yeah i do actually like some of his productions/remixes. a lot of it though is just spectacularly shit and like some novelty hipster version of jive bunny. he seems to have some really poor taste and unfortunate knack for taking genres and making them into completely dire novelty fodder, via cheesy rock and pop samples. and as for his backing of kuduro, i thought it was a bit 'huh' that MIA has a song called sound of kuduro on the new version of kala. its like theyre going for some sort of definitive take on the music. (the idea of a kuduro remake of lil wayne - no doubt totally contrived by diplo - doesnt really get me very excited either).
sound of kuduro was on the buraka album, she's just one of a couple featured vocals.
but I agree with you, re: being bothered by diplo trying to create "definitive" takes on the genres he interacts with. for example, why is bonde do role on mad decent and not any funk carioca from rio? why did he feel the need to rename the genre? I enjoyed the favela strikes back mix, but how much money did he make from the pressing and how much got back to the original artists (the answer to the second question is "none")
why is it that the kuduro that diplo/mia interact with is basically the more listener friendly "progressive" kuduro from lisboa and not the raw from luanda?
I mean understand why: raw street music is raw and harder to sell and the majority of their audience isn't inquisitive enough (nor do they necessarily care) to figure out that what they are hearing isn't as quite as "authentic."
its funny though, listen to kuduro (or the stuff on myspace labeled that way) and listen to buraka som sistema and they have very little in common really, apart from angolan mcs, some of the stuff is just electro with mcing on.
i would think that a better idea than making your own version of kudoro would be to bring out some of these angloan kids on yr label or whatever, buraka are portuguese, sure they link into it, but no one seems to be licencing the tracks they love so much for release, very little happens the other way, there are a few labels that licence baille funk, not diplo, incidentally, there have been some licences from south africa, it's difficult to do but if you really loved that stuff you would do it.
you can definitely do it. check
fair trade funk
with respect to kuduro, there appears to be a relatively established album and video* release schedule with a lot of different local djs producing local tracks (as opposed to it mainly being pure anonymous cdr street music) if you go to
afrosom they have folks posting plenty of full length kuduro albums straight from luanda.
I'm not trying to understate the difficultly of a non-portuguese speaking DJ going to Angola and "bringing the artists up" but you figure he could at least network with some local mcs or producers and get something going. I mean having music coming from lisboa isn't a big deal either, it would just be nice if they brought up someone or something that at least sounded like kuduro.
*reasonably professional looking videos:
