In the 1990s I swapped the tropical concrete jungle São Paulo with another concrete jungle in Northern Europe, Berlin. An immigrant, a foreigner, a refugee, a “South American guy” in another diaspora, fleeing from the catastrophic economic and political situation in Brazil, I decided to share my passion for the musical heritage as Dj GArRinchA. Never mind the former and current politics in Brazil, let’s go back to where it all started, for me anyways. In the early 1990s, the political map of the world saw profound changes with Germany and the once divided city Berlin at the epicenter. Before the Berlin Wall did not only divide this city, it was also the most obvious manifestation of the political crack which had been running through the world after WWII. Shortly after the wall fell the entire Eastern bloc started to totter and finally collapsed.
After the reunification, many West-Germans along with people from all over the world came to Berlin. Others from East Berlin could not wait to leave. Abandoned by their previous owners, places in the Eastern districts were squatted. Unlicensed and thus illegal bars would pop up on every corner and disappear or move to a different place within a week. A thriving art scene with newly opened galleries emerged in rundown houses. Coming to Berlin in the 1990s was like entering a laboratory with transformation taking place at any corner and affecting any aspect of life. This transition generated a vacuum that made people feel almost like creators shaping part of tomorrow’s world by trying out new things while the old was retreating and the new was still to come. In short, Berlin became the center of the young subculture in Europe.
In this spirit a new movement was born, which I call the “Latin American Way” of the Berlin subculture. Among the first places where this yet-to-be-born scene gathered was the Freitags Bar (German for Friday’s Bar), one of the various unlicensed bars at the center of the former Eastern part of the city. To me, this place embodied perfectly the spirit of that time. Only people who knew about it would come to this gloomy cavernous place in the basement of a pre-WWII building. Each time there was the risk that the party would be called off by the police which made every single event not only slightly adventurous but all the more precious. Thanks to the Latin American affection of the host, music and drinks from South America set the tone. The DJs staging there had no names yet and put music on that nobody knew, the Brazilian cocktail Caipirinha still had the charm of novelty, its rum base Cachaça was a rarity and quite pricey.
Initially as guest in that gloomy cavern then as “employee” sitting upstairs by candlelight, i was the doorman. After a while i began to provide CD compilations with Brazilian music to the guys that did the music in the basement i.e. DJ´ and suddenly i could listen that music been playing again and again the parties downstairs. The logic consequence was to play my compilations by my self, also this was the begin. After a while i was a resident and began to mix Brazilian music, first of all with the all known Spanish Latin-American songs and later with Balkan music, a style that came in the taste of the people in the early 90ies. Just like that we promote almost every week the party in the Freitag´s Bar and one day a friend of my came to me and ask “…who is this singer you play every week in your set…? with this amazing voice! ” my answer was who-else if not Elza Soares!
Another Friday in the bar and this friend came again to me to say that he knows who this singer is, she was Garrincha´s wife! After that he said… ”you are the Dj Garrincha also…” and because was no night where I’ve played Elza Soares i accept that suggestion. So that night in that basement was the birth of Dj Garrincha. Not only i got a dj name, after my “baptism” everybody began to have dj names in the bar and some of them are active day now in Berlin like Dr.Sócrates and Andy Loop in Barcelona (by the way the asking guy in the history above).
But the most impressive personal experience for me back then was in 1996 after the concert of Chico Science & Nação Zumbi, when I met these musicians in the Freitags Bar. Yes, Chico Science was there in this very basement bar in the Mulackstraße, a place which, unfortunately, due to gentrification does no longer carry the taste of the 1990s. To point out not only the importance and meaning of this place in the early 1990s but also its effect, I should add that the most popular Latin American events in Berlin nowadays are produced and organized by people who used to be regulars at the Freitag´s Bar and whom I keep meeting at those events as today at the: TROPICAL DIASPORA in Berlin.
One of the lasting encounter at this basement existing today was that one with the guy that did the “doorman job” after me, today´s resident DJ Dr.Sócrates, his definition of Tropical Diaspora could´t be better…
I know Dj GARinchA for many years. We both share the love for unconventional music without labels or prejudices. We have shared many djs sessions, some good moments, some bad ones. But we haven’t given up our dream of collecting musical experiences that do not fit quite rightly what the mainstream expects for djs firing the dance floor. As Dj GARinchA told me about setting up a musical “tropical diaspora” supporting local bands and good music I couldn’t say no. For me “diaspora” means the constant movement in search for life based musical experiences, the traveling around of rhythms which are the result of suffering and exploitation as much as of a joyful sense of life.
“Tropical Diaspora” performs in the past in a emblematic venue where we try to create a room for empathic sharing. Instead of market professionalism we like to emphasis a true naive amateurism, though not in a pejorative sense. We claim the right of being amateurs of the dance floor, that is, literally, lovers, “amadores” as we call it in Portuguese. Surrounded by an ocean of mainstreams, the “Tropical Diaspora” party is an island of, simply, music. This is a music that is born uncut from the lives of the people. It is organic not manufactured; it grows from life’s stories. We respect that. “Tropical Diaspora” means music without preservatives, but as it simply is: “Tropical Diaspora”, the place to be in Berlin."
Afterword – Berlin Then and Now: The Total Antagonism
The Berlin described above – a laboratory of transformation, a magnet for runaways, refugees, and squatters, a place where unlicensed bars flickered in basements and every night felt like an act of creation – no longer exists. What was once a city of precarious adventure, low rents, and collective dreaming has become its opposite.
Today, Berlin is gentrified. The same districts where Freitags Bar once pulsed with the risk of police raids are now lined with organic supermarkets, co-working spaces, and cocktail bars charging €30–35 for a Caipirinha – if you can even get in. The artists, DJs, and doormen who defined the 1990s have been pushed out. In their place stands a new figure: the celebrity doorman, not the candlelit friend at the entrance, but the bouncer at places like Berghain, who decides your worth based on outfits, Instagram potential, and an aura of “cool” that has nothing to do with music or survival.
That doorman doesn’t protect a hidden community. He protects exclusivity for hipsters, tourists, and people with money. The line outside is no longer about shared adventure – it’s a performance of status. The spirit of the 90s – reckless, warm, broken-beautiful – has been commodified, packaged, and sold back as a brand. The unlicensed bar is gone. The basement is a luxury loft.
Berlin is now just another city made for people with money. Rents have tripled, quadrupled. The very forces that once made it a haven for the displaced – cheap space, legal ambiguity, a vacuum of power – have been reversed. The wall is long gone, but a new, invisible wall has risen: one built from €30 drinks, curated guest lists, and bouncers who never smile.
And the violence is no longer just economic. The Berlin police – the same institution that once watched over the crumbling Wall – now represses pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide protesters with brute force. They beat demonstrators, fire pepper spray into crowds, and arrest people for chanting words like “Freedom” or “Palestine.” Certain phrases are censored by the state: “From the river to the sea,” “Stop the genocide,” even the mere display of a Palestinian keffiyeh in protest contexts has been banned or criminalized. The city that once prided itself on being a refuge for counterculture and free speech now silences those who speak against mass death. The doorman at Berghain is a joke compared to the doorman at a protest – the cop who decides whether you go home or to jail.
Tropical Diaspora Records was born out of diaspora, movement, and survival. That Berlin is dead. What remains is a polished, overpriced ghost – a city that remembers its former self only as a marketing campaign for rich hipsters, while its police crush the voices of the oppressed.
This is not nostalgia. This is an obituary for a city that turned its back on the very people who made it great. And an acknowledgment that the next Tropical Diaspora will have to find another home.