FREEDOM TO MIX — DEDICATED TO FLORA PURIM & AIRTO MOREIRA

In 1994, the statement WE MUST MIX was HOPE as suddenly there was FREEDOM TO MIX. South Africa slowly started learning how to live together after decades of division. The phrase reflected what we were trying to achieve through music: bringing people together regardless of race, language, nationality or background. More than thirty years later, that message remains unfinished and in 2026 this is still a long walk but there's hope. Listening today to South Africa's thriving international electronic music scene, I often hear echoes of those same principles — the communal spirit of the dance floor — these are not new ideas. They have deep roots in the musical traditions represented by artists like Busi Mhlongo, Mabi Gabriel Thobejane, Amampondo, Madala Kunene and many others who helped define the early MELT 2000 years.

What makes Freedom To Mix special is the way it reconnects these different moments in time. For more than eighteen months, Obakeng Kekana, better known as Dazz-B MusiQ, immersed himself in the MELT 2000 archives. He explored recordings, photographs, videos, notes and stories connected to the catalogue. More importantly, he wanted to understand the people behind the music.

As he dug deeper, he uncovered the Live footage of the 1994 Outernational Meltdown Farewell concert under the banner WE MUST MIX. It united Airto Moreira, Jose Neto, Byron Wallen and Andrew Missingham with some of the finest South African artists like Moses Molelekwa, Sipho Gumede, Pops Mohamed and Amampondo. The next find was an interview I had given the next day on the slopes of Lion's Head. Listening to it decades later, he immediately identified the central message of FREEDOM TO MIX — the underlying message of HOPE for the New Rainbow Nation and a United World.

From that moment, the project found its direction. What emerged isn't simply a remix of different recordings. Obakeng found a way to connect Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, the spirit of Outernational Meltdown, my 1994 interview and a contemporary South African dance floor groove into new pieces of music. Freedom To Mix is a conversation between generations.

It connects recordings made at Real World in Box, UK, Santa Barbara, California in 1993 and the work of dozens of musicians from different nations who gathered in South Africa in 1994. It reconnects 3 decades later picked up by new generation of producers and remixer working on the back catalogue of MELT 2000 in 2026.

It brings together Brazil and South Africa, past archives and the future, memories and ways to mix and still have hope to live in harmony.

WE MUST MIX.

Bless us with the spirit of musical creation beyond AI

Robert Trunz 2026