amémé


“Your vibe attracts your tribe. The rhythms carry ancestral memory while moving through modern beats, and in that mix you can feel a room of strangers become a community.”


What do you remember from your childhood in Benin, how did your community respond when you began blending local rhythmic traditions with contemporary electronic music?


I grew up in Cotonou, in a neighborhood where sound and kids dancing in the streets was part of daily life. You could hear the market sellers,


the radios


playing, and the ocean in the distance.


I grew up in a very


musical environment in Benin, where drums and percussion were the essence of our cultural traditions. Drums like the djembe and conga were just a few specific elements used in West African ceremonies I grew up around. I was introduced to electronic music by my brother when he came home to visit after having been in Europe for a year, and that’s when I fell in love with the sound. I only started experimenting


with blending


electronic music and traditional rhythms myself when I arrived in New York. I had the pulse of New York’s nightlife at my fingertips and my upbringing in Benin that shaped the foundation we’re still building on today. Now, I do my best to represent my community and where I come from in every song, set, and choice I make for the project. With artists like the legendary Angelique Kidjo also coming from Cotonou, Benin has a lot of pride in its creative exports.


Between your brother mother’s


influences in fashion and textiles, and the French house tapes your


brought


home from Europe, at what moment did you clearly feel that Africa and Europe could engage in a musical dialogue?


There was always a bridge. African and Caribbean sounds already had electronic elements, dance music came a bit later. Someone like Black Coffee put that framework of translating traditional sounds to the language of popular dance music. My brother returned from France with a mixtape full of music that had a pulse and really felt alive. My mother always told me that a single thread can transform a fabric. African and European sounds were never


were different threads waiting to be woven.


When you first said “we are all one tribe,” what personal meaning did that phrase carry, and how did it become the philosophical seed of what would later become One Tribe?


One Tribe grew from a simple feeling: New York’s electronic scene needed a space for Afro- house and the community around it. We didn’t want another


party; we wanted a


full experience. We brought in percussionists, dancers, and painters so the night felt alive and shared. From there, the events naturally expanded into a fashion line and a music label, different expressions of the same vision. For me, One Tribe celebrates Afro-house and the universal power of sound to connect people. Your vibe attracts your tribe. The rhythms carry ancestral memory while moving through modern beats, and in that mix you can feel a room of strangers become a community. That’s what One Tribe means to me.


rivals; they


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