Mr Bongo - Twenty years of Bongo beats

The London record shop Mr Bongo was a legendary landmark for DJs and collectors of Hip Hop, Latin and Brazilian sounds. Now a label releasing music and films, Mr Bongo celebrates twenty years in the business of musical passion.

For 20 years now, Mr Bongo has been a platform for independent music, and more recently films and charity organizations, promoting the best in global sounds and an artful tastemaker for future tendencies. Despite closing its landmark Soho record store in 2004, the label continues its work and remains a crucial reference point. Mondomix spoke with its founder, David Mr Bongo Buttle.

"I started out selling vinyl LPs I’d brought back to London from LA, to finance my studies. I also used to DJ at clubs where I’d play funk, Latin soul, boogaloo, bossa and batucada – music I’d brought back from Latin America. So much great music from places like Brazil and New York just wasn’t getting heard over here but gradually a scene built up, with people like Gilles Peterson being a great champion of the kind of Brazilian, Latin and jazz music we sold at the shop.
When we started the label, our releases reflected the fact we’ve always been into lots of different sounds. We’re probably associated most with Brazilian and Latin music but we also had two other imprints – Beyongolia (for hip hop) and Disorient (for Japanese house) and a shop in Tokyo."

The diverse musical styles in the Bongo catalogue make it a rich mix. David Buttle’s love of vintage Brazilian music led to the reissue of classics such as The Ipanemas 1964 bossa gem ‘Os Ipanemas’. Whether recording new albums with long neglected masters like Tito Puente, or taking the plunge with debut artists such as young Cuban singer Hanny, the label has a canny ear and is proud to have been the first to release Seu Jorge’s sublime debut album Carolina outside Brazil.

In 1996, this special relationship with Brazil took on an added humanitarian dimension, with the label’s involvement with the favela charity Street Angels in Salvador da Bahia. This community organization is behind the construction of a school and a health clinic there.

Mr Bongo also collaborated with the Bottletop charity which works with communities in Africa and Brazil, producing bags made from recycled bottletops. With supporters ranging from Fatboy Slim to Gilberto Gil to fashion house Fenchurch, they have run very successful campaigns raising funds and profile for health education initiatives. The label was involved in releasing the two ‘Sound Affects’ albums related to the project.

Fatboy Slim visits the Street Angels project with Bottletop

More recently, Mr Bongo Films, has been responsible for the reissue of some world cinema classics, including Gutierrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment and the lyrical masterpiece I am Cuba and Glauber Rocha’s White God, Black Devil (Brazil).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvwLZOpxAFQ
I am Cuba

Memories of Underdevelopment

To celebrate the big 20, the label produced a Best of Mr Bongo collection and a hefty 8CD boxset is the latest release in the popular Brazilian Beats series. Future projects for 2009 include a new album from Terry Callier and the debut from South African hip hop power poet Tumi and The Volume.

http://records.mrbongo.com

http://streetangels.mrbongo.com

Get the mp3.mondomix selection of the Mr Bongo label:
Terry Callier	Montuno Sessions	Bottletop presents Sound Affects	Awadi

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