Endre (3k) Dalen is a music obsessive of the highest degree. A writer, promoter and DJ, his musical eccentricities spill into various aspects and dimensions of club music and beyond. He writes for the likes of Klassekampen, curates events for Mela and often stands behind the decks at Hærverk. He’s always on the cusp of some new musical movement from some far flung corner of the globe with a particular ear for the sounds of sub-Saharan Africa.
His musical knowledge is vast and extensive and it moves from the an early life listening to American Hip Hop to the more obscure sounds of genres like Gqom. As A DJ he often delves into the more adventurous sounds he’s collected, with a penchant for the more provocative side of club music. In this edition of the Jaeger Mix he travels from Amapiano to IDM in a blistering melée of sound, punctuated by scarred rhythms and deep grovelling bass.
We catch up with Endre in South Africa, where he is currently immersing himself in some of the music and culture for new stories. “Yo, guys, I’ve, been on a writing frenzy the last week here in Johannesburg,” he writes. He’s doing “a story about Kenyan black metal, as well as a reviews for TBA, reviews for Jazznytt, articles for Samora Forum” amongst others while picking up the odd DJ gig around town.
It doesn’t stop him however for indulging our own questions and much like his Djing, he goes all in, providing extensive insight into his varied musical background and interests. We talk Djing, non-western music and more in this interview.
Hello Endre and thanks for taking the time to do this. You’re a music journalist, event organizer and DJ. What’s the red thread that ties it all together sonically?
These are different kinds of storytelling – at least they are for me. You know how they say that when you learn a new language, the accent from the last language you learned will be heard in the next. It’s a similar story with professions – so I would bring my experience as graphic designer into journalism, I would bring my journalism into editing magazines, I would bring my experience from editing magazines into DJ-ing, and eventually I would bring my experience from DJ-ing into organizing events.
Apart from freelancing as a journalist, essayist and cultural critic, and DJ-ing, most of my energy feeds into Digital Diaspora. Which is a platform that I initiated with the aim of documenting, as well as mediating music and culture from countries of the South – as well as music and culture crossing the borders between Europe, Africa, Asia and beyond.
Can you give us a quick overview of all your different projects?
It is now five years since I initiated Digital Diaspora as a record label, but so far we only released one album which is Merge Emerge – A Convergence Of Electronic Music From India And Norway. It was curated by the Valencia based, Indian producer Audio Pervert and myself, with contributions from people like Lárus, Bendik Baksaas, Center Of The Universe and Mungolian Jetset, Christabelle, as well as a bunch of Indian acts.
Since I was so occupied with Oslo Mela and editing Samora Forum for many years, I didn’t have enough time to prioritize the label. I guess also having a music critic, who sometimes also is doubting his own taste, as label manager is part of the story here.
And since my experience comes from events organizing, Digital Diaspora functions now more as an events organizer, than a label. Other than that, I recently took up the role as tour manager. It was an interesting and in many ways a successful experience.
When it comes to events, most of our events have been at Kafé Hærverk, but also Salt, Baba bar, Paul’s Boutique. One of our first proper events was Unganisha Club, with Coco Em and Justin AKA Huille Huille, acts from Nairobi meeting acts from Oslo, and later we pulled off two Nyege Nyege Remix Oslo festivals in collaboration with Nyege Nyege in Uganda.
MelaKlubb is another story that Digital Diaspora is now taking part in, it’s something I’ve been involved in, in one way or another, since Oslo Mela Festival had their first afterparties in 2007-2008. Obviously, this was Ashley Shiri’s idea, but over the years people like Dhita Siauw (founder of the club Barong Sai), Daniele Aguilar (the Holmlia OG that taught Cezinando how to write lyrics, as well as releasing his first albums) and Silvio McAuley (a Drum & Bass connoisseur) have laid a lot of the groundwork for what we’re doing now. We’re now already planning the next MelaKlubb, it will be a collaboration between Oslo Mela and Digital Diaspora.
Whether writing, playing or arranging events, you always look outside western traditions. What planted the seed in terms of your musical wanderlust and what do you find often draws you to these exotic sounds?
I think one thing leads to another, so as a very young kid, in the MTV era, I was into heavy metal – as well as Michael Jackson, a strange combo in itself. But what happened was that both of those somehow led to hip hop – yes I was one of those boys wearing my pants like Kris Kross, and they were MJs support act at Valle Hovin in 1992. As a nine year old, I was sitting there at the press tribune, with my older brother who used to be a music journalist.
As I grew a bit older, alternative music of all kinds, from New Order, to Sonic Youth and Kraftwerk became my side-interest to hip hop. The connection between Kraftwerk and Bambaataa was always there, Sonic Youth was also dabbling a bit with hip hop. And when I read the liner notes to some of New Orders songs and found Arthur Baker and John Robie as producers, the same guys who produced Planet Rock, all the planets were finally aligning. These were revelations to me, but around the same time, the crate digger and indie hip hop of Madlib, J Dilla and MF Doom was another important portal – into jazz, blues, soul, funk, disco, afrobeat, turkish psychedelic rock, zamrock, highlife, city pop and all kinds of music. At the time Steely Dan was another act that was connecting the dots for me.
So when I came as a young “sivilarbeider” into the Oslo Mela and Samora Magazine office in 2004 I already knew quite a bit about music history. But I was lacking a broader understanding of culture, and this was also a time when I began realizing how little I actually knew about music, still do, because there’s so much out there. So I began my own more or less autodidactic research into culture, music and arts, through the lens of the anti-racist movement, and with Samora Forum and Mela as the playground.
It’s often music from the African continent, and more specifically sub-saharan Africa that seems to pique your interest. What is it about the music from that region that entices you?
I guess people put me in that “box”, and since that has been my main concern through writing, DJ-ing, events organizing and many other ways of mediating music – I guess I’ve asked for it. Other than all the amazing music coming out of this region, my “get in where you fit in” approach is the best explanation. And when you’re working within the field of cultural diversity, you can’t ignore that all the most ethnically and culturally diverse countries in the world are in Africa. Now that I’ve spent so much time in East Africa and South Africa – it makes me want to go back to see my friends again and again – and find new music. And most people are much friendlier in these countries than in Europe.
How and when did you start DJing?
In 2014, I think it was the first ever event at Paul’s Boutique, my childhood homie Pål Bagge asked me to play my music there. It wasn’t really DJ-ing, by any means, but a bit later Svein Olav Andersen AKA L.I.T.SW.D., approached me and put me on a bill with him. I think he just knew that I had a lot of records – and the right records. We shared a lot of musical interests especially back then, so everything finally made sense.
In the previous years my interest for Detroit house and techno had climaxed, I think I was at Filter Musikk every Friday for years. But the music that really turned me on, in a club context, was something more complex, funkier, faster and weirder: Labels like Príncipe Discos, Gqom Oh!, Hyperdub and NON Worldwide or other similar genres, became my style, but I was always open to bringing in whatever I thought fitted – be it Sakamoto’s proto-electro track “Riot In Lagos”, Miami bass, hip-life, bollywood disco – sky’s not even a limit.
When Kafé Hærverk opened, I suddenly found myself playing records there once in a while. What surprised me there was how many people asked me about what I was playing. There’s a genuine curiosity, and open-mindedness in that space – that you won’t find in many other clubs in Oslo.
I also sometimes DJ-ed after Jazz In Khartoum, a great jam-session Åsmund Skuterud and Kjetil Jerve organized every Tuesday at Khartoum Contemporary Art Center. And then I had a monthly club concept in there, which I dubbed World Wide Web Music – a mishmash of electronic music from all over the world.
Whereas much of this music would be appreciated by large audiences back home, Europe’s club community has never really latched on to a lot of this in the same way. Why do you believe genres like Gqom and Kwaito have never had the same kind of success as back home?
Right now, I am in Johannesburg, South Africa, even here, GQOM is a rather small community compared to home – in Durban. Every place on earth has its own sound, GQOM in Durban, afrobeats in Lagos, kuduro in Luanda, dancehall in Kingston, grime in London, we even talk about Oslo disco in Oslo.
But when people travel, they bring along their music and form new cultures – so it becomes a subculture – here in Johannesburg that subculture is a mix of regular kids from Durban, weirdos from everywhere, and the queer crowd.
In 2004 the only genre that was bigger in South Africa than kwaito was gospel, but kwaito didn’t have much influence in the West, those were the recent years after apartheid, so maybe it also was good for the development of a distinct South African identity.
The most obvious continuum from kwaito – and afrohouse – today is amapiano – and amapiano is along with hip hop – the dominant music in Johannesburg, and then also South Africa as a whole. What is interesting is how amapiano now seems to be the biggest genre in Africa, it’s as popular as afrobeats, but it’s hard to prove it, people don’t stream music in these countries like In the West, the streaming economy is only developing. A major part of streams of amapiano songs comes from the African Diaspora in Europe, America and elsewhere.
A similar thing happened with afrobeats over the last fifteen years, amapiano simply went beyond the gatekeepers of the music industry, and created its own circuit. But amapiano’s rise over the last five years is something else, because it also has hit a big nerve in the underground tastemakers, or record industry gatekeepers – maybe because it’s so close to other forms of house music.
I was so surprised when I came to see Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force perform here at Jaeger in 2023, and with Mark Ernestus himself doing the support gig, I expected some dub-reggae or dub techno. Then he gave us a full set of amapiano deep cuts, and private school amapiano – tracks nowhere near the big clubs or hitlists, especially in the West.
What are some of the challenges of playing and finding this kind of music in and around Oslo, specifically?
It’s not easy to find this music in physical shape anywhere, so as a record collector – it’s almost a mission impossible to acquire a broad collection of African electronic music in Oslo.
The challenge with playing contemporary African music is that people will come and ask for Burna Boy, or something like that, especially if you’re DJ-ing around Youngstorget. I think it’s a bad thing, because the whole area around Youngstorget works like a shopping mall – Strøget is practically speaking a mall.
My worries is that the whole area, for the most part, serves the same mix of hiphop, dancehall, afrobeats, amapiano and R&B – and the DJs are navigating between these genres in a sometimes very abrupt way – or more to the point, it feels like some links are missing.
Give us an introduction to your Jaeger Mix. What was the initial idea behind this mix and how did it evolve on the night for you?
My initial idea was to keep it consistent, maybe it didn’t really happen like that, but anyhow, the songs I mixed were very much one thing leading to another, like I’ve said earlier. One of the first tracks is a Dutch bubbling track, but this one has a slower dembow bounce to it, but with a club feeling. Then the following track is my favourite track by reggaeton star Bad Bunny, a sample from “Get Your Freak On” in there, then switch to French dancehall by Moesha 13, then Aya Nakamura, maybe the most popular French artist in the latest years. So I am showing some of the similarities, and differences between two of the most popular artists in the world, and two of the most obscure, and that they actually can work together, in the same story.
The beginning of the set was my approach to seduce the crowd with tracks that are catchy and easy to dance to – yet still mixing the familiar with the unfamiliar – and it seemed to work. Something I came up with on the spot, just before I started, was to begin the set with an African ambient track, with chants in the beginning, somewhere along the way, it is a field recording of a fire burning. So this became the end of the set also – or actually – it was also a new beginning. So then I put on Suzi Analogue’s “CHANGEDDD” a track that sounds a bit like Squarepusher or Aphex Twin (is it even a sample from «Analogue Bubblebath» in there?) – but Suzi Analogues vocals are more like autotuned southern soul music.
Interestingly, when this track came on, the crowd who lost its mind somewhere between the darker ends of GQOM, the “Ketamine, Coke & Molly” of Amaraee, the breakneck batida drums of DJ Firmeza, the madcap dennery segment of Slaughter Arts Media, the blitzkrieg drum & bass & treble of Slikback, the 160 BPM singeli of DJ Travella and the 180 BPM Javanes gabber gamelan of Gabber Modus Operandi – was now back on the floor.
Most people listening to this music will be unfamiliar with the artists and styles of music. How would explain the sonic nature of the mix as a whole?
Chaotic, hard, metallic, cutting, edgy, but not only experimental. There might be a few parts of the mix that are a bit more quiet, or have a softer pop feeling, especially in the beginning of the mix, but even the amapiano tracks on here are almost hard like GQOM or bacardi house. I wanted to include some 3step, the newest big development of South African house music in this mix. It’s like four to the floor house music, but without the fourth beat, a broken beat in that sense, and goes usually at 118 BPM. But that music form is more often than not feel-good music, and on the softer or more feminine side of the spectrum. Which would be great to have on board here, but due to the nature of this mix, I couldn’t find space for 3step in this story.
You’re always on the cusp of new music arriving outside of the western paradigm. Who are some of the newest artists on this mix and what drew you to them?
One of the most recent tracks is “Ngibolekeni” produced by Xduppy and DJ Maphorisa with many other vocalists and producers behind it as well – so typical of the community sensitivity in amapiano. The main act, Xduppy is a quite new name on the amapiano scene, but mentored by Maphorisa. I went to their album release party in Johannesburg last spring, the after party at a club here called Louis was quite insane – and this particular track is my favourite. Then Vanco feat Aya’s “Ma Tnsani (Yallah Habibi)” is as irresistible as it can get, the lovechild of a Johannesburg producer and a vocalist from Quwait. When I saw and heard how well it worked when someone dropped it, at Boddhi Satwas gig at Sentralen this autumn, an alcohol free dance event by Mud Sessions – i was conjured. This track is so Oslo – with the Arabic influence we hear on the club circuit here nowadays.
Another really interesting track on here is Toya Delazy, Tash LC and Ahadadreams “QOBA”. Ahadadream has more than a bit of GQOM influence in his bass music, as well as being a British-Pakistani, and Tash LC is also both of South Asian and Afro-Caribbean heritage – here I am thinking of Durban as the biggest Indian city outside of India.
DJ Kolt is new as a solo act, also part of Blacksea Não Maya, a collective releasing on Principe Discos. What I really love about the track is the sensational synths and percussion in the intro – then DJ Kolt is launching this big room house music – with some quirky batida signature snares completing the funk.
The pionéer DJ within bubbling, DJ Shaun-D, is doing something like that in reverse on “Spacetune”. The track begins as some kind of familiar acid techno – then the drums go berserk in a warpspeed dancehall rhythm. The story goes that bubbling came along when some Den Haag DJ played dancehall on 45 rpm instead of 33 rpm – and a genre was born.
You also travel in search of new music, genres and scenes. What have been some of your most exciting recent finds?
If you really want to get a clue of what’s going on in the intersections between avantgarde club music and traditional music, follow Nyege Nyege Tapes, as well as Hakuna Kulala. In the beginning it was more focused on East Africa, although one of the early tapes is The Mysterians making Greek synth music, now it’s more like a global movement. It’s not even necessarily new music.
Nyege Nyege released a compilation by C.V.E., a group that was part of the alternative hip hop and poetry scene at Goodlife Café and Project Blowed in Los Angeles in the 90s – but this doesn’t sound like you’d expect. Then Ridlore from the group had a residency at Nyege Nyege in 2016, but the connections to the Nyege Nyege people go even further back.
Another a Nyege Nyege related release on the Hakuna Kulala label is Catu Diosis’ “Three Queens” – coming back to the influence of GQOM again. I first met Catu at a party on a Kampala rooftop in the spring of 2019, then when Nyege Nyege happened, she did a big thing, see her Boiler Room set for proof. She’s a dancer herself, as well as a rapper and producer – now a Kampala Queen – in self-inflicted exile in Cologne. She got stuck there after her first European tour, you know when the pandemic hit, later she came back for MelaKlubb in 2022, and Nyege Nyege Remix Oslo in 2024.
The week before we booked her to Oslo in 2020, it was for a show at The Mela House. It was an unofficial Bylarm event also involving one of the biggest rappers in South Africa, K.O, an underground rapper named King Lutendo, and then Da Kruk, who was the first to play amapiano on national South African radio way back when. Also Iskald Sound, an Oslo based act involving Soulbase, DJ Correct, Bafana Nhlapo and Baba Soul, more or less formed one of those nights. Their sound is very much a combination of influences from South African house and Afro-Portuguese electronic music – with live percussion and vocals in the mix as well.
The event we did at the Mela House was very important for me, and I think it meant a lot to many of the people who were present – whether they were performing or were just in the audience. The idea was to present African music as pop music, or underground music, not as anything exotic, or traditional, not necessarily how we would have done it today, but anyhow an important matter at the time.