Get To Know: Toumba

Toumba got into dance music when he was studying at Loughborough University in the UK, but it was hearing SHERELLE play a particular track that convinced him he could make his own beats. “She played TSVI’s ’Hossam’, and when I first heard it, it was like two worlds colliding. That’s why I got into production, because I thought, ‘I can make that’.”

Today an active participant in Amman’s electronic underground, he contributes to the running of community project and club space MNFA in the city, where producers, DJs and creatives meet to play music and exchange ideas. “My friend found this carpark garage space at a hotel that wasn’t being used, it was just a dump for leftover construction materials. He was like, ‘I want to use that’, then he built it up, and used it as a club,” Toumba says. “It’s a very community effort — we run the bars, we run the door, we do the decoration.” 

The city’s scene, Toumba reckons, is small but tight-knit, and because of its diminutive size, there’s no compulsion to compete or conform, so artists can create with freedom. “It gives you the space to do something you really like, because there’s no social pressure,” he says. “There’s nothing that works or doesn’t work — we’re going to establish that, you know? But it’s hard to incubate these talents, because of the lack of infrastructure.”

For the time being, Toumba is working on a live show, and is also preparing his next release, an EP that will emerge on TSVI and Wallwork’s Nervous Horizon label. He’s excited by the possibilities of global rhythms colliding and merging, and creating something new in the process.

“That’s the beauty of it, that’s how we move forward, because if we stuck to just what we know and made the same things over and over, we’re hurting ourselves and boring our audience and our own creativity. So it’s good to be inspired, but at the same time respect the origins of styles of music.”