Rokia Bamba: sound designer and DJ, Brussels

Since she picked up her headphones again, Rokia Bamba’s star is rising quickly in Brussels and Paris. She is not DJ-ing in just any circuit, but picks out the activist circles of Globalicious, La Colonie, Massimadi – where she curates the whole DJ-programming – and the New Afro Ke-Pon’ festival of which she will be curating the first Belgian edition in 2020. She has a unique and daring style, mixing a-cappella with groove and punk and many more genres, a style she developed over the many years since she first co-founded Full Mix at Radio Campus, one of the first HipHop, R&B and Funk radio shows (1992). She has been a radio-maker since the age of 12, then a presenter for the (African Diaspora Brussels’ Radio Campus show Sous l’Arbre à Palabres (1989).

Rokia Bamba also works as a composer of artistic sound pieces like 21C/19C_Chpt3_Numbers and Comments (2017), designed for the performative projections of Antje Van Wichelen and My musical Kongo language exploration (2017), live performed at La Colonie, Paris. She participated in the Orchestre Populaire de Bruxelles concert at L’Ancienne Belgique with the singer Arno (2017), in the poetry piece Ceci n’est pas un poème II (Bozar 2016), in the conceptual collaborative work With unveiled face – what the portrait reveals of myself and of the others (Ethnoscripts 2015 Universität Hamburg Institut fur Ethnologie) and other artworks, For these pieces she often uses her own field recordings, her voice and the voices of the people close to her. Sound creation and editing was an important part of her assignment (2002-2006) at the cultural organisation Brussels belongs to us (BNA-BBOT). A second aspect of this assignment consisted in guiding groups (youngsters, inhabitants, refugees) into creating their own radio shows and sound pieces. She also continued the sound-educational line of work with projects like Radio Campus Nous Appartient and Radio Zinneke, and she participated in the Rencontre Internationale des Radios Francophones (Micro Voyageur) in Canada

Rokia Bamba holds a post-master degree in Intercultural Mediation (BAGIC Centre Bruxellois d’Action Interculturelles 2012-2015) and a Master in Journalism and Public relations (1996) from the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

For the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum (Cologne), she created the sound for the Artist meets Archive Exhibition NOISY IMAGES with Antje Van Wichelen, May 4 to July 21, 2019.