Disco Diaspora Sranan Rewind

Disco Diaspora is back on Saturday, February 28, at Mezrab, presenting Sranan Rewind. Curated by 1.06 Music Library with additional selections by Jumanne (Pokoemonster), this audiovisual dance party brings together music videos from the Surinamese and Surinamese Dutch archive, tracing its evolution from the 1970s to today. Get ready to dance the night away, celebrating the beats, the visuals, and the energy of Surinamese culture, in a unique dance party you won’t forget. ★ Surinamese Dutch people form one of largest migrant group and diaspora in the Netherlands. Following Suriname’s independence from the Netherlands in 1975, a significant wave of migration took place, bringing many Surinamese to the former colonial metropole. This migration carried with it a diverse, vibrant, and historically layered transatlantic music culture that has since deeply influenced Dutch popular media and cultural imagination. Growing up in the Netherlands, it is difficult not to be shaped by the rooted presence of these musical traditions in popular media as well as through private and semi-public forms of dissemination. From archival recordings emerging from the Bijlmer to mainstream television and popular music platforms, the variety of Surinamese Dutch artists and communities have played a crucial role in shaping the Dutch entertainment industry and its soundscape. Sranan Rewind pays tribute to this rich history and to what it reveals not only about the Netherlands, but also about the relationship between the diaspora and the multi-ethnic homeland. This program features music videos made in the Netherlands and in Suriname, reflecting contributions from across Creole, Hindustani, Indigenous, Javanese, and Chinese Surinamese communities. By bringing together archival material that has often been disseminated across fragmented platforms, it places emphasis on the cultural importance and relevance of the Surinamese- Dutch archive for the Netherlands and beyond. It offers a different view of history, one that is not marginal, but rooted in a collective present and in future sonic and decolonial imaginaries.