VOL.1 • Coffee

VOL. 1: COFFEE PLANT (2015)

Symbolism: The coffee plant on the cover ties directly to the enslaved African labor on Brazilian plantations, where the rhythms of samba, rock and latin sounds were forged in brutality.
Tracks:
- Mataron A Juan Andrés (Super Spanish Combo): A protest song against police brutality in Barcelona, honoring Juan Andrés Benítez, killed by officers.
- Grilos Da Vida (Banda Jardes): A rare 1976 samba-rock track, nearly lost to history after bootleggers dumped copies in the Tietê River.
Legacy: Pressed in 500 copies, now a collector’s artifact.

VOL.02 • Cacau

VOL. 2: CACAO (2018)

Symbolism: Cacao represents the Indigenous and African bodies crushed in colonial mills, yet whose labor birthed chocolate—a global commodity.
Production: Hand-printed using a 1950s Heidelberg press, with labels made from recycled plantation ledger paper.
Sound: Cumbia and Pachanga with Maya Language hip hop.

VOL.03 • Sugarcane

VOL. 3: SUGAR CANE (2020)

Symbolism: Sugar cane embodies the bloodiest chapter of colonial exploitation – the crop that sweetened Europe while cutting through generations of enslaved flesh.
Sound: Forró de Cabeça’s raw Forró de rabeca recorded in Recife.
Context: Pressed as the pandemic began, becoming a sonic lifeline for the diaspora.

VOL.04 • Cotton

VOL. 4: COTTON (2025)

Symbolism: The cotton plant embodies the bloodiest chapter of racial capitalism—the fabric of slavery that clothed the world while stripping Africans of their freedom. Like the bugigangas of my grandmother’s life, cotton was deemed “worthless” in the fields but priceless in global trade.
Artwork: Stark white fibers against black soil, echoing the false dichotomy of race constructed to justify brutality.
Sound:
- Samba Blues: Recorded in São Paulo, Brazil.
- Last Kind Words: Recorded in Mississippi in the 1930 and Revisited by Valerie and Benedict Turner in New York.

**The Bugiganga Tropical 7 inch Treasure Cover record collection**

The Idea by Dj GArRinchA

Bugiganga Tropical: The Origin of the Vinyl Collection

Tropical Diaspora Records® began with this very project: Bugiganga Tropical, a 7-inch vinyl series whose name carries deep personal and colonial weight.

The Portuguese word “bugiganga” translates to trinket, gewgaw, or knick-knack—a term I often heard in the homes of the wealthy, where my Black grandmother worked as a domestic servant (empregada doméstica), one of many euphemisms for modern-day slavery in Brazil.

As a child, I accompanied her to those opulent apartments in São Paulo’s elite neighborhoods, where white employers dismissively referred to her belongings—her few, precious possessions—as “bugigangas.”

This duality became the core of the collection: what colonizers deem worthless—trinkets, scraps, the labor and creations of the oppressed—are, in fact, sacred. The music, crafts, and raw materials extracted through slavery and exploitation hold the true value, far beyond what the powerful ever acknowledged.

Plants as Memory, Vinyl as Resistance

Each cover features plants—coffee, cacao, sugarcane—to honor the ancestors whose forced cultivation of these crops built the so-called “New World.” Bugiganga Tropical Vol.1, with its coffee plant motif, ties the music’s Afro-South American rhythms directly to the land and labor from which they emerged.

This is more than a record series. It’s a reckoning with Abya Yala (the Guna people’s term for the Americas, meaning “land of vital blood”), where Indigenous and African resilience forged cultures that colonialism tried to erase.

The Vinyl as an Archive

The first four releases in our catalog are foundational. They trace the musical legacy of the transatlantic slave trade and Indigenous resistance. Vol. 1: Coffee (2015) – The brutal way of forced labor. The stimulant that fueled colonial exploitation. Vol. 2: Cacao (2018) – The stolen sweetness of Indigenous knowledge. The bitter seed of stolen Indigenous knowledge. Vol. 3: Sugar Cane (2020) – The sweet stalk that cut through generations of flesh. Vol. 4: Cotton (2025) – The final stitch in slavery’s fabric, now unraveled

A Call to Listen Deeply

This is more than music. It’s an act of remembrance, reclamation, and repair. We invite you to engage with these sounds, to sit with their stories, and to question the narratives you’ve been taught.

Play these records. Hear the past. Resist the silence.

Thank You

Djs Dr.Sócrates and Garrincha
Tropical Diaspora Records® 2025

Bugiganga Tropical Releases

Making the Bugiganga Tropical Collection

We are proud to present a new edition of Bugiganga Tropical, a vinyl collection that embodies the principles of Tropical Diaspora Records®. This project explores the cultural encounter between two displaced peoples: Africans forcibly brought across the Atlantic and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Their collision birthed new forms of expression—music, art, and resistance—that reflect both the horrors of colonialism and the resilience of survival.
Acknowledging the Paradox of Language and Power

We recognize that the tools we use—language, design, even the term “America”—are shaped by imperialist narratives. English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese: these are the tongues of colonizers, yet they are also our means of communication today. Silence is not an option. We choose to speak, to reclaim these channels, and to amplify voices that have been systematically erased.

Design as a Political Statement

The cover art of Bugiganga Tropical is intentional. Each volume features plants—coffee, cacao, sugarcane and cotton —that symbolize the forced labor of enslaved Africans and the displacement of Indigenous communities. These crops built colonial empires on genocide, yet they also became sites of cultural fusion. The music within these records—Afro-Brazilian samba-rock, Andean Cumbia, Forró de Rabeca, Samba, Blues—is a testament to that survival.

The Roots of Tropical Diaspora Records

The word “bugiganga” still echoes in my ears – a Portuguese term meaning trinkets or knick-knacks, spat contemptuously by wealthy Paulistanos to describe my Black grandmother’s few possessions as she worked in their homes. An “empregada doméstica” they called her – just another euphemism masking modern slavery.

These records grew from that injustice. What colonizers dismissed as worthless – the music, crafts, and fragments of culture preserved by the oppressed – became our most sacred treasures. The Bugiganga Tropical series honors this truth: that what masters called “trinkets” were in fact the irreplaceable heritage of enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples.

This is music as living history – not streaming data, but physical artifacts you must hold to truly know, just as my grandmother’s story must be held to be remembered.

The cotton plant embodies the bloodiest chapter of racial capitalism—the fabric of slavery that clothed the world while stripping Africans of their freedom.

“The ‘bugigangas’ of the oppressed outlast the gold of the oppressors.
This music is proof.”

Questioning the Names We Inherit

Why “America”? A term derived from Amerigo Vespucci, imposed by European cartographers. Why not Abya Yala, the Guna people’s term for this land: “land of vital blood”? Our work challenges these colonial frameworks, insisting on a narrative that centers the oppressed.

The Vinyl as an Archive

A Call to Listen Deeply

Play these records. Hear the past. Resist the silence.

Thank You

Djs Dr.Sócrates and Garrincha
Tropical Diaspora Records® 2025