The final performance of TabomBass at the #32bienal will be a huge party celebrating dub with the masters Victor Rice and Yellow P (Dubversão Sistema de Som).

TabomBass is a sound system in the form of an altar that reproduces only low- spectrum sounds. The flames of three candles placed in front of the loudspeakers dance and throb along with the basslines. TabomBass’s grave reverbs were composed by ten musicians and producers from Accra, the capital of Ghana, where the artist Vivian Caccuri spent four weeks developing the project. The musicians are Keyzuz, Yaw P, Sankofa, Wanlov, Ghalileo, Mensahighlife, Kuvie, Panji Anoff, Steloo and Mutombo da Poet. During the four monthly performances, Brazilian artists are invited to layer beats, instrumental passages, words and other sounds onto the African deep- bass sequences, presaging new Afro-Brazilian musical genres. The idea is to find fresh ways of cross-fertilizing Brazilian and Ghanian electronic and dance rhythms.

Dub, the focus of this final performance, emerged in Jamaica in the 1960s and spread across the Atlantic to the rest of the world, achieving particular relevance in Ghana, where TabomBass was conceived. ‘Dub’ is short for ‘double’, with reference to the layers of echoes, delays and cadences that recall the ebb and flow of the sea. Dub uses repetition and reverberation to lure the listener into a kind of trance that dilutes individual psychological space into a collective sonorous experience. According to Lee "Scratch" Perry, one of the country’s leading exponents, ‘Dub’ also comes from ‘duppie’, a Ga word also used by the Akan, two of country’s main ethnic groups. ‘Duppie’ means ‘ghost’, particularly malignant spirits from Ghanian and Jamaican folklore that can be captured, tamed and transformed into playful sprites through music. 

That’s what Victor Rice aims to do in this performance: transform these Ghanian basslines into new forms of dub. Since the 1990s, the São Paulo-based North- American has been unveiling the secrets of this important technique. With his personal collection of riddims, he uses a live PA to demonstrate how effects are inserted and instruments selected – the cornerstones of dub. His work has yielded some acclaimed dubs mixed at Version City studios, a reggae and dub enclave in New York, and at the COPAN Studio in São Paulo, where he has mixed dozens of local artists, such as Céu, Karina Buhr, Anelis Assumpção, Elza Soares, João Donato and Tulipa Ruiz, whose record ‘Dancê’, which Victor mixed, won the Latin Grammy Awards for best contemporary Brazilian pop album in 2015.

Yellow P is founder of Dubversão Sistema de Som, one of the most respected and accomplished sound systems in the country. Leading the collective since 2001, Yellow is an avid collector of rare dubplates, and to listen to him is to immerse yourself in a precious treasure-trove of the best Jamaican dub on vinyl. On Saturday December 10, TabomBass at the Bienal comes full-circle with the very best Jamaica has to offer, evoking Africa as a myth of origins multiplied through the echoes of dub.