In an ambitious and expansive project encompassing ten cities across two continents, Ten Cities engineered musical crossovers and examinations between Europe and Africa.

Enlisting DJs, producers, musicians and journalists across Nairobi, Lagos, Luanda, Cairo, Johannesburg, Naples, Lisbon, Kyiv, Bristol and Berlin, meetings resulted in recording sessions, parties, talks, seminars and more. Contextualizing with local accounts of the histories of the clubbing scenes of each city, the four-year undertaking—a large initiative involving multiple institutions and organizers, including brothers Hannes and Andi Teichmann from the PLATOON NETWORK—culminated in a compilation album documenting the cross-genre, transcontinental collaborations and a final blowout event in Berlin last November, with a forthcoming book collating all of the written materials.Recognizing music—in this case, unique micro-genres of club music—as more than entertainment, something central to popular culture, Ten Cities taps into a number of political threads. While raising the specter of colonialism, the focus is a subversion of stereotypes and the desire for nuance. Exposure is also important—the overlooked contribution of underappreciated but exciting musical forms becomes as important as the creation of new ideas formed from different perspectives meeting. Borne out in the club, it also reveals, again, the power of the connectivity of music.