soungou at Nyege Nyege [Jinja]
Timon Essoungou Bony Malong aka soungou is a newcomer DJ and community worker whose cultural activities centre around strengthening bonds between diasporic/afroeuropean/black artists, musicians, activists in Switzerland and creating and holding space for queer BIPOC to come together and celebrate. As an extension of this, he is interested in building connections with contemporaries on the continent. soungou has been invited to perform at «Nyege Nyege International Music Festival 2022» in Jinja, Uganda from 15-18 September 2022. The invitation follows on from the Club and Care residency at Gessnerallee that soungou took part in earlier this year, and intersects with the Swiss music professionals invited for a networking trip in the context of the festival.
“For my set at Nyege Nyege I will focus on centring diasporic Swiss musicians whom I admire and who influenced me. The collage of Swiss sounds and my personal technique of mixing should emphasize the talent of the artists around me and function as a catalyst for celebration,” he explains. “Playing at Nyege Nyege Festival will not only be a big step in my personal, musical career that enables me to connect more with artists from the African continent, it will also nourish intercontinental relation in music and culture from a perspective of the free and independent scene.”
BIOGRAPHY
Timon Essoungou Bony Malong (soungou) is a newcomer to the cultural spheres of Switzerland. As a member and initiator of the FUBU group, his first foray into the cultural world came in 2020 when the group organized its first event. From organizing and curating events centred around the queer BIPOC community of Switzerland, becoming a DJ followed as a natural progression. With a style that might be described as a mix of Latin and Afro influences, deconstructed club and a lot of passion, he tries to find his place in the nocturnal playgrounds of music. soungou concludes that it is about celebrating ourselves and caring for each other. In the last two years soungou has played in very different contexts to get to know multiple spaces for culture and celebration. He moves between more institutionalized spaces like Shedhalle in Zürich or the Istituto svizzero in Rome and more self-organized spaces like the Leaving Dakota in Brussels or the FUBU parties he organizes and hosts with the collective of the same name. Since the beginning of 2022 Timon initiates the coordination of the blackbox in Zürich for experiTheater. This is the first step for him into a curational approach on artistic practices, however the question of holding space without domination is always part of his reflections. In September 2022 Timon will start a Bachelor’s degree in Process Design at Hyperwerk in Basel. In this three-year programme he hopes to acquire skills for interdisciplinary work. From summer 2024 Timon will take over as a programme coordinator for community, club & music for Experi Werkhalle, a non-white theatre house. In this practice, efforts will be centred around a decolonial approach to club nights focusing on music as more of a communitarian experience instead of an individualistic artistic practice.
