Credit: Cristina Isabel
Miami duo Afrobeta—which is playing Tampa’s West River district on Friday—can go from sweet like a guava pastry to sweaty like 4 a.m. in the club in a heartbeat.

Over the years, lyricist-vocalist Cuci Amador and synth-centric producer/arranger Smurphio have brought their tropicalic funk and livetronica to stages across the globe, including some at Glastonbury, Space Ibiza, Burning Man and Ultra.

For this one at Hooch and Hive, the band is just a few hundred miles north of home and playing alongside local extraterrestrial synthwave act Moonbae and Bay area beatsmith project Consumer Ready, which cuts and mixes everything from harp-bop to ‘50s jazz and 8-bit soundscapes into lo-fi beat tapes made especially for the Florida night heat.

This article appears in Jun 9-15, 2022.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...