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Found & Lost

January 11, 2012
5 Comments

KIDS COCKTAIL
actual colors depicted

We found the CD above a few blocks from home as we were walking up Concord Ave last month. It was badly scratched, probably the reason for its unceremonious discard — and no doubt compounded by however long it had been kicking it by the curb. All the same, it was awfully alluring. I immediately twitpic’d it, tweeting to g0d that it might play, and stuck it in my pocket.

Back home, I couldn’t get much further than the second track (though, notably, it fared better in my car system than my computer), but fortunately Track 1 was a whopping 15 minutes and several songs long. The contents, though still pretty mysterious to me, are about as awesome as I had imagined they might be, considering the crazed white baby, intense pink, and unauthorized Tinkerbell cluttering the cover.

Appropriately, the opening is epic. I keep wanting it to break into an 808 State jam, and I keep wishing I had an inkling of what they were saying. Since the first two songs really run together, this first chunk I’m sharing is a good 8+ minutes:
[audio:http://wayneandwax.com/wp/audio/kidscocktail1.mp3]

At about 8:30 into Track 1, there’s an amazingly reggaetony riff and vocal (which I’m sorely tempted to sample), but from there, rhythmically-speaking anyway, the track heads more into saidi than dembow territory:
[audio:http://wayneandwax.com/wp/audio/kidscocktail2.mp3]

Finally, just before the CD crapped out, it offered up one of the funkiest versions of happy birthday I’ve ever heard —
[audio:http://wayneandwax.com/wp/audio/kidscocktail3.mp3]

I can only really approach this at a fairly superficial level of sound & image, sorry to say, since I can’t read or understand the language at all. Any help with that, or with finding other (and less scratched) recordings like this one would be much appreciated. Decent kids cocktail is hard to come by these days!

  • everything
Tags: arab, baby, cambridge, kids, lifey, metadata, soundscape

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& Found! (But Still a Little Lost)

5 thoughts on “Found & Lost”

  1. Jeeblee says:
    January 11, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/KIDS-Cocktail-Nancy-Haifa-Fairouz-Children-Arabic-CD-/290548344723

    Ha! Now we need a translator : D

  2. wayneandwax says:
    January 11, 2012 at 1:36 pm

    Wow, you found that fast! And I couldn’t google it up at all. Cool — you’ve put me hot on the trail, e.g.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakhbat_Shakhabit

    Look for an update before too long.

  3. Pingback: wayneandwax.com » & Found! (But Still a Little Lost)
  4. mjb says:
    January 14, 2012 at 6:05 am

    It’s the cross between Baby’s Gang and Natacha Atlas I didn’t know I’ve been waiting for!

  5. Boima says:
    January 19, 2012 at 4:36 pm

    In the intro of the first song they’re talking about somebody or something’s name. The adult voice can’t remember the name, and the kid reminds her. I think…

Comments are closed.

Wayne Marshall is an ethno/musicologist by training, a technomusicologist by calling, and an erstwhile blogger/DJ.

Here you’ll find lots of thoughts about music, writing about music, even music about music.

Holler at a scholar:
wayne at wayneandwax dot com

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