Raised by griots, trained by machines, Afrotronix transforms cultural erasure into pan-African electronic liberation.
KÖD
NEW ALBUM
LISTEN
Humanity’s first algorithm was written in rhythm.
KÖD honors this legacy.
The talking drum required both technical skill (the drummer) and cultural literacy (the listener) — a perfect parallel to today’s relationship between human creativity and digital technology.
“My work teaches digital systems the languages and rhythms of our ancestors,” says Afrotronix.
Through the vocoder, I’ve created what I call “the voice of an African robot”. For the first time, a robot speaks Sara and Goulay.
KÖD is built on two foundational elements: the ever-present drum, and traditional vocal techniques reimagined as organic synthesizers.
KÖD is a meditation on what eludes machines.
GOURNA genre, or Guruna was registered at UNESCO December 2025
KÖD in Sara means the tam-tam. The talking drum represents one of humanity’s earliest forms of coding: rhythm as language, sound as data, drum as transmitter.
The album’s opening track captures machines in the act of learning — attempting to decode linguistic patterns and melodic structures.
The machines are hungry, saying “Feed me with the African database.”
I’ve fed these machines my life’s work: years of collecting and archiving Sahelian musical traditions, voices preserved on worn cassettes from my childhood, now digitized and made legible to algorithms.
Artificial intelligence can learn our languages, reproduce our melodies, even compose for us. But there is a language it will never understand: that of ancestral gestures, sighs laden with stories, ritual silences that speak the unspeakable.
An ode to our secret codes—passed down skin to skin, gaze to gaze, from generation to generation.
KÖD celebrates these sacred spaces that make us irreplaceable.
We remain the guardians of the invisible, the masters of our own codes.
‘Afrotronix, one of the most gifted artist of his generation’
France 24
‘His vision of Africa 2.0 An Africa without complexes, “free from the colonial imprint”, which delves back into its roots “before the invaders”, without remaining stuck there, to invent the black man of the future, African or not.’
Le Monde
‘A fusion approach stemming from Afrofuturism, a movement mixing African roots and science fiction visions’
France Info
‘He embraces the aesthetic of Afrofuturism’
BBC World Service
'AfrotroniX shows are an incredible crossroads of Afro-urban music and dance, where digital arts explode.'
Le Monde
BIO
Raised by griots, trained by machines.
Some sounds travel the world. This one was never supposed to leave.
Chad’s first electronic export and an Afrofuturist icon, Afrotronix is led by Chadian guitarist-producer Caleb Rimtobaye from Montreal. Born in Chad amid civil war, shaped by the initiation rhythms and vocal traditions of the Sara, Gourane and Arabic communities, Afrotronix doesn’t sample tradition. He rewires the machine to speak its language.
His sound “Electro Sahara” bends digital architecture itself, fracturing the structures of deep house, Amapiano and Afro electro until they can hold the weight of Chadian rhythms. A Sonic Ritual Initiation. His music actively bridges north, south and center in a soul that is unmistakably Chadian.
Wearing the DOM, a helmet carrying its own cosmology, he creates sonic mosaics revealing Chad’s most sacred sounds reimagined as the world’s most futuristic. Behind the project, a thesis: humanity’s first algorithm was written in rhythm. Electronic music and African oral tradition don’t oppose each other. They were always the same conversation.
Over 130 stages worldwide, WOMAD, Afropunk, JOVA Beach Party. Collaborations with Baaba Maal, Youssou N’Dour, Jovanotti, Stonebwoy. Best African DJ (AFRIMA 2018), 18 international awards, composer of the awarded soundtrack for the Chadian film Diya (Carthage Film Festival). Decorated by the French Republic as Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres for his contribution to cultural influence and transmission. He also leads the Aunties, a collective dedicated to women’s empowerment through art and cultural transmission.
His new album KÖD, featuring artists from Chad, Nigeria, Sudan, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Congo and Canada, positions Afrotronix at the center of the pan-African electronic conversation, at the exact moment the continent’s future is being written in rhythm.
“A dance of intersecting horizons and futures to be created together.”
An electrifying blast from a future born of ancestral greatness.
MUSIC
CALEB RIMTOBAYE
Cultural entrepreneur, producer, composer, creative director, songwriter
Founder, director, creator, co-manager of the group AFROTRONIX, LES AUNTIES.
Founder and conductor of the group H’SAO.
Producer and director for several artists including Bongwana Star, Sarahmée, Djely Tapa.
Guitarist and singer, two decades of experience
Director of the Juno Award-winning album "Barokan" by Djely Tapa, recognized as Best World Album in 2020.
Album productions:
#1 FUTURE TRIBE Afrotronix
#2 IYA Les Aunties
#3 BAROKAN Djely Tapa
#4 NOMADIX Afrotronix
#5 TAAR Elété
#6 SAOTRONIX Afrotronix
#7 SAAR H’Sao
#8 ORIA H’Sao
#9 VOL 235 H’Sao
#10 H’Sao H’Sao
Film score composer:
DIYA, Fiction, 120 minutes, directed by Achille Ronaimou (Chad-France)
WINNER BEST MUSIC AT CARTHAGE FILM FESTIVAL 2025, for AFROTRONIX conception, production, arrangement and interpretation on DIYA film 's original score
NOMADIX'S REVIEWS
50 best albums of the year:
AfrotroniX - Nomadix : "... An inventive, brilliant and dancing album, bordering on reality." ICI Radio
"Does the future of mass African pop also pass through Montreal? We will know very soon with the album produced by AfrotroniX"
Alain Brunet La presse
"The singer-guitarist Caleb Rimtobaye adds to it with this project claiming Afro-futurism and which integrates electro in a magnificent way" Le devoir
You also won’t get enough of those guitar solos that are prevalent throughout the album. OkayAfrica
