Nansen Magazine - Issue 02

KALAF is best known as one of the founding MCs of Buraka Som Sistema, a rambunctious music project that burst out of a Lisbon nightclub and onto the global stage in 2006. The group fused contemporary European electronic dance music with kuduro, a frantic Angolan dance beat developed when Kalaf was growing up there in the 1980s. Their bringing kuduro to the mainstream permanently altered the global club music scene.

But KALAF has also made a name for himself in Lisbon as a writer, becoming a prominent essayist and cultural critic in the Portuguese speaking world. This double-whammy has allowed him to cultivate the broad influence he enjoys in Portugal today, stretching from young club-goers to middle-aged newspaper readers. KALAF is on a mission to unify the Portuguese-speaking world, crossing borders drawn up during colonisation to bring the people of his homeland and his chosen home together.