City Beats: Bogotá
In our City Beats series, we explore underground scenes in cities worldwide. This week, we’re spotlighting Bogotá, Colombia, and its thriving drum and bass scene.
Colombia’s capital city is home to 8 million people—and it seems as though about half of them are involved in the drum and bass scene. Bogotá’s D&B underground is thriving, with festivals like RE.SET, Radikal Styles, and 420 Bogotá laying the foundation for new artists to flourish and international artists to let loose.
Collectives and sound systems like Autonotek, Liquid Mood, Womandbass, and Bogotrax have built thriving communities, and put Colombia firmly at the forefront of Latin America’s electronic underground.
From Europe to Latin America
Colombia’s D&B scene started as an offshoot of Europe’s. Back in the ‘90s, when the genre was setting Europe’s underground alight, a crew of disillusioned French ravers relocated to Colombia. They were sick of the heavy policing of free parties in Europe and the routine suppression of rave culture. So they brought the scene to Colombia, introducing their breakneck beats, wild parties, inclusive community, and innovative approaches through free raves on the outskirts of Medellín and Bogotá.
“These French guys brought their vinyl, their music, and started to make the free parties,” says BRAIN, a D&B producer from Bogotá. “It was very special, because it was really underground, really DIY, really alternative and deviant from society.”
Bogotá’s D&B Revolution
If that planted the seed, then it fully blossomed when Jairo Vargas co-founded RE.SET, Bogotá’s longest-running drum & bass event and label. Vargas grew up between Colombia and the U.S., where he soaked up NYC’s house and techno scenes.
It was the late ‘90s, and Vargas was determined to bring the culture back to his home city. Back then, records were hard to come by, and he returned to Bogotá with an extensive collection. That led to the founding of Phono Lab in Bogotá’s Zona Rosa neighborhood, a record store that soon became an influential electronic music hub. For over a decade, they supported the local scene while connecting communities through music and events.
Phono’s events soon expanded from the more popular sound of techno to the more underground Drum & Bass. “Drum and bass didn’t fit in with the style of Techsound, but we knew the city wanted it. So myself and DJ Sebass, who is now known as Colombia’s drum & bass Godfather, set up RE.SET,” said Vargas in a 2019 interview with Bandcamp. “There were a few nights here for the sound, but no one was doing it seriously, with professional production and international acts.”
Local Talent, Global Reach, and Community Impact
The first major RE.SET event was in 2006, but they’d been testing the waters with smaller D&B events. The first European artists to travel to Bogotá to play a D&B event were Silver (from UK trio North Base), and Drumsound. They were blown away by the crowd’s wild energy, lack of self-consciousness, and gratitude. Since then, that energy has spread like wildfire, with D&B events in Bogotá every single weekend and a flourishing scene of homegrown talent.
That includes artists, collectives, club nights, and sound systems such as SINTESIS, Zipaquirá!, Stxp UP Soundsystem, La Modular, Phonologia, Exophono, Silentzcorp, Inbassion and many more.
The womanandbass collective are championing women in the scene, and D&B artists from across the globe are itching to play some of the city’s underground festivals. Artists like DJ Sebass, Vargas, and BRAIN are teaching Bogotá’s youth how to DJ and produce, and every time a DJ comes from abroad they ask them to create a masterclass to give back to the community. “That’s my engine that keeps me moving,” says BRAIN. “There are many people with way more talent than me in Colombia, but they don't have the opportunities, so I'm opening the doors for those people.”
