Name: Batida

Nationality: Angolan

Occupation: Producer, songwriter
Current Release: Batida's Neon Colonialismo, featuring DJ Satelite, Bonga, Mayra Andrade, Poté, Nástio Mosquito, Ikonoklasta, Octa Push, Lia de Itamaracá, DJ Dolores, João Morgado, Botto Trindade, Pedro da Linha & Branko, is out October 21st 2022 via Crammed Discs.
Recommendations: Look for Bonga’s “72” and “74”.

[Read our Octa Push interview]

If you enjoyed this interview with Batida and would like to know more about his productions, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.

We also recommend our IKOQWE interview, a duo composed of Batida and Luaty Beirao/Ikonoklasta.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it? 

I started as a kid with my cousins doing presentations on family meetings. Our influences were whatever was playing at home and on the tv. Brazilian Soap Operas, The Muppets, Music Charts, Radio DJs and my aunt’s tapes that she would bring from clubs.

Later, as a teenager, it was another older cousin's artistry as a dancer, painter and DJ skills, playing from early hip hop to dance music and rock. Later on, my stepfather playing the bass as a jazz musician and his and my mom’s record collection. Me listening and recording radio in my room and saving every cent to buy records.

It goes on and on until I had the courage to do it for myself. Mixing sounds and bringing (different) people together was the main interest.
 
When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

It makes me feel happy and with the need to move or just happy to be relaxed.

I don’t approach things in a certain way. I try and when it goes right for me, I just get lost in time and most of the times I smile.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

Trying and doing the same thing over and over in different ways.

It’s more about me feeling sincere and happy with the result, as well as anyone who I collaborate with, than anything else. It’s about dialogues, most of the times and trying to find new common grounds of fulfillment.
 
Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I don’t have a solid family context and have no net. I need to assure my survival in all terms.

Spiritually and socially I need to feel that what I do is useful somehow, not just as an artistic expression but as a form of comunication adding something to our collective dialogue. I don’t depend on ammounts of validation for that, only to be able to pay my bills but I definitly feel happy and motivated by feeling that like minded people get me or feel inspired by what I do.

I do love radio, electronic and percussive music, dance, video and arts in general.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Provocing changes and movement. Thought and body stimulation. Ideally, tickles, smiles and dance.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

Contributing to tradition. Slow and not aiming for futuristic as it is always dated. I like to look back and dialogue with how I feel right now and where I would like to go next.

Perfection is such a dangerous concept. Trying to accept anything that I like and the uniqueness of those choices as my best contribution and way to eventually innovate as a consequence of not trying to replicate as an objective but as an accepted failure that will lead to something new to me.
 
Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

Anything that I feel familiar and at ease and something that challenges me in a good way. A drum, a drum machine, software, buttons, interacting with other humans and accepting my limitations to focus and wonder.
 
Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

Opening email, replying like I am doing now, interacting with others, keeping myself not too affected by admin and requests and challenges that come out of interacting with others, looking for a safe space and time to feel good and diving into an idea. I fail the majority of days on the latter.

When it works well, I am either alone travelling or at home with my cat by my side. He gets most of my time I am in that zone.

But again, I do get lost between dealing with different tasks, surviving, keeping my mental health and harmony at home. I love to work, though.
 
Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

I can’t. But I can try.

My last one: talking and trading basic ideas with other artists and getting them back to conclude and making all of them dialogue with each other and having a sense of utility and social consequence.

That includes remixes, collabs, discussions, reading about history, actual topics, watching docs, movies, diving in universes that are new and going back to the same old, that is usually around the late 70s and 80s between hip hop, house, punk, Madchester, etc etc.

It also includes my own perception of what could have been if Angola would have been able to get rid of colonialism and project the independence ideas with no war as well as Portugal making kind of the same with the April revolution, aiming for a more fair society, free of the Western narrative that it is part of.

That … and individual and minimal ideas where I bring just an element, challenging myself to do what is missing and not just what I know what to do, playing with words, images, videos, a plastic piece, all on the same level and trying to make all that possible in practical terms like clearances, deals, team, etc.

I tend to repeat myself at the same time I try to achieve different results while respecting everyone and everything involved. The exact definition of insanity, always aiming for utopia within my limitations. I can’t be more concrete than this. I am tired now.
 
Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I think I did it over the past replies. The individual credit is used by egk and needs to deal with ownership and rights. In the end we are all connected and ubuntu is the filosophy I relate to the most. I take interviews and have individual photos just for the sake of my survival. Otherwise I am eaten alive.

We can’t really look at the sky or the ocean and take it as a whole, right? I am inspired by the ocean, the stars and every artist I interact with.

Btw: I like whales and we cannot go to a better place if we don’t value all of them now.
 
How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

Music is as essential to us as water. Like for the whales, too. We are not the only animal to have music as part of its existence. But we may be the only ones using it to make money only. Music is essential to us. As water.
 
Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I need it everyday in every key moment. Deep or just hedonistic or plain stupid. It’s not that it helped me to understand - but to go through something or to bring with me in a more bearable or human way.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

Music does not need to be rational or explained. Science is not about keeping a certain truth. It's about broadening our perception and bringing to evidence what is not explainable.

Maybe they both reveal that the sacred and beautiful is everywhere if we are open to it and we try not to control it and that manipulating others throught it is not what brings us the best out of us a species. It’s more about sharing information and experiences together, on the same level.
 
Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I don’t use sample packs. I do sample and have Ableton open though. Is a Bimbi art?
 
Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?
 
No. But I do feel it works better when done or experienced or shared in a group. Maybe it’s always a collective creation.