A product of their home
MCs Momo and Azmarino of Footscray outfit Diafrix.
Photo: Supplied
Diafrix are, undeniably, Aussie hip-hop. By Andrew Drever.
IT SEEMS odd, given Australia’s vast multiculturalism, but there have been disquieting local scene mutterings and murmurings that Footscray hip-hop outfit Diafrix aren’t ”true blue” enough to be considered part of Australian hip-hop.
Maybe it’s their music, which fuses reggae, traditional African influences, soul, dancehall and drum’n'bass, as well as hip-hop. Perhaps it’s that their two frontmen are former African refugees. Maybe it’s that their lyrics don’t contain any cussing. Or is it that it’s a world away from the typical and popularised Australian ”skip-hop”?
Whatever it is, Diafrix’s Momo (Mohamed Komba) and Azmarino (Khalid Abdulwahab) have a strong view on the matter.
”We are part of the Australian hip-hop scene,” Abdulwahab says determinedly, while on a leisurely stroll around Footscray. ”A lot of people say no but that’s where the debate starts. Why aren’t we part of Australian hip-hop? We got a frickin’ ABN! Yeah, we are different. We don’t do the same music as them but we are part of that culture.”
Komba arrived in Melbourne 23 years ago as a three-year-old with part of his family from the Comoros Islands, off the south-east coast of Africa near Madagascar.
Abdulwahab, 27, is from war-torn Eritrea (in north-east Africa) who, having left his family and three siblings in Eritrea, undertook a decade-long search for citizenship in Italy, Jordan and Switzerland before settling here in 2000.
The duo met in 2001 at a hip-hop workshop run by TZU’s Joelistics. Naming themselves after a Footscray cafe (Cafe D’Afrique), the duo were joined by the largely unseen producer Ptero Stylus (Glenn Christiansen), who is responsible for the worldly palette of sounds on their debut album, Concrete Jungle.
”He [Christiansen] had really strong hip-hop, really strong drum’n'bass and really strong reggae production,” Abdulwahab says. ”So when we did Concrete Jungle, we were sitting comfortably within those genres because we’d been doing them for so many years. It wasn’t just typical hip-hop.”
Both Abdulwahab and Komba, who see themselves as products of their dislocation and displacement, conduct music workshops and community-based mentorships for disadvantaged youth and immigrants, as well as holding down day jobs as youth workers.
”We’re rapping for our culture,” Abdulwahab says. ”Being part of the African thing, because of our backgrounds we can’t deny that and we don’t want to mess it up, because there’s only a few of us out there talking the other side of the story.”
Diafrix play at the Espy, St Kilda, on Friday, October 30.
