Shantel & BCS

With his international mega-hit Disko Partizani, Shantel became the audible face of a new music and dance culture worldwide. He was the first who, thanks to his multi-layered family roots, gave current pop culture a cosmopolitan sound. With Shantel, migration can be heard and danced to. Musical gems from south-eastern Europe, Greece and the Middle East appear in a new, multi-layered context.

Instead of understanding music as a dynamic product of historical, social and cultural influences, it becomes static and homogeneous: music with Greek, Anatolian or southern European sounds thus, even when it is created in Frankfurt in the heart of Europe, still becomes the music of the others. According to Shantel, this denial means that music beyond the European mainstream, unless it is extremely commercialisable, is rendered invisible. Shantel understands his work as producer, musician and DJ as a declaration of war against the existing social structures of dominance and the assumption that only what can maintain the clear separation between the sound “here” and the sound “there” can succeed in the mainstream.