Category: africa

SCATTER

2010, for me, is shaping up to be a year of projects. There’s a lot of exciting stuff going on but before I talk about any of it, let’s look around for inspiring music:

Responding to my Columbus On Hold piece, @SinkDeep created lovely mixtape accompaniment to the prose – check it out!! (Her served crashed when I tweeted this over the weekend… time for a repeat performance?)

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jiljilala2

Awesome Tapes From Africa has been busy lately, with many welcome forays into north Africa. As I tweeted recently: Jil Jilala’s banjo+drum machine phase was a great one. Digitized cassette evidence courtesy of ATFA.

also: let’s think about sufi plug-ins and sufi click-tracks.

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jiljilala

And while we’re on classic Moroccan chaabi from the 70s and 80s, try this post quartet:

Morocco II (Nass el Ghiwane 7″ rip & George Orwell waxing weird on tourism in brown-peopled lands!), III (Jil Jilala 7″ rip!), IV (folkloric stuff I don’t dig!), Morocco I.

CIA HISTORY PART 3

roots reggae rips. 7″ style: http://rootsfromyard.blogspot.com/

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GangstaBabyCIA

CIAFRICA has a new free mixtape. CIA History Part 3. As I mention in the Pitchfork interview:

…I’m also very soon, around the same time, releasing a mix CD– actually I’m mixing it, from these African MCs and singers from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, called CIAfrica. its great because people think… “Oh African music, it’s dancey, it’s happy, nice melodies, very uplifting”. And these guys are abrasive, synthetic, angular, non-dancey lyric-driven music. It’s fantastic. So that’ll be coming out soon too.

that’s for fall. until then, you can check CIA History Part 3 or any of various other free mixes floating around their myspace.

[audio:3) URgencia by MANUSA and PRINCE ABRAHAM for CIAFRICA.mp3]

Manusa & Prince Abraham – Urgencia

[audio:6) THE WICKEED MAN by MESSENGERS for CIAFRICA.mp3]

Messengers – The Wickeed Man

STRONG OPINIONS.

CIA-HISTORY-PART-3

ODD OUT THERE

français

me: world music marketing is so crazy right now. on the back of a cd i just got sent:
“a group of parapalegic street musicians who live in and around the grounds of the zoo in Kinshasa, Congo
matt: wowwwwwwwwww
me: they make music of astonishing power and beauty.”
matt: man
that’s really crazy
what does that mean?

Leopoldo2dabelgica

[King Leopold II caricature, from Vanity Fair 1869]

me: hardcore sick novelty post-Konono
its apparently true
it means in order to sell african music 2 younger market they need sensationalist backstory
matt: yeah that’s a really weird flavor of exploitation
they live in a zoo!
pity sales
me: w/ Konono (also from kinshasa) it was “they make their own amps and it distorts, f#cked up folk-urban”
backstory sales
spectacle sales
matt: yeah
me: the zoo bit is jawdropping
oh yeah, bikes rigged up to be taxis/mobile transport units. on cover of CD
matt: parapalegic zoo resident music
me: made in yet another failed african state undergoing massive crisis, but not so famous as Zimbabwe..
now on sale by Belgian label,.
Sent at 11:21 PM on Tuesday
me: ‘King Leopold Productions” – just kidding. i should post this convo on the blog.
Sent at 11:22 PM on Tuesday
matt: haha yes
it’s very odd out there
Sent at 11:25 PM on Tuesday

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“Today at the dawn of 2009, people in the Congo are still dying at a rate of an estimated 45,000 per month and already 2,700,000 people have died since 2004.

– wikipedia sourced from this New York Times article.

CAKE & ICING

my friend from CIA Africa who lives in Côte d’Ivoire and will be performing in Paris on the 28th and 29th of this month emails:

“OK OK BLACK PRESIDENT no no BLACK FAMILY IN WHITE HOUSE ,
IN ABIDJAN THE NAME OF THE NEW PREsiDENT OF THE WORLD
IS BARACKA FOUSSINI BRAMA , lol ,in MALI BAMAKO BAMA …
in all Africa people remix the name with ethnic name reference…”

today we’re gonna have our cake, and we’re gonna eat our cake.

obama-cake

HUNGRY GHOST H.I.V.I.P.

spoek real african style

the only bad thing about receiving good music late at night is forgetfulness. i shoulda posted this before everybody else, but the internet isn’t (always) a race.

brand new mix from Spoek Mathambo of Sweat X and Playdoe (i first wrote about Sweat X for this Fader piece, they’re back on tour in ye olde Europe right now).

[audio:spoek_mathambo_HIVIP-DEZEMBA-LIAZONZ-MIX.mp3]

Spoek Mathambo – H.I.V.I.P mix: Dezemba Liazonz (also on zshare)

I love mixes whose tracklists don’t make any sense, but are awesome anyhow

H.I.V.I.P mix tracklist:

CABARET VOLTAIRE – DECAY
SIDELELE – BIG NUZ (SPOEK MATHAMBO ‘BELL HOP’ REFIX )
IZINJA – BIG NUZ
GEENEUS – INTO THE FUTURE
DURBAN FUNK – BUBZIN
KHOLOI – BUJO MUJO
ANGICENGI –
SEDUCER – CNDO FEAT. BIG NUZ
GEENEUS – NIGHT REMIX
DJ SKHOKHO – 04
DJ BONGS – BANGA
GEENEUS – YELLOWTAIL (SPOEK MATHAMBO ‘MONATE FELA’ REFIX)
?? – NO STRINGS ATTACHED
CNDO – TERMINATOR
CABARET VOLTAIRE – VIBRATIONS
RISQUE RYTHUM TEAM – THE JACKING ZONE
DJ SKHOKHO – 08 (SPOEK MATHAMBO ‘AIDS IN THE HOSTEL’ REFIX)

HIVIP MIX1

FETISHISM IS SO VAGUE

Plan B just published the full text from interview I did for a short feature about the role of the internet in the work of artists/labels releasing “outernational” music. I’m glad they upped the entire interview.

Here’s an excerpt. [full text]

Plan B: People also talk of the “fetishization” of non-Western music by Western listeners…

“I don’t care what ‘Westerners’ fetishize. They’ve been fetishizing black people for centuries now, who cares? You simply exist in all your complexity and let them deal with it. Fetishism is so vague. I care a lot when Westerners rip off non-Western musicians, even by rendering them anonymous like Sublime Frequencies often does, but random concepts of fetishization don’t really mean much. It’s almost too abstract to matter.

“Musicians like getting paid to play, they like getting credited for their work, and if they’re singing or rapping, they want you listen to their words. It’s simple. I think Western fetishization is an awesome thing if it means, say, more African bands can travel and make a living outside of their home countries. Who’s to say what’s the difference between fetishization and interest? How many kids fetishize Bjork or Radiohead? Is use of the term “fetish” racist in and of itself, would you just be talking about ‘fans’ if it were Western bands?”

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OK. Time for a song about an elephant.

[audio:O Elefante – Ray Barretto – SHH Remix.mp3]

Ray Barretto – O Elefante (SHH remix)

dibujo-de-elefante

SUPER ACCORDEON

this is an indicator of my level of busyness. I am just now listening to a CD i personally bought up in Harlem nearly 3 weeks ago, called Amadou Barry – Super Accordeon. It cost $3 and the store where I got it is open 24-hours. They mostly sell phone cards and dvds.

On the ultra-xeroxed cover Mr Barry is wearing a v-neck t-shirt printed with a large picture of a black woman’s foot. She’s in dark heels with a red flower and matching toenail paint. There is no leg. Barry looks worried, startled, purposeful, intent. “Demi-Talon” is what his shirt says.

The poorly-photocopied image has given Amadou Barry a high-contrast bright white aura rimmed by electric blue. The synth with its resonance pushed way up takes precedence over the super accordeon in this song:

[audio:AmadouBarry_ SuperAccordeon.mp3]

Amadou Barry – track 8 from Super Accordeon

Here’s a video, audibly taken from a cassette. The sound gets filtered out pretty regularly. Head-cleaner has its uses…

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.

bilde
[Sister Fa, courtesy Piranha Records]

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.”