Reppin Da Bean

Tonight at Beat Research we’ve got a special session in store: our main man, Pacey Foster, will be teaming up with heavyweight hip-hop scribe Brian Coleman to celebrate Boston hip-hop. Yeah, you read that right. And what? We rep da bean, knamean ;) The occasion is the publication of an essay by Pace on the […]

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Autumn 09 Adventures

About to turn the corner on fall/winter, so allow me to remember my favorite season of the year with some choice moments made immortal (as the Internet). Longer time since my last, so a few more flicks than usual. Got a post devoted to Mexico to follow pronto. Here, a fair amount of family fare. […]

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Mmagicc Kkingdomm

img by photog_friend (cc) Tonight at Beat Research, we’re happy to play host to one of our favorite producers/DJs of the moment, Kingdom! Have you heard his recent mix for Discobelle? You really should. It’s so many different colors of awesome, I can’t even tell you. I’ve been digging Ezra’s approach for a couple years […]

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Two Gigs This Week, en Mexico!

I’ve been dying to get back to Mexico City since I first went there a couple years ago. I’m headed there today (primarily to attend the SEM conf) and will be staying through the weekend, and I’m excited to report that in addition to #sem09 I’ll be playing a couple gigs! Big thx to my […]

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Follow Ups

For those out-of-towners who were wondering (and I’m flattered, really), it turns out that last week’s talk at MIT, “Skinny Jeans and Fruity Loops,” was recorded after all. That said, it’s audio-only whereas my talk was fairly visual-centric at times, so it’s a little weird to not be able to see the accompanying videos, photos, […]

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Se Llama Sonido

Tonight at Beat Research: the one-and-only Sonido Martines ! For those who don’t know, Sonido has been a driving force in the recent (re)surgence in cumbia interest outside of its longtime hotspots. He co-authors La Congona New Cumbia with Sñr Rupture, and he’s largely responsible — at least by my ears — for brokering the […]

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Two Talks This Week

First, tomorrow @ MIT (5:15pm, 14E-310): What can we learn about contemporary culture from watching dayglo-clad teenagers dancing geekily in front of their computers in such disparate sites as Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, and Mexico City? How has the embrace of “new media” by so-called “digital natives” facilitated the formation of transnational, digital publics? More […]

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Is It Funky Enough?

When Guillaume was here last week, we discovered in conversation that we both had long been sitting on posts that centered on the question of Africanness and UK funky. I joked that we should both finally get around to finishing these posts and drop them on the same day, causing a ruckus on the ol’ […]

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World Music 2.0 (and W&W) on Afropop Worldwide

Afropop Worldwide has a new program, airing currently on terrestrial radio in the US (and soon to appear online as streamable audio), which focuses on a subject near&dear to the heart of this blog: world music 2.0, aka nu-whirled music, aka global ghettotech. Or as they put it — Afropop Worldwide takes us into the […]

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