Kalaf Epalanga DJ Set

Not only is Epalanga a writer, he is also one of the founders of Buraka Som Sistema, a musical project that started off in a Lisbon nightclub and made it all the way to international stages in 2006. The group merged contemporary European electronic dance music with kuduro, a frenetic Angolan dance rhythm. In Capítulo uno (Chapter One) he will explore his work as a DJ with a set prepared specifically for the festival, besides talking about his narrative and essayistic work.

Kalaf Epalanga (Benguela, 1978) is an Angolan-born writer and musician currently living in Berlin. As a musician, he co-founded the label Enchufada, a creative and dynamic platform that promotes new musical styles from Lisbon to the entire world, and he founded a band that won the MTV Europe Music Award, Buraka Som Sistema (on pause since 2016). He has written columns for the Portuguese newspaper O Público, GQ magazine (Portugal), the independent online Angolan magazine REDE Angola and he is currently a column writer for the Brazilian literary magazine Quatro Cinco Um. He has published two collections of literary chronicles in Portugal and Angola: “Love Stories for Coloured Children” and “The Angolan Who Bought Lisboa (for Half-Price)”. “White People Can Dance Too”, Kalaf’s first novel was published in 2020 by Temas de Hoy, and will be translated into English by Daniel Hahn and published by Faber in spring 2023.