Cumbia Digital Eats Salsa for Breakfast; Comes to Brooklyn Bowl

Overheard in a Berlin Cafe: “Any advice for somebody wanting to start a record label?” the young man said.

“It’s a nightmare, but we’re all gonna die, and you might as well do something you love,” answered Grant C. Dull, founder of ZZK Records, the premier record label in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which specializes in “cumbia digital.” And this Thursday, July 22nd, Buenos Aires’ best DJs and their drum-toting live band will be taking over Brooklyn Bowl.

In 2008, Grant C. Dull, whose DJ name is “El G,” founded Zizek, shortened to ZZK Records, after four years of building and running cultural events website What’s Up Buenos Aires.  El G has played at festivals such as Coachella, Roskilde & Summer Stage in Central Park.  The ZZK cumbia digital sound has influenced DJs and artists like Bersas Discos & Tormenta Tropical in San Francisco and DJ/Rupture and Diplo in the East.  The sound has ignited a resurgence in cumbia music for a new generation of Latinos, hipsters, and world-music audiophiles alike, with leading label ZZK receiving a wide range of media attention from big names like The NY Times, CNN, The Fader, Mad Decent, Discobelle, and Generation Bass.

Cumbia is colored like Colombian sunsets. Cumbia sounds like Caribbean coconuts falling to the ground. Cumbia feels like the sweat underneath a Panama hat…. It’s African. It’s New World. It’s tribal, it’s digital. And now it’s coming to Brooklyn.

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