Boulevard Soundsystem mixtape in red, gold and green for Aut Aut Pisa

Reggae music is rebel music, and that says a lot about the music itself and its dedicated aficionados. When I was asked by Aut Aut Pisa to do a ‘playlist’, I rebelled and offered a live mixtape instead, promising to deliver a political message through the selection of the music. But in the end I also rebelled against that giving preference to a mix and blend of a wide range of Jamaican music(s) which is characteristic of both my personal style and the musical genre itself. Reggae music need not shout out its politics because it is inherently political even when it doesn’t try to be. As a black diasporic music, its heavy basslines pump out righteous blood in the heart of the political community in which it finds itself, internationally or, rather…AUTernationally!

So here it is, an AUTernational mixtape in red gold and green; the Rastafarian colours which symbolise the blood of those killed for the cause of the black community (red), Jamaica’s vegetation and hope for the eradication of suppression (green) and the wealth of Ethiopia, African motherland of Rastas (gold). But these three colours need not exhaust themselves in the theology and world vision of Rastafarianism as a culture of resistance. So they are here employed to allegorically allude to the variety and ‘mixability’ of a musical culture I have come to love and humbly yet proudly serve as a reggae selector with my sound, Boulevard Soundsystem, in the hope you’ll ride along with us with those riddims, rhymes and big basslines.

Boulevard Soundsystem is a UK-based reggae selector dividing his time between Brighton and his native Greece, working with great British MCs such as Brother Culture, MC Trooper, MC Champian and Serocee with whom he runs the regular Reggae Bombing clubnight. In his free time he writes a PhD on public sociology and intellectuals.

Boulevard SoundSystem x Sunday Morning by Autautpisa on Mixcloud