The Bongo Hop

About

The Bongo Hop is the alias of trumpeter and composer Etienne Sevet. As a studio project it features various artists, from Colombia's Nidia Gongora to Haïti's Kephny Heliacin, french creole MC Greg Frite, Angolan semba icon Paulo Flores etc. He draws his nickname from his childhood's favorite comic book heroes, Keubla and Kébra, an african seaman and a french rat-faced ghetto character hustling their way through a chaotic 1980's post-colonial Africa. It started in Cali (Colombia) in 2011, where Etienne Sevet, a belated self taught and instinctive musician, had been traveling to and living, since 2003. Working as a music journalist, dj and promoter, university teacher, unearthing unspoken afro colombian folkloric traditions, collecting records, he finally started to learn the trumpet - his first contact with the practice of a musical instrument - in 2010. As he arrived in Europe with a series of compositions that would later form the Satingarona series, he met producer Patchworks who helped him produce his first two albums. His three albums to date, Satingarona pt 1, pt 2 and La ñapa came out respectively in 2016, 2019 and 2022 to worldwide critical acclaim, from France Inter to BBC6, FIP, Radio Nova, KCRW, Worldwide radio, NPR, Gladys Palmera, Radio Canada, WDR Cosmo Radio, Radionica, Ibero, Songlines, Le Monde, Telerama etc On tour he leads an 8 piece afropean+latino live band featuring Nidia Gongora / Laurene Pierre Magnani (lead vocals) , Setounkpatin Gnanho (drums), Jean Tchoumi (bass), Mario Vargas (percussions), Felix Marret (keyboards), Luisa Caceres (saxophone), Riad Klai/Quentin Langlois (guitar)