Why We Send Signals, Not Newsletters

"The word is colonial technology."

This is not a provocation. It is a diagnosis.

When we sat down to create our first transmission—Signals from the Crossroads #1—we faced a question that every project claiming to be anti-colonial must answer: Do we use the tools of the colonizer, or do we refuse them?

The answer is not simple. We use Mailchimp. We write in English, a language not our own. We press records in plants powered by who-knows-what energy. We are not pure. We are not authentic. We are not the unspoiled voice of the periphery. That voice does not exist .

But refusal is not the same as innocence. Refusal is a practice. It is a thousand small refusals within systems we cannot fully escape.

The Problem with "Newsletter"

The word "newsletter" descends from corporate internal communications, public relations departments, direct mail marketing . It is a tool designed to push product, to optimize open rates, to segment audiences into demographics. It is the linguistic equivalent of the shipping container—efficient, standardized, cold.

It assumes you are a consumer. It assumes we are a brand. It assumes communication is a funnel at the end of which you purchase something.

We refuse this container.

As Dr.Sócrates writes in our manifesto: "The culture of colonized peoples is organized in the metropolises of the Western world. It has been incorporated into the Western system of cultural classification. Ethno, Afro, Latin, World... are all names that give Westerners the means of recognition and difference: because it is Afro, it is not ours."

The same logic applies to communication. "Newsletter" is a name that organizes our relationship with you into something transactional, extractive, corporate. It tells you who you are supposed to be in this exchange: a lead, a metric, a demographic.

We refuse the name because we refuse the relationship it demands.

The Crossroads as Method

So we chose another name: Signals from the Crossroads.

The crossroads is where Exu stands. Èṣù-Elegba. Laalu-Ogiri Oko. Exu de Candomblé. Echú. Legba. Leba. Exu de Quimbanda. Obi. Lucero. Many names across the diaspora, one messenger. Orishá of communication that never arrives intact.

Exu teaches us that distortion is not failure. It is fidelity.

When we send a signal, we know it will arrive distorted. By distance. By history. By the noise of empire. By your own context, your own struggles, your own listening. This is not something to correct. It is something to honor.

The crossroads is also where Fanon diagnosed the wound. Colonialism is not a misunderstanding. It is a collision. The gun meets the body. The chain meets the ankle. The doctrine meets the soul .

We do not make music about this wound. We make music from this wound. The difference is everything.

Thirty Years of Encounters

Our address list was not bought. It was not scraped. It was not traded in the data markets of the attention economy .

It was collected one encounter at a time, across thirty years.

1995, Freitags Bar basement, Berlin-Mitte. A Brazilian immigrant at the door collecting coins. Someone wrote an email on a napkin and handed it to him. His name was not yet DJ Garrincha.

2000, Fischladen, Friedrichshain. Another doorman. Another napkin. Dr.Sócrates .

Record fairs in São Paulo, Kansas City, St. Louis. Conversations after panels. Business cards handed over with a question. Dancefloors at YAAM and Weltruf Kiel where, in the morning light, someone said: send me what comes next.

These are not leads. They are crossroads. Each address is a moment where music became connection, where encounter became something worth remembering.

What We Authorize

At the bottom of every email there is a link. Unsubscribe. Update your preferences. Colonial words for stay but resent or leave quietly.

We offer a different link: Release yourself.

You owe us nothing. Stay because the wound is also yours. Stay because the music is good. But do not stay out of obligation. Obligation is the colonizer's emotion .

And for those who stay, we offer something else: total reproduction authorized.

Take it. Print it. Post it. Translate it. Send it to someone who needs it. We do not own these signals. We are merely their current transmitters.

What Comes Next

No schedule. Signals, when something arrives at the intersection of memory and combat.

Future transmissions may contain:

• Botany of Resistance dispatches

• Field notes from record buying journeys

• Ancestor files (Emory Douglas, Lélia Gonzalez, Aimé Césaire)

• A Listen: one track described, not embedded

• Correspondence: replies to those who write

• The Poster: something detachable, printable, shareable

We are Tropical Diaspora Records. Berlin, 2015. But we have been gathering since the 1990s in basements and squats and any space that would hold us .

Our logo is a woman shaped like the Atlantic. Her hair is the currents that carried. Her hair is also the roots that stayed.

This is what we are.

This is why we send signals, not newsletters.

We authorize total or partial reproduction of this blog entry.

Reproduction authorized.