TROPICOS

"Tropicos" is a multicultural music project by Rafaele Andrade that dives into the impact of globalisation on our virtual and personal relationships with other human communities. Inspired by the research "Futura tropica", by Juan Pablo Garcia Sossa, the project explores how the world is increasingly shaped by unequal, global and virtual relations, including societal conditions, standards, and hierarchies.

In "Tropicos", I explore language as the key factor to connect personally with different cultural backgrounds of an international public. The text is quite ambiguous: it can be from someone living in the south or the north hemisphere, and therefore, it also represents that we all suffer from the influences of unequal relationships and its economies. 

Every song-story is used with the original narratives and expressions of each  language and its culture. This project uses 4 languages —Dutch, Portuguese, English, and Spanish— to convey stories about the impact of globalisation in human relations through the areas and themes of fair work labour, transport systems, the construction of aesthetics, and land belonging. These extended song formats delve into the complexities of these areas by its virtual connections and their impact on cultural traditions. Personal narratives, including insights into intimate stories between the Netherlands and Brazil, creating a thought-provoking scope of virtual relations.  

The project also engages in an ongoing dialogue on postcolonialism, using Knurl's electro acoustic sounds and visual identity to represent a possible new dimensionality of the world dynamics: the world's relations should not be only based on ‘south-north’ , but rather in the 3 dimensionality of global relations with nearby countries and cultures that shares the same ‘world tropics’. 

Through this, "Tropicos'' communicates a universal message about interconnectedness, diversity, globalisation and the evolving language of music.