the Dutty Artz familia keeps growing. Welcome Adam Atropolis, lifelong New Yorker and next-level beatmaker and songcrafter. Right now he’s in Colombia with his Cumba Mela crew, cooking up all sorts of very cool, very considered collaborations with local musicians (“we’re working with the king of kings of vallenato today,” begins a typical email), from the nu-skool electronic heads to, well, squeezebox lord Hugo Carlos Grando, king of the kings of vallenato.

but better to have Atropolis explain. He’s been there for two or three months now, and is coming back soon, so expect to hear a lot more from (and about) Atropolis real soon. – Jace Rupture

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It’s been too long since we posted anything. Just to update the world, to those who are actually reading, part of the Cumba Mela collective has been doing a mini-tour through Colombia for the past two-months. There is a lot of great footage and music to come. For those who don’t know, we are producing a compilation with artists that we are collaborating with throughout Colombia. We are also performing and producing a documentary that illustrates our journey.

Please click the following link to learn more about our project: The Colombia NYC Project

So far we have worked with a handful of artists. Once we return to the states February 1^st. we will have more solid posts, previewing the work we have done here so far.

For now, I would like to share with you our experience in Palenque ; an historic village in Colombia with a massive heritage of preserved African traditions. Benkos Bioho, an escaped slave who aided many other slaves to live freely in this community, founded Palenque in the 17th century. Today, the traditional language of Palenquero can still be heard among the streets. The language was formed due to the diverse African tribes that lived together. Therefore, the native language of this area is a mix of several forms of African dialects with Spanish.

We were in Palenque during a champeta festival, which was really crazy. Since we have been in Colombia, we performed in Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Cartagena, and Barranquilla. And of all the places, we found the craziest and loudest sound system I have ever heard (no joke), in this small remote village, with wild pigs, goats, and chickens running around.

Anyway, during our 3-day visit we had the honor to be in the home of Raffael Cassini, one of the members of Sexteto Tabala. His group is regarded to be one of Colombia’s most highly regarded and important Afro-Colombia artists. It was amazing to see how such a highly regarded musician is living such a humble life-style in the quaint village of Palenque.

On the following day we had a beautiful experience with Las Alegres Ambulancias. We set up our mobile studio in their home and recorded a track with them. A remix of this track should be out hopefully in the next year. The completion of this entire project will hopefully be finished in a year.

Be sure to check out the short documentary bellow on Las Alegres Ambulances.

On our last day we worked with this young hip-hop crew. It was the first recording this 16-year olds have ever done in their life. We will be posting this track with some remixes soon, as well as some footage of the production behind this track.

Once we returned to Cartagena we met up with two more artists from Palenque. Viviano Torres, one of the fathers of Champeta, and Son Palenque. We got the honor to record with both of these artists. So stay posted to hear our collaborations with them.

As of now, we are in Taganga. Since we have been in this chilled out beach town we met up with Juan Carlos and Walter Hernandez, from Systema Solar, in their beautiful home studio. So keep posted to check out whats to come!