like the moon
Louis Chude-Sokei has just published one of the more textured and sympathetic accounts of Nigerian 419 scammers I’ve read to date. Touching on everything from e-waste to Nollywood, proposing a tongue-in-cheek anti-eco-tourism, and taking into its analysis the way that transnational hustler culture speaks through the (dated) language of hip-hop and dancehall, it’s an incisive […]
Read More →I first met Benjamen Walker in prison in Jamaica. Either there or the hotel down the street. We were both in Kingston together, with a ragtag band of a couple dozen more, in order to, as best I can understand it today, sprinkle some internet magic on the place. (And help support some serious reform […]
Read More →This video mostly speaks for itself, and speaks volumes, but here are a couple key items: The weapons are not real! We don’t support violence. Also fake picture. Song used: Punjabi MC – “Jogi“ The range of reactions are absolutely precious. Does this mean the terrorists win? h/t ebog
Read More →[Ok, here’s another oldie-but-goodie from the Riddim Meth0d vaults. Plenty of readers are no doubt familiar with this post/mashup, especially since I’ve revisited the issue. In the time since I wrote it (almost 5 years ago!), I’ve also had the strange fortune of submitting a brief report — about the significance of “Big Pimpin” to […]
Read More →Tomorrow I’ll be joining the fine folks from the Music and Sound Studies Colloquium Series at the University of Minnesota to talk about the synaesthetic publics addressing each other via skinny jeans, electronic dance beats, and wonky shuffle steps. I’m pasting the title and abstract below. As you can see, I’m flogging some familiar, but […]
Read More →Despite that my blogspot blog is long defunct, I have, largely out of protest, republished the post which some idiot (or some idiotic bot, more likely) thinks infringes copyright. Here is a link to the post, and below is the note that I have appended to it: Update (31 March 2010): This post, originally published […]
Read More →Joining the ranks of many great blogs and other innocents caught in the crosshairs of copyright fuckery, I received my very own Blogger DMCA takedown notification today! I learned this evening via email from Blogger that the following post, originally published to my wayneandwax blogspot blog back in June 06 (defunct since October of that […]
Read More →What Happens in Riddim Method Stays in Riddim Method
I’ve written a lot here about the “riddim method,” a cheeky term suggested by my co-author Peter Manuel to describe a well-worn practice (and in the case of our article, a distinctly Jamaican version of it). We jest, but we’re serious. In short, what we try to explain is an approach to musical materials as […]
Read More →Next Tuesday (Feb 2) will be the initial meeting of the first class I’m teaching at MIT. I’m excited about the course, a new one, which invites students to read along with me and collectively investigate what I’ve been calling music industry — that is, a broader understanding of musically-propelled cultural practice than something like […]
Read More →DJ Earworm offers up his latest year-end mashup retrospective, putting together the top 25 songs of 2009. For me, despite how remarkably well it all hangs together, this doesn’t quite have the magic of last year’s collage, but it’s still a great way — much as I would prefer to never hear those BEP songs […]
Read More →via Filastine (reblogged, more artfully than i&i, by /Rupture) — URGENT CALL FOR SOUND COMPOSITIONS On a topic even more urgent: Climate Chaos Deadline: December 13, 2009 Public Performance: December 16, in the streets of Copenhagen during the Climate Summit, broadcast from the Sound Swarm, a of battery of bicycle-mounted megaphones within the Bike Bloc […]
Read More →Team Tenenbaum has filed an OPPOSITION TO PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR JUDGMENT AND DEMAND FOR INJUNCTION, which pretty much means what it says — or in my attempt at non-legalese: they’re asking the judge, rather than entering the judgment recommended by the jury (which, interestingly enough, she has yet to do), to fundamentally reconsider the validity, […]
Read More →Thx to the ever-vigilant Ted Swedenburg for bringing to my attn the latest episode in the surreal and surprisingly sustained saga of “Arab Money” (click the non-HD version to stay here) — Video Games | GTA IV: Ballad of Gay Tony | Yusuf Amir Trailer XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii So there […]
Read More →Tonight’s Beat Research brings to Boston the shady presence of a shadowy figure known as DJ N-RON. N-RON first caught my ear back in ’05 with his (& Leftenant’s) mix, “A Thunder Sound” (mp3), chock full of remixes and drawing together a wide range of sounds — from dancehall, grime, electro, leftfield hip-hop, ethnomusicology classics […]
Read More →So, yeah, inundated by mixes, but finally got a chance to check out last month’s Rinse FM set by Butterz (ft. Terror Danjah), which shows grime (& its bastard cousin, dubstep) alive&well & wot-u-call-it as ever. Comfortably contentious even! Esp w/ the notion that grime might be less than alive & well. I love the […]
Read More →how u like me now off the hook in the facebook with the twittering in urban/suburban hip-hop settings? GQ: do you have a favorite [rap act]? Steele: P. Diddy I enjoy quite a bit. GQ: Do you want to rethink that? Steele: [laughs] I guess I’m sorta old-school that way. Remember, I came of age […]
Read More →photo by Brent Hagerman In the first comment on my Zunguzung Meme post, Droid asked the perfectly reasonable question, Is it possible that Zunguzung itself is an adaptation of someone else’s work? It’s something I’d been wondering myself, of course — for about as long as I’d been noting the melody’s long legs, really. In […]
Read More →“Martin Luther King walked so that Barack Obama could run,” said one boy. “Barack Obama ran,” said another, “so that all children could fly.” — Harper’s Weekly Review, 20 Jan 2007 (quoting Jeezy!) Today, we hold heads high, jump for joy, savor this historic, hopeful moment. Tomorrow, noses to the grind. Support and criticize. We […]
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