like the moon
I’ve been working on a talk/chapter called “Skinny Jeans and Fruity Loops” and while part of that has involved tracking floggers and tecktonik across Latin America, another part has required that I dig into LA’s similarly day-glo/geeky youthtube dance scene: i.e., jerkin. More on all of this research later. Meantime, I just want to share […]
Read More →I’ve been listening to the MasalaCISM radio show for years, so it was a thrill to finally make it over to the studio when I was in Montreal last weekend. Extra bonus: Poirier and Dub Boy (in from Bristol for Karnival v.1) were also Bendude‘s guests that evening. Benoit started red hot with uptempo dancehall, […]
Read More →I’m excited to announce, for a couple reasons, that next week PBS will begin airing the 4-part series, “Latin Music USA.” Episode 1 (Latin Jazz, Mambo) and Episode 2 (Salsa) will air on Monday, October 12; Episode 3 (Chicano Rock, Tejano, Norteño) and Episode 4 (Latin Pop, Reggaeton) will air the following Monday, October 19. […]
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 guest at Beat Research is my friend & colleague at MIT, Ian Condry, author of Hip-hop Japan (Duke U Press, 2006). He’ll be joining us this eve to celebrate the translation of his book into Japanese, and he’ll do so by offering a set that traces the broad contours of Japanese hip-hop. I hope […]
Read More →I’ve really been enjoying all the feedback I got on my “treble culture” post. One idea that’s been especially interesting is the seemingly common notion — repeated & affirmed by many commenters — that we tend to imagine/assume bass even when we don’t hear it. I suspect that this phenomenon may be at work more […]
Read More →The Story Behind The Story Behind The Roxanne Shante Story By Wayne Marshall and Jeff Chang If a rapper claims to be a killer, no one cares. If she says she has an education, they send in an investigative reporter, or at least someone who purports to be. Oh don’t we love gotcha journalism. But […]
Read More →I’m in the process of working up a short essay on the topic of “treble culture” for a volume on “mobile music.” I’m hoping that some of my awesome readers/interlocutors might lend me a hand (and/or ear). There are two main areas in which I am interested: 1) the rise of “treble culture” and the […]
Read More →from Raquel Rivera to wayne marshall, Deborah Pacini Hernandez date Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 11:38 AM subject riddle me this Hi dear compis. I still don’t quite understand how the amazon sales work, but I got a big kick out of seeing us #1 in salsa and and #1 reggae. And #11 in rap. […]
Read More →charlie sporting a hat bearing the name of his boat, a name inspired by some songs No doubt most readers of this blog are aware that my father-in-law, Charlie Nesson (aka eon), is also very much IN LAW. And he’s been making the news a lot recently, mainly for defending (pro bono) Joel Tenenbaum against […]
Read More →Botswana’s Ruff Riddims (now tweeting) have been putting in work lately. Now that the studio is up and running, they’ve been grinding out some promising stuff — a mix of kwaito and kwasa-kwasa, hip-hop and reggae — and they’re starting to reach out, nationally and internationally, to share their work with the wider world. Check […]
Read More →Some bookish things to report, including the latest re: Reggaeton — namely, that tomorrow, Wednesday May 27 (which happens to be my born day), I’ll be appearing alongside co-editor Raquel Rivera on WNYC’s Soundcheck.
Read More →I love the moment at 0:21 in this credit card commercial: It’s obvious why, no? MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” — a “work” which, in addition to the song itself, includes as a part of its whole a now iconic video, known as much for its choreography as parachute pants — has become a […]
Read More →Sick of that “One Love”? Try this one — [audio:http://wayneandwax.com/wp/audio/who-one.mp3]
Read More →@noz sez sometimes RT can mean “real talk”; here it’s both re: Lil B (RT @noz): The 19 year old Pack frontman currently maintains 114 myspace pages (not accounting for the “SECRETE” [sp] pages he hints at in blog posts) all launched over roughly the last eight months and each showcasing five or six original […]
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 →With their latest greatest up-to-the-timeness (actually, an overview of 08), the Heatwave remind me that I should really bring more of the many mixes I enjoy to yr attn. These days, and for the last several years really — ever since the rise of the mp3/blog mix (h/t L-R?) — I listen to music mainly […]
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 →thx again, lmgm Like I try to do with most fruits of my labors, I’m liberating some recent words of mine here (shhh!), composed last week for a relatively well-consulted (by music grad students?) music “dictionary.” It’s likely that none of you will read them otherwise, not that you’d necessarily want to. (I’ve received requests […]
Read More →The haunting echoes of r&b and garage ephemera are hallmarks of Burial’s music. Myriad, minute vocal snippets, tossed-off castaways in a sea of murky radio remembrances, reanimated as deeply expressive fragments, pitched around, recontextualized rhythmically and harmonically and vibewise. This is a poignant poetics, sometimes jaw-droppingly so, as the producer projects an alarmingly “human” voice […]
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