The Stool Pigeon

M.I.A.'s voice booms through the speakers alongside Buraka Som Sistema's beats: "The sound of kuduro's knocking at your door."

Lisbon's Buraka Som Sistema (comprised of beatmakers João Barbosa, Rui Pité, Andro Carvalho and vocalist Kalaf Ângelo) are solely responsible for knocking doors down around the Western world with kuduro, a dance-centric genre that hadn't previously been heard outside of clubs in Portugal and Angola (formerly a Portuguese colony).

"It started with guys in Africa trying to play techno," João explains. "But the dance was there before the sound. If you went to an African club in Lisbon in the nineties - the moment the kuduro started - the whole club would break out into the same dance, almost like line dancing."

"Each tune had a specific move, the name of the tune was the name of the move," adds Rui.

While the floors used to fill with dance moves mimicking frogs, old ladies on canes and drivers manning steering wheels, Joao says these days the clubs have swayed towards a hip hop leaning. "Now it's more about MCs than about dancing and instrumentals. Now it's just MCs saying how bad and gangsta they are."

BSS are something of a legend in Portugal, often headlining the biggest festivals over other legends (in one case, Bob Dylan) and giving kuduro a new breath of life. Their take on kuduro (which translates as 'hardass', matching the booty-banging beats) brings fresh, bass-driven sounds into the mix, bridging their vast musical interests, which include drum'n'bass, dubstep, and rock.

Pressed for description, Rui accidentally reveals he imagines their brightly lit version of kuduro as colours. "I see yellow and purple, always," he says. "Wow, this is my first confession of this!"

They tell tales about bringing the kuduro sound to energized clubs and festival stages around the world, and fall about in hysterics describing a recent brush Kalaf had with the law. Travelling to a festival in Norway without a passport (he'd lost it the week before), he got busted and locked up.

"It gives us street cred," says João. "For the first time in his life, Kalaf got to say this sentence: 'I have to take a shower to get this jail smell out of me.'"

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