Rokia Bamba

Rokia Bamba (DJ)

Based in Brussels, Belgium, sound artist, DJ, radio host, educator and activist with African origins, Rokia Bamba is a member of the collective Troubled Archives. Her compositions, influenced by the practice of DJing, mix archival sounds with vocal recordings, fragments of music and field recordings. A radio producer since the age of 12, she became known as the creator of the program Sous l’Arbre à Palabres (1989) and co-fonded Full Mix (1992) for Radio Campus Brussels, one of the first hip-hop, R&B and funk radio shows. Bamba is also the founder of podcast Sororites, conversations with my sistas on Studio Balado.

As a DJ, Bamba is active in counter-cultural locations and events of the Francophone African diaspora, including Globalicious (Brussels), La Colonie (Paris), Afropunk (Paris), Massimadi (Montréal), Festival des Libertés, Pink Screens, Ancienne Belgique, BOZAR, le Botanique (Brussels) amongst others. She has participated in the collective work With Unveiled Face (2015) for the University of Hamburg’s Institut für Ethnologie, the sound poetry event Ceci n’est pas un poème II (Bozar 2016), all’Orchestre Populaire de Bruxelles à l’Ancienne Belgique (2017). With the collective Troubled Archives, she collaborated on the installation of late-nineteenth century anthropometric photography NOISY IMAGES (2020), part of the show Artist Meets Archive at the Rautenstrauch Joest Museum in Cologne and participated in Tutto passa tranne il passato/Everything Passes Except the Past of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin.

As a composer and sound director, Bamba collaborates with an array of performance and visual artists such as Antje Van Wichelen, choreographers Alesandra Seutin and Zora Snake. Between 2020-21, Bamba created for exhibit RESISTE ! at European Roma Institute for the Arts and Culture, the finissage of the exhibition Musa Nuit by Minia Biabiany at the Fondation Ricard (Paris) and La Verrière of the Fondation Hermès (Brussels).

As a curator, Bamba collaborated with the first Belgian edition of the ‘New Afro Ke-Pon’ festival (2021) and Théâtre 140 (Brussels) with Carte Blanche – Femme Flamboyante (2025).

As a teacher, in collaboration with Lezarts Urbain, Bamba has also conceived numerous music worshops, projects and concerts for the women’s prison Berkendael (Brussels) and a project with the rap collective Murmuziek for the Prison de Forest (Brussels).

Artivist Rokia Bamba provokes shivers, awakens senses and pushes towards positive action.