled Family Albums in which 35 families share photographs that span their time living in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. The families were part of a wave of migration that arrived in the country from its former colonies Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe. The photos act as a counternarrative to the spatial and social segregation that many of these people have faced since they first arrived in Lisbon, proudly proving that they are, and have been, the beating heart of the city for decades. 

J. Paris’ six mugshots are of producers DJ Danifox, XEXA, DJ ADAMM, DJ Dadifox, DJ Narciso and DJ Nuno Beats. Their works form part of a growing canon of batida, an open and electric style of music that embodies decades of innovation and influence coming out of Lisbon’s ghettoes. “The installation reflects on the role of sound for us Black communities in Portugal. I found the need to bring these people, these faces, forward who are in the scene because they’re not only shaping batida, they’re shaping the language, how people dance, the nightlife and the dancefloors of Lisbon,” he explains. As if to add literal weight to this claim, beneath the photos is a row of thick, grey folders laden with documents and labelled with the names of music collectives. From left to right, these names map a timeline, starting with Portuguese kuduro groups like Família B.F and Os Gala Squad, to batida’s pioneers – DDG (DJs do Guetto) and PDDG (Pequenos DJs do Guetto) – to its youngest stars at LS Produções, Alto Nível Produções and RS Produções. Underneath the folders, strings and beads spill out like roots: this is J. Paris’ batida family tree.

Batida has been blossoming in Europe at least since the Lisbon-based label Príncipe released DJ Marfox’s Eu Sei Quem Sou in 2011. This was before many outside of Lisbon knew what to call this type of music. In 2012, Resident Advisor labelled Marfox’s debut kuduro; in 2015, Mixmag said the music coming out of these ghettos was a “uniquely African take on techno”, while Pitchfork used the term batida in 2014, summarising it as a conglomeration of “kuduro, zouk, batucada, kizomba and tarraxinha.” That last one has proven to be the most accurate and lasting definition as batida has come to be recognised as a fully-fledged genre that encompasses a host of styles from the African diaspora. “There’s this huge disconnection between how batida’s been titled and how it’s been referenced in popular culture,” states J. Paris who was partly inspired to create his installation because of batida’s misrepresentation. “People are referring to batida as Lisbon’s sound, but I would say it's Angolan.” 

He stresses that understanding batida’s roots in Angola and other West African countries can foster a sense of belonging in a place where one may not always feel entirely welcome. Family Albums, for instance, is on view in the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument of Discoveries) – a monolith of a museum erected to celebrate Portugal’s colonial “successes.” “We feel represented by the installation because we grew up around kuduro. Kuduro was spawned toward the end of the Angolan Civil War [in 2002] and was initially made as a form of enacting joy for youth. That’s the culture I’ve been exposed to growing up in the 2000s – my brothers would listen to kuduro. And there's so many people like me who are familiar with that experience.”

Batida, although distinct from kuduro, shares some sonic overlap, which, as J. Paris explains, has to do with the specific Lisbon neighbourhood a producer comes from. Early 2000s batida sounds similar to kuduro because many of its producers are from Quinta do Mocho, a neighbourhood which J. Paris states has a strong Angolan influence. So, even though the likes of DJ Marfox and DJ Nervoso have heritage in São Tomé e Príncipe, their style of batida is heavily informed by Angolan kuduro. The rowdy, siren-driven loops that charge through tunes like Marfox’s  “Mitologia” or Nervoso’s “Vuto” at around 140 BPM are not far off the sort of rambunctious beats that kuduro dancers and MCs (a.k.a “kuduristas”) perform over nowadays. 

“Kuduro is definitely a dance before it is music,” confirms J.Paris, before explaining that kuduro wasn’t officially registered as a genre until around 1998. Producer and dancer Tony Amado arrived at the name when he saw Jean-Claude van Damme drunkenly swaying between fighting and dancing in a scene from Kickboxer. If we use that scene as a template for kuduro (which translates as “hard ass”) then the kuduro dance finds its character in both van Damme’s loose, sensual movements as much as it does his rock hard butt cheeks – which he flexes with every kick and splits. 

Watch this performance of Noite e Dia, a revered kudurista, and you’ll notice how she matches wavy movements with spitfire vocals. “In batida there isn’t necessarily a vocal that’s consistent or has structure,” J. Paris intones. “Kuduro brings that structure in order to be a stage for the kuduro performance to thrive.” Where kuduro has an established time and place in history, batida is more ambiguous. Many in Europe might credit the start of batida with the rise of Príncipe in Lisbon, but J. Paris dates its inception way back to when Angolan musicians started playing with more uptempo rhythms in the 90s, turning styles like semba and kizomba, both of which are Angolan couples dances, into something you could move to alone. “[Kizomba pioneer] Eduardo Paim came up with this very specific beat and some dancers were like, play that batida again – and batida just means beat. So batida just became nameless in a way.”

That very namelessness has made it difficult to define what batida actually is. It’s not produced at a specific frequency like dubstep; it’s not centred around one rhythm like the “Dem Bow” rattle of reggaeton, nor does it move to a specific speed like footwork. J. Paris points to Paim’s “Nagibo (Instrumental)”, recorded in 1995, as a good template: it follows a 4/4 rhythm at 130 BPM and marries the loose and light percussion found in kizomba and semba, with an upbeat soca mood (via whistles and toms) and a driving house kick drum. Another one is Bruno Castro’s “No Fear” released in 1996, which sped up Paim’s broad palette to 140 BPM. Such speed is the backbone of kuduro, but a track like “New Song” is different: its starry pad interludes, lurching organ riff and sudden scattergun toms have an amorphous nature that feels too loosely-stitched together and experimental to be of any use to a kudurista.

Emboldened by his findings, J. Paris teamed up with the batida collective RS Produções and released – Ressurgência – the follow-up record to his installation that would map batida’s sonic journey to kuduro and back again. All in their early to mid 20s, RS Produções are at the forefront of Lisbon’s underground music culture and are steering the genre to styles like kizomba and semba.

“Batida has a lot of its own characteristics, depending on the BPM,” writes DJ Narciso, the founder of RS Produções, over text. “I believe that 130 BPM has been a great innovation [for batida] and that with it we can make [batida] a more global sound. But if we’re talking about batida at 140 BPM, that style came from kuduro, and from then on a sound was created here among the producers in Lisbon.”

Listen to the compilation DJs di Guetto and you’ll hear the BPMs range from 140 BPM to 100 BPM – the lower end of the scale taking its cues from kizomba and tarraxo. Producers in RS Produções and Tia Maria Produções are continuing to experiment with these polar extremes in tempo, but have generally skewed the spectrum more towards a slower 130-95/90 BPM range and are using it to either push their sound more towards techno (like Narciso) or leave space for vocals.

“If you look at track ‘1’ on Ressurgência, the intro was very simple which gave me space like I would have in rap,” says rapper Lukeny, who also features on the Ressurgência record alongside another vocalist DoubleLife. Lukeny has worked with batida producers like B I L L Y G and feels that batida isn’t a million miles away from some of the rap beats he’s worked on. “If you listen to a rap beat with certain sounds, and you speed it up a little bit, it’s a batida – it’s crazy,” he says, before pointing to the transition from track “01” to “02” on the record, which moves from Lukeny rapping to DoubleLife then repeating, “Estamos superando sofrimento” (We’re overcoming suffering.) Lukeny thinks DoubleLife’s verse represents the difference between batida vocals and kuduro vocals. “His style is close to an adoço which is when a kudurista will repeat catchphrases or use some of their own slang to create a positive message – something that sticks with you.”

Batida’s new recruits are also taking a leaf out of kuduro’s forthcoming, positive messages and making more narrative-led and emotionally-rich music. “Previous producers [like DDG] were producing their hearts out, but the intention to literally say what they were feeling was not there,” explains Lukeny. “Now we have the intention – like Nuno [Beats] had the intention of telling you that his record was literally about him pouring his heart out.”

Nuno Beats’ debut album Sai do Coração, released this year, translates to a more romantic version of “get it off your chest” – with “chest” being replaced by “heart”. Throughout the record, Nuno leaves space between the beats to weave personal narratives. “Confusão no Guetto”, he says over the phone, is loosely based on an argument developing between his mum and dad, who split up when he was younger. Two hand drum rhythms overlap haphazardly at the start of the tune before falling into a tumbling lockstep by the end. While the slow build of the percussion reflects the swelling argument, the percussion, Nuno says, reminds him of his Angolan heritage.

“Batida is not just a genre, it's an explanation of where we’re from and what we are,” he declares. “We are mostly Black people from projects and, while we’ve been living here, we’ve come to learn that Portugal has quite a lot of racist people. I remember going to school and kids asking me, Where are you from? Batida brings this sense for us; it represents us. But now that batida is getting more views and more people are listening to it, you’ll see people in the papers calling it batida of Lisbon. But batida of Lisbon does not exist. It’s just batida.”

Both a curse and a blessing, batida’s nebulousness leaves it both vulnerable for outsiders to commandeer and claim it as theirs, while simultaneously allowing for musical freedom not seen in electronic dance music since the early days of Detroit. “There’s so many possibilities,” smiles J. Paris. “If you want to endorse in batida and you have something to say then do it.” 

DJ Narciso, Nuno Beats and Henrique J. Paris shared some drum loops that you can use as a base to craft your own batida. These bare bones instrumentals reveal just some of the tempos and rhythms that go into batida and that have been covered in this article – like the upright 4/4 kick drums of kuduro and the rocking lilt of kizomba. But beyond that, it’s up to you how you twist and shape the drums to make the beat your own.

Download DJ Narciso, Nuno Beats and Henrique J. Paris’ free selection of batida beats

Text and interview Joseph Francis
Photos by Anna Viotti and Rafael De Oliveira