like the moon
a moomba, apparently — no relation to afrojack, i don’t think Reggaeton doesn’t die, it just continues to fragment and reconstitute in a thousand different ways. (Sorry about the passive language there — I don’t think reggaeton has viral/memetic agency, but I still find myself using that sort of shorthand/emphasis even when what I want […]
Read More →I’m thrilled that Joro-Boro is due to join us tonight for a little Beat Research. A few months ago, I received a fortuitous email from him, linking me to a new mix he’d put together, full of what he called his “favorite local dirty sounds” — a familiar if distinctive melange of polyrhythmic electronic dance […]
Read More →An ethno-colleague, who shall remain anonymous, had her students listen to the Afropop program on World Music 2.0. She was kind enough to send me a hilarious response. I’m rather floored by the ways it mixes a (kneejerk?) resistance to exoticism and an insistence on indigenous originality. I wonder how many other listeners/readers either A) […]
Read More →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, […]
Read More →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 […]
Read More →I’m headed north this weekend to take part in the Pop Montreal conference. I’ll be speaking/playing on a “DJed Lecture Series” alongside such keen observers / boosters / makers of “World Street Music” as Guillaume Decouflet (aka Khiasma / Valeo from Masalacism), Brian Shimkovits (of awesometapes fame), Sao Paolo’s Dago Donato, and 90210’s favorite hip […]
Read More →Readers of this blog need no introduction to the mighty Maga Bo, our guest at Beat Reseach TONIGHT (!), but this blurb from his website sums it up pretty nicely without using the words “ghetto” OR “global” — Maga Bo is a producer/DJ based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His work spans the breadth of […]
Read More →I’ve received repeated requests to share the text I delivered in my pre-concert talk for the Nettle residency at Brandeis. It’s only taken me four months to post it here finally. Regular readers of this blog may find certain passages familiar; some are literally cut-n-pasted from posts here (where I do a lot of my […]
Read More →A couple weeks ago, a bunch of Boston’s “baile funk” enthusiasts were assembled by the um-and-only Gregzinho — who, incidentally, is our guest tonight at Beat Research! — to watch a couple DVDs showing different sides of the carioca scene: DJ Cabide’s self-produced “national” and “international” DVDs (which were both great & grainy), and the […]
Read More →Gavin’s throwing darts again, and he hits a couple bullseyes — or offers some sharp prodding at any rate. The post is on par with his thoughtful and provocative ruminations on the ethics of musical tourism from almost exactly a year ago, and we can read it as something of a follow-up, a continuation not […]
Read More →ethnotechno :: the best in left-field asian-tinged electronica an unabashed embrace of the "ethnotechno" tag — sooooo 90s, no? (tags: worldmusic representation ethnicity orientalism electronic fusion) Blackdown: The man who cycles through glass walls interesting post by blackdown about photographing london's "margins" (tags: london photography representation urban architecture space race class blogpost) Scene and heard: […]
Read More →Recent discussions spurred by Matt Shadetek and /Rupture quoting him feel like the culmination of a couple years of critical discourse, clumsy practice, and increasing interconnection between the two. I’m enheartened to see this kind of debate taking place and the number of insightful perspectives offered up, and I think it can only be good […]
Read More →hawgblawg: gothic bellydance per recent discussions, ted swedenburg links to a fascinating “goth bellydance” video, which is set, interestingly, to a custom refix by enduser of some _bollywood breaks_ material (tags: bellydance video arab middleeast US goth breakcore orientalism blogpost dance) YouTube – The Story of Rapper’s Delight by Nile Rodgers chic’s nile rodgers offers […]
Read More →Thx to my man Motaz, an Egyptian/Cairovian musician and activist currently residing in Cambridge, for pointing me to Jennifer Peterson’s excellent article — Sampling Folklore: The re-popularization of Sufi inshad in Egyptian dance music — which not only, beyond some linkthink, merits a post of its own here (for a few reasons), but inspires some […]
Read More →Musical Tourism, Ethical Consumption and other blog resonances pinging through my mind « UNFASHIONABLY LATE “We try to shuck our inherited identity as tourists or consumers or Orientalists or neocolonialists, and build new identities in their places … that will assure us that our musical choices match up with our liberal politics” (tags: worldmusic global […]
Read More →Lest it get lost in that last post, allow me to note separately that tonight I’ll be joining Gregzinho at WHRB for the beginning of a 7-hour orgy (10 pm – 5 am EST) devoted to nu whirl music. If you’re local to Boston you can catch it on 95.3FM, if not, it’ll be streaming […]
Read More →Although my research/interests often turn to (trans)nationalism, lately I’ve been thinking less about nationhood and more about neighborhood — not in terms of an actual space or place (though that’s part of it), but something more akin to neighborliness, to being a good neighbor, to finding an ethics of neighborhood in an intensively globalized/mediated era. […]
Read More →GHETTO BASSQUAKE: Kuduro Wants You vamanos keeps the torch aloft for kuduro, resisting flavor-of-the-month global-gtech consumption (tags: kuduro blogpost angola africa global ghettotech mp3s video dance blogging) New York to Back Same-Sex Unions From Elsewhere – NYTimes.com first, a pardon for slick rick, and now this?! i’m starting to like this paterson guy (n/h) (tags: […]
Read More →“Globalists” Seek Peripheral Sounds – norient.com – independent network for local and global soundscapes new english translation of camilo rocha’s globalistas article (by me, after tweaks by andre albert of google’s machine translation) (tags: worldmusic global ghettotech DJ journalism poco US MTL brazil cumbia tech) Full List of Stuff Educated Black People Like « Stuff […]
Read More →I have to admit, when I first heard MIA sing “slang tang” during the opening salvo on Arular, I found it an awfully clever gesture. And I liked it. A lot. I appreciated the allusion to a classic riddim and the winking rearticulation to describe how the gyal’s (s)language — London calling / speak the […]
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