In Conversation: Enrico Figueiredo

About Enrico:

Over the last month Tanzanian musician and music producer Enrico Figueiredo has been the Sound Artist in Residence at St John’s College. During his 40-year career to date Enrico has been instrumental in the performance and recording of Tanzanian popular music, from rumba through hip hop to singeli. As well as working as a producer Enrico is a musician and was the lead guitar player in the InAfrika Band which performs, and records music influenced by Cuban music and Congolese rumba. In the late 1990s Enrico began producing hip hop and played a central role in the emergence of a local hip hop scene in the 1990s. Since 1994 Enrico has been the producer and manager of the influential Sound Crafters one of the oldest studios still operating music studios in the Temeke District of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Sound Crafters has been instrumental in creating, recording and preserving a whole range of musical genres in Tanzania.

About this event:

Enrico will be joined by the interdisciplinary artist and writer Valerie Asiimwe Amani and the researcher and the Africa Oxford Initiative programme manager David Kerr, for a discussion of his career and the significance of sound sampling in his music. Enrico will share some of the recordings that have been particularly instrumental in his work.