I’m voting for Michelle
Month: October 2008
CUMBIA QUICKIE 1-3
the creeps. as something that can be given, generosity’s uncanny flavor.
this song – the lyrics and to a lesser extent the music – gives me the creeps. Blurred lines between (human) ownership & desire.
[audio:Policarpio Calles – La Cosita.mp3]and 2 newer cumbias, popular jams, from a 2004 Vampiros DJ mix “Villero one”
RAI IS THE EUROTRANCE OF EUROPE
busy days, these.
Artist Paul Chan will be joining me on the radio tonite. Kingdom held it down last week, Brazilian funk carioca/MPC wizard DJ Cabide the next. Paul’s playlist is tentatively titled “LOVE/sex: Marquis Muzak”. If I had time I would re-write this post with one of his fonts, maybe the Panther one or the Charles Fourier (!) one.
KEYWORDS: raï, autotune, eurotrance, instant familiarity.
[audio:houari_manar_feat_mafia_de_la_rue-hya.mp3]Houari Manar feat. Mafia de la Rue – Hya
so there’s this looooong ongoing trope of comparing various types of world/other music to black american music. “raï is the rap music of the Arab world” or “rembetika is the blues of Greece” etc etc etc. it gets a bit boring.
Between Timbaland’s synth arpeggios and sounds like the one in this tune, maybe terrible eurotrance should be the new go-to genre for ’00 comparative musical realness/authenticity.
“Timbaland brings Eurotrash to US pop!” “Raï is the eurotrance of Europe!”
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excerpt from Chan’s ‘ambient video essay’ Baghdad In No Particular Order:
KABYLE STARBURST
Kingdom tonite on the radio! Tune in, this show should be good..
plus, Mode Raw blogs!
plus, 2 Amazigh pop jams as mid-morning fuel. REAL POP = INSTANT HAPPINESS with a dreamy aftertaste.
a big hit! Tamazight lyrics, French hook. This has been bootlegged onto the “Oriental Vibes” vinyl which Broklyn Beats stocked awhile back. Kabyle stormer with international legs.
& here’s one of those 10 minute Berber male & female autotune duets (which i can’t get enough of)
[audio:VarietesAmazigh_track07.mp3]FILE UNDER: WHITE NOISE
Peroxide locks stick out from her headwrap. The cute mujahid repeats the phrase with machinic fidelity until her batteries run out. “Islam is the light, Islam is the light,” says Mattel’s latest baby blonde squeeze-toy. Or at the least that what concerned parents across Yanquistan heard the the Little Mommy Cuddle ‘n Coo doll saying before Mattel “eliminated that segment of the sound file from future production.” Story here | aqui. (gracias Sonido!)
We live in a noisy world. Basic listening is difficult. Extracting sense from sound is even harder. The manufacturer Mattel blames the alleged proselytization on a misunderstanding caused by distortion and cheap foreign-manufactured electronics. “Because the original soundtrack is compressed into a file that can be played through an inexpensive toy speaker,” says Mattel, “actual sounds may be imprecise or distorted.” What they are saying is that proper audio fidelity would have prevented a collective misinterpretation of religious fidelity. Mass-manufactured gibberish ( “baby babble with no real sentence structure”) was misinterpreted as having meaning. Amidst intentional nonsense and unavoidable noise, a seemingly non-existent signal was heard, and acted upon. Zeal is the word we’re looking for. Or is it exegesis?
[audio:Lil_Mommie_Coo_Original.mp3]“And now I wanna be your dog” sang Iggy Pop, whose rock-styled heresy was repudiated by the New Age gospel group the Stone Roses several years later. The Roses turned Mr.Pop’s statement on end, signing “I wanna be a door” – a compressed poetic declaration of non-sentient desire more in tune with 15th century Gnostics than the hedonistic environment of late 80s Manchester in which the Stone Roses found themselves. “I don’t have to sell my soul, Hizbollah is in me”.
SEQUIA CUMBIAMBERA?
Shehab, either uptown or in Cairo, has a music blog ! nice layout.
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a friend was visiting some record shops in Texas — digging for crunk cumbia on my behalf. the main place had closed, and a few others turned up empty.
i’m a bit worried. maybe the culture was too viral. You do need some original loops to enter every now and again to keep things bouncing. [try this ZIP for dozens of reggae-soundclash fx lil jon airhorn type samples.] but the AV8-style booty cumbia edits? Perhaps the iterations of iterations of iterations (of accordion loops) went dry. drought…
time 2 offer a sacrifice 2 da krunk kumbia godz: [audio:lucky_kumbias1_excerpt.mp3]
GIRA SUDAMERICANA / BENETTLED
2 weeks ago we learned that the program that was bringing my band Nettle to the U.S. next March was cancelled – terminated – due to financial crisis. ‘It’s no small irony that a program inspired by 9/11 as a way to (re)connect with the wider world now finds itself without support thanks, if indirectly, to the disastrous policies of the Bush administration.’
It was quite a blow, especially as we needed something like this to make a US trip possible; people with Arabic writing on their passports are having a worse time than ever entering America, even with serious visa sponsorship.
This unpleasant notice gives us renewed determination to put the album out during the week when we should have been doing shows in America, Abdel & Khalid’s (& Wren’s) first time there. Strangely enough, the cancellation gives a new heft to it’s working title: In The Heart of the Heart of the Country . Plus, at some core level, it’s music about friction, at least to me.
THE GOOD NEWS is that i just confirmed a Rupture South American tour for late November/early December. Events in Bolivia (La Paz, El Alto) and Lima, Peru. Details TBA.
elsewhere on the continent, Rukula directed me to a full-length, embeddable version of the Musquito animation, thanks!
PROBLEM SHIRT PLUS OURIKA REVERB
in London, the shop clerk looks at my Dutty Artz t-shirt and says: “where’d you get that?”
me: “I made it. This is my label. We hired someone in the States to make them.”
him: “Oh, OK. Well I just wanna make one shirt – for me. it’s gonna say: IF YOU’VE GOT A PROBLEM WITH ME, I DON’T CARE, BECAUSE THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM.”
He says it drained of all emotion, like he’s reading a grocery list. I’m startled and look at him to make sure it isn’t some kind of joke. It isn’t. I am in Britain.
I say “OK”.
He says “would you like a bag with that?”
I say “yes, thanks.”
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click on this if you want a t-shirt (or our music!), we have some left:
AwTaFrAf mostly hangs out in sub-Saharan Africa, so when he heads north, I’m happy. Cassette from Berber country! with extra helpings of reverb and echo underneath that.
[audio:Oudaden_Track_05.mp3]MUEZZINS AND MCS
w&w: “jace offers less a review than an extended essay on the sounds, significations, & marketing of a west african / “islamic” hip-hop comp”:
Beat Happening, an essay of mine published in U.A.E. daily The National.
I played two songs from Many Lessons on the Ramadan/Eit radio show, streamable, makes a nice soundtrack for this article. also available in podcast form.
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Timeblind (Mr rastObama) blogs the collapse, with the up-close details of someone who plays (played?) the market a bit. also here:
“It hasn’t bled out into the real economy yet, but this stuff is more significant than 9/11 in what its going to do to the real world economy and to the American psyche. . . So anyway I have many positive things to say about the way that social and economic structures can be rebooted, and I’m really excited to see how the western ingenuity adapts and moves forward. I think this is all a positive development, despite what it just did to your parents’ life savings.”
LAST OF THE LOVE SONGS
“..girl I can’t believe…”
melting horns, Jr’s voice as is trails into silence, gaps – gutted love song becomes the realest kind. Dub-space as container for emotion. Nothing serious can stop echoing.
Junior Byles – Last of the Love Songs
[audio:JuniorByles_LastOfTheLoveSongs.mp3]