someone asked me on flickr whether the image below is “supposed to be scary” — barack o’lantern by becca “only,” i replied, “if you’re afraid of a crypto-muslim quasi-communist pseudo-american halloween” which is, unfortunately, a joke that wouldn’t play in certain parts of this country. but four days out from THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF
Month: October 2008
Signs of the Times
Postcolonoscopy Transnotionalism
English Translation of Thoda Resham Lagta Hai Don't take this elegance as anything less than a disaster Oh my adorers, don't take me as made out of hard soil It takes a little silk, it takes a little glass Diamonds and pearls come together, it takes a little gold Such a fair body is then
Tabula Rasta
EBONYJET | Whose Tube: Doing For Self or The Cyberground Railroad: Part 2 "We are taking this cyberground railroad to new celebrity, much like our cousins worldwide. Youtube has become a place to 'get a rep,' for some to use as a stepping-stone to other things. But for some, and maybe most of us, it
Trustafari !
Think SNL has been spot-on in their election08 satire? Their send up of shanty-dorm trustafarians is just as hilarious, at least to someone like I&I — (thx to joe schloss for making sure i saw this)
Nietzsche House
The N-Word Is Flourishing Among Generation Hip-Hop Latinos – Music – Village Voice "Somehow, the n-word has found its way back into hip-hop's critical zeitgeist: I'm interested in exploring, as a Dominican New Yorker, how we as a community have propagated it. Recently, due to the mounting criticism of Boricua rapper Fat Joe's use of
Vulture Shark Sculpture Park*
A few weekends ago, me & B & the Neeks visited the Decordova Museum in nearby Lincoln, MA. It’s a favorite spot of ours for taking a stroll or having a picnic, and we were gassed to bring Nico to a place filled with such marvels. I was pretty amused, actually, by her bemused reactions
This Is Happening Now
As. I. Type. Cabide DJ is on Mofo Radio at WZBC here in Boston, playing live MPC routines (sometimes with his feet) and promising to offer up a Miami Bass -> Funk Carioca history lesson a little later. If you’re reading this around the time of posting, TUNE IN NOW — there’s still 2 hours
Living with Cheerios
I knew that having children would also mean having cheerios. Finding them under foot, in the creases of the car seat, stuck to the wall, etc. When Becca and I moved into our present apartment — previously lived in by a couple and their one-year-old — we cleaned from top to bottom what was already
Strange We Can Believe In
GYWO – 23/6 Comedy News awesome! GYWO (i.e., get your war on), some of the funniest, bitingest anti-GWOT humor around, has gone video with its clip art conversation steez :: (thx, paul irish) (tags: humor video politics war election08 animation critique satire) Youth2 : Dancing in the streets local article on malaysian shuffle, a "legit
Flee Market
Ninjasonik – Tight Pants (The Rap Remix) – Chunnel o u mad? :: tight-pants wearers of the world, unite! (tags: brooklyn fashion video hip-hop EDM af-am race sexuality critique) Literary Encyclopedia: Mirror Stage, The 'It is a well-attested fact that one day, usually between six and eighteen months, a child that has not been able
Atenção!
Cabide DJ has landed. He’s here in Massachusetts. Met the man last night, who blessed me with a couple of those lovely shrink-wrapped CD-Rs so common in Rio. Don’t know bout you, but i CAN”T WAIT FOR SOME LIVE MPC COM NARIZ ACTION!!!11!!1 As Gregzinho details, you can catch Cabide at all sorts of venues
Dance Culture in the Age of YouTube
Since Curm asked some good questions on my previous post about dance video and music culture, it seems I should share my abstract for the presentation I’ll be giving at this weekend’s annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, which follows from a similar curiosity (my own) about how current circumstances relate to historical patterns
Make It Bahrain
Just in case ppl haven’t seen it yet, I wouldn’t want something so remarkable to get lost in the comments. Thanks to Kevin “Todomundo” Driscoll for the link and, yep, I’ve already put Ted “Kufiyah-Spotting” Swedenburg on the case — Can anyone tell me, though, how Al-Jazeera is [being used in?] framing this clip? I
Musee de Beau Zack
History of Hip-Hop Radio (NYC 1986-1991) / audio – GRANDGOOD wow — a mixtape combining excerpts from golden age NYC hip-hop radio — nice work! what a window into a wonderful world — (h/t noz) (tags: hip-hop NYC radio mix archive goldenage) CBRAP » A Very Fresh Way To Learn butterfly in the sky, i
Just May Be
I’ve been on a serious YouTube grind over the last couple weeks, working up a couple papers/talks on black digital youth culture. Check the waxtube or my favorites to sink into a pixelated dance trance. Gave one version of this black-digi-youf chat a couple weeks ago at Harvard, which thx to a little bird tweet,
Big Farma
WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Listener Fodder's Posts the awesome "mix machine" cassette rescue service continues, with several additional mixes from so-cal swap meets, plus some classic new jersey rap radio (world famous supreme team!) :: i can't get enough of this stuff (tags: digitized mixtape hip-hop radio mp3blog) Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in
Shake It Like Onomatopoeia
Beat happening – The National Newspaper jace offers less a review than an extended essay on the sounds, significations, & marketing of a west african / "islamic" hip-hop comp: "Populist, ecumenical, Muslim, fun: Many Lessons is good, right? Yes. … None of this diminishes the fact that the label releasing Many Lessons (Piranha) is using
Beet Street
todo mundo » Blog Archive » Busta learns from Ice-T, takes cue from Soulja Boy, T-Wayne kevin offers some incisive analysis of busta's hopping the dance craze train :: 'Should he reach out to Cash Camp and do a video with them or can Busta claim to be just another node in the teen dance
Blogariddims 50
Today marks the seeding of the fiftieth and final episode of the brilliant Blogariddims series, a near-monthly “podcast” with which many readers of w&w no doubt have some passing acquaintance. Indeed, if you’re omnivorous like me, you’ve likely downloaded every one, each time enticed by the loving, careful, idiosyncratic and refreshingly all-over-the-map episodes from some
Finnish Lines
Byron Garcia: The ‘Thriller’ Maker 'And the genius behind it all is the prison boss, Byron Garcia, the Cebu provincial security consultant who came up with the idea in an attempt to improve and discipline and morale. The son of Congressman Pablo Garcia and sister of Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia, Byron Garcia faced a difficult
Bean Research
Longtime local pal and fellow Riddim Methodist, the mighty Pacey Foster, has been working on a history of hip-hop in Boston — a project that began as a commission to write a chapter for a book on regional hip-hop scenes and which has gradually expanded into something much larger as musical-social networks have led him
Half Baked Alaska
Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before "Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest. There are now nearly 600 maps." (tags: world map visualization geography cartography) Dancehall.Mobi » Middle East Riddim 2008 middle east riddim relick, 4 years after the
The Anxiety of Influence
With a thread titled “weh unna tink bout this dancing ting inna the dancehall?????” discussants have taken up the subject of tight pants / “how mi look” fashion over at dancehallreggae.com. Me nuh really rate chatroom passa passa, so I wouldn’t have noticed, except that someone (here’s lookin at you, SELVATRON) linked to my recent
Pimp My Piragua
El Ganso Gris has a nice lil piece today (w/ video!) about Miguel Luciano‘s “Pimp My Piragua” project. I’ve talked about Miguel’s work here before. It’s stunning stuff, and I’m thrilled to report that a shot from his “Pure Plantainum” series is gonna grace the cover of our reggaeton book (due out this spring!)!
Hugs for Tecnobrega
Tecno brega / eletro melody is back on my radar for 2 reasons — 1) Ronaldo Lemos, the Rio-based law prof who’s been hailing the genre’s open business model for years now, has just published a new book about tecno brega and its creative approach to the music biz, Tecnobrega: o Pará Reinventando o Evento