Batida
Pedro Coquenão was born in Huambo, Angola, and raised in the suburbs of Lisbon. In the last decade he has been creating and interacting with music, dance, visual and plastic arts under the name Batida.
The same name that, 10 years ago, was used for a radio show he started to broadcast on the National Portuguese Radio Antena 3 and RDP Africa. Soon it became the name for an artistic universe that he has developed, featuring music at the center, with records released on Soundway Records, collaborations with favorite artists, like Konono No1 and shows presented on stages across the world.
It all may have started when Pedro was only 8 and did his first song along with his cousins called "Surukundina", that was presented in a small show to their family.
In 2007, he started to develop Batida. After a successful local release in 2009 that was pointed as "one of the most relevant records done in Angola and Portugal" by António Pires, a referential portuguese music journalist, in 2012, he was picked by Soundway Records for an international release as the first new artist to be signed. Mixing electronic with samples from the 60's and 70's Angolan music, his first and self titled record was released with many praises from international media.
It's on his sea container "O Contentor Roubado", that he has been creating his new tracks and plastic arts.
On stage he likes to be surrounded by other artists to represent each story. With a special drum kit assembled by himself, and developing choreographies with the dancers, he also brings to the stage own made artefacts and props, and the songs are contextualized by hand picked archive or own filmed images for each one, in a constant search for reconstruction / deconstruction of his memory, experiences, and interactions.
The show was already presented on Summerstage, globalFEST, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Roskilde, Pitch, Lowlands, Eurockéennes, Les Nuits Sonores, Les Suds à Arles, Transmusicales, Babel, three times at Eurosonic and twice at Glastonbury and Womad Festival (UK and Cáceres).
Over the web Batida was the first Luso-Angolan artist to feature on Boiler Room, where he was already 5 times, the last two in Lisbon. One of them was in 2015, a memorable performance on Red Bull Music Academy Takeover Boiler Room Lisboa. He was also invited twice for the Africa Express show, a Damon Albarn project. First at Fiesta des Suds in 2013 and in 2015 year closing Roskilde also, presenting songs that featured musicians from Gorillaz, Maximo Park, Magic Numbers, Bombay Bicycle Club and Damon Albarn himself.
After that Batida remixed "Heavy Seas Of Love", one of the songs from Damon's first solo album.
His most recent album "Dois" was released later 2014, again by Soundway Records.
Inspired by the Lisbon multi-cultural synthesis and the artists he met, as well by his return travels to Luanda and a very special experience in Nairobi for the 10 Cities project for the Goethe Institut. The new record was produced in his own studio-garage and includes a new serie of collaborations: "Luxo" with Spoek Mathambo and Duncan Lloyd (Maximo Park), "Céu" with François & The Atlas Mountains, "Pobre e Rico", with Angolan legend M atadidi, and "Tá Doce", with Lisbon's AF Diaphra among others. The record reached #2 on the US New World CMJ.
In 2014 Batida was selected over more than 800 artists to present his show on Womex, the biggest international World Music showcase festival and was considered by the NPR Radio as one of the best 10 acts from this edition.
That year ended doing the support act on four Stromae big arena shows.
In 2015 he was listed for Best Artist, in the Songlines Music Awards, as well as for Best European Indie Album in the Impala Awards, and the show was considered one of the best festival shows by the referential music Magazine Les Inrockuptibles.
Pedro co-produced the new Konono No1 album, with the band original producer Vincent Kenis, released in April 2016 named as "Konono No1 meets Batida".
The album was fully recorded in Pedro's garage-studio, and during that period they had the opportunity to play the first two shows together where some roughs of the recording sessions were presented along two exclusive versions of "Bazuka" and "Cuka".
Beside all the amazing reviews on the press, the album reached number one at the CMJ, the United States College Radio Chart and they played some more shows together in France, Holland, Barcelona, Pirineus and Portugal.
2017 started with another memorable performance at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage in Washington D.C., that ended with the crowd dancing on stage, followed by the globalFEST showcase, back to NYC, where hewas the artist chosen to close this year edition at the Studio at Webster Hall.
After returning from NYC, he flew to the Netherlands to perform for the third time at the Eurosonic Festival, where he presented The Almost Perfect DJ, a new performance he prepared and debuted in September last year at the first edition of Iminente Festival, a festival in Oeiras, Lisbon, curated by the Portuguese visual artist Vhils.
Recently he was invited by Gilles Peterson (who had already chosen his self-titled debut album before as one of the 2012 albums), to take part in the Music and Words section of his radio show on BBC6 Music, highlighting him as an unique artist from the Afro-Electronic music scene in Lisbon that he called: "Massive!".
"It's just on another level in terms of how he presents his show, how he approaches his music making, whether he's performing live, or adding visuals, philosophically just how he goes about his business."