PICKS: Ludovico Esposito's tributes to Andrea Mi

Published on 2020-04-15 00:00:00 by Ludovico Esposito

The Italian long-time music activist Andrea Mi has passed away. When the news came out last Monday, April 13th, I felt devastated like many many others. After over three decades of DJing, teaching, journalism and radio shows, he couldn’t defeat a serious disease he has been fighting for several months.Its been very difficult to handle such sorrow, but even more difficult to “accept” the challenge of describing one of the biggest personalities I ever met in the music industry through a few selected tracks. It is rare to find a highly skilled and extremely gentle, enthusiastic, inspiring and smiling person like he was. Not to mention his encyclopedic knowledge of music. In fact, he was a true lover of underground movements, a real supporter of quality music. His motto “from dub to club” pictures pretty well his eclecticism and wide taste for music. His radio project MIXOLOGY promoted electronica, experimental, afro, hip-hop, dub, jazz, bass and techno styles which he’s been digging and playing loud himself since for ever.While I put down these words, some tears drop over my cheeks. I guess his humanity and high professionalism broke through myself as so as many other young music activists like me. He conquered the hearts of pretty much everyone out there. I like to think that he would prefer us to transform the pain for his loss into productivity. I really hope that this tribute feature will pay homage to the unique persona he was he does deserve it. He will be truly missed.Below are a few selected tracks that I think can represent Andrea. But be sure that not even 5000 tracks would be enough to fully show his commitment for music and culture.Dancehall, dub and trip hop parties have been rooted in Andreas soul since the very beginning of his musical activism. He played many gigs with Daddy G, he was always so pumped about it.DJ Vadim was another hero for Andrea Mi and yet one more artist he was very confident with. Last year, Andrea asked me to put together a mix for his radio MIXOLOGY which would eventually represent the sound of my festival Sagra Elettronica. I did play this track inside the mix he was so happy about the mix and the idea behind the festival, that he helped me a lot promoting the event, without asking anything back. Just pure passion and desire to support.Andrea co-founded the excellent experimental label OOH Sounds and strongly contributed to its rise. As the label reports on its Instagram page: “His energy and determination built many of the connections on which OOH-sounds grew up and still is now. Talking to him, even discussing animatedly, was an absolute privilege given his vast knowledge and culture.”Andrea was able to always ‘surprise me in a way. Back in the days, I didn’t know he was passionate about abstract/future jazz. One day I talked to him about Jazz-O-Tech, a new label I was working with; this opened up to yet another collaboration between us. He immediately fell in love with the label sound, so we scheduled a label mix on MIXOLOGY. He also recently showed support for the label’s upcoming release by Healing Force Project.One more electronica-afro straight rhythmic track by the one and only DJ Khalab. Being two ‘top of the pops of Italy’s electronic music scene, I remember they collaborated and interacted together on many occasions.Being a fan of hip-hop and turntablism, I am sure he would have loved this album assuming that he didn’t know it. That is unlikely, I reckon. I never shared it with him, it just didn’t occur. Hope he will feel the vibe from there.