like the moon
Last week month marked the release of Airtime, an EP from Masalacism Records. A happy convergence for me, the project brings together two sets of friends from far-flung parts of the world: Canada’s Masalacists and Botswana’s Ruff Riddims. The EP features the singular style of MaSuper Star, a dynamic duo who teamed up last year […]
Read More →Late last week I came across an entertaining collection of Mexican pro-w33d songs. Among them was a narcocorrido by El Tigrilla Palma entitled El Rey de la Kush (take that, Dre!). Enjoying the juxtaposition between traditional musical style and utterly contemporary slanguage / thematics, I couldn’t help tweeting that it seemed “so gangsta” in its […]
Read More →Since we’re back to the topic of the wide and contested world of reggaeton, it felt fortuitous to find in my inbox this morning a link to a new interview with Renato, Panamanian pioneer of reggae en español. With the effective prodding of Peter Szok, a history professor from Texas, Renato helps to further flesh […]
Read More →Notably — at least for this enthusiast of Jamaican culture bubbling through the American mainstream — to help stage Lil Wayne’s big comeback, producer Bangladesh contributed another a-milli-esque banger, in this case opting to deliciously substitute Harry Belafonte’s well-worn Jamaicanisms for Phife Dog’s more obscure ragga filigree — What’s funny — and telling, in a […]
Read More →My Tuesday lunch talk at the Berkman Center is now available for viewing/listening/downloading/etcccc And I’m happy to report that, in fine Berkman tradition, the talk has already been blogged by some very astute observers of digital/internet culture: Jillian York offers an affirming precis here David Weinberger, author of Everything is Miscellaneous, live-blogged the talk in […]
Read More →Last week a daily newspaper from Abu Dhabi, The National, published a piece I wrote about “nu world” music under the title “Sounds of the wide, wired world” (29 Oct 2010). As usual, while I think my editor — here, the mighty Dave Stelfox — did an utterly admirable job of making my prolix prose […]
Read More →How is it that it took until this past weekend for me to stumble upon* this utterly bizarre, Bill Laswell-produced, hip-hop-infused 1987 version of “Boops” by Sly and Robbie? Be sure to watch at least up to the eskimo kiss and cello duet — *thx to DJ C for a fun-filled afternoon of random riddim […]
Read More →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 →here’s looking at me Apropos of noticing, this marks the 700th post since I moved this blog to my own server, way back in October 2006 — almost exactly 4 years ago, and well before Google/Blogspot starting alienating users en-masse. That’s a lotta posts, and I want to thank all of you who read here […]
Read More →Next week I begin teaching my second course at MIT. It’s a new syllabus, though it draws on certain materials I’ve used before. In contrast to previous offerings, however, this will be the first time I teach a class with a primary focus on reggae outside of Jamaica — on what I’m calling here “global […]
Read More →When I was in Mexico recently, I gave a lecture-demo on how one might express ideas about music through music. (Readers of this blog will be familiar with these approaches, especially via my excursions in riddim meth0dism.) Although I want to keep the concept as open as possible, believing there are myriad ways to do […]
Read More →[Here’s another repost for the archives. These are by no means my most accomplished etudes in this vein, but I think they suggest some fun and useful possibilities, especially for pedagogy. As usual, I’ve updated some links below. This was originally published way back on 17 February 2006.] in my class on electronic music, i […]
Read More →my friend alex, sporting a shirt made special for him in Paris’s 11th & inspired by this guy (see e.g.) In yesterday’s re-post of a review, you might have caught the following barb-backed big-up: Ayobaness! continues a line of releases from Outhere portraying African popular music that is, you know, actually popular (not just what […]
Read More →Considering the prodigious and idiosyncratically imaginative output of Mr. Munchi, it’s seeming more and more apt to call what he’s doing something like a genre unto itself. Moombahcore? Nah, Munchiton! Just yesterday I was flipping over his Amen-breaking, dembow-dripped, synth-cackle, “Datsik – Firepower (Munchi Moombahcore Rmx).” And then this morning I find the following in […]
Read More →I don’t have as much to say about reggaeton in Mexico City as I do about hip-hop and graffiti, though it has often been an elefante in the room. Also, you don’t have to understand much Spanish to read this sort of writing on the wall — There are other kinds of reggaetony writing on […]
Read More →Despite that the majority of what I listen to takes the form of DJ mixes, and that I probably download something around 3 per day, and that I probably like a good third-to-half of what I DL, I rarely find the time to write about all this great stuff I’m listening to. So aside from […]
Read More →A few things to add to my recent post about graffiti in Mexico City — First, Said Dokins, one of my guests at Postopolis, writes to share some supplementary materials — in particular, documenting the role played by women in “arte urbano”: También te mando unos links de los libros que nuestra editorial tiene actualmente […]
Read More →Since my first trip to Mexico City, I’ve been struck by graffiti in DF — the amount, the quality, the style. From everyday tags to stencil ads, grand pieces to snarky jests, locally steeped and globally conversant, the ubiquity and diversity of graffiti in DF is quite stunning, as a few flicks from last week […]
Read More →The great irony of Postopolis!, as fellow blogger Nicola Twilley observes, is that the intense, consuming nature of the event itself tends to preclude much blogging about it. Add to the 60 or so presentations packed into 5 days the bewildering and inviting charms of Mexico City, and you’re lucky to make a virtual peep […]
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