like the moon
I know what you’re thinking — el fin de Delfin? No puede ser! But it’s been about a month and a half since the Chilean jokesters who made Delfin both a YouTubospheric laughingstock and legend — not to mention the undisputed king of tecno folklore — finally hung up their bloggy hats. As they write, […]
Read More →Pictured above is a shot of Filiberto Ojeda Uptowns / Machetero Air Force Ones by visual artist Miguel Luciano, as featured in a show opening this Sunday, April 15, at Bard College. I’ve been an admirer of Luciano’s arresting approach since Raquel Rivera (who brought this latest project to my attn) sent me a digital […]
Read More →Sure, I traded a chance to see the Chicago River dyed green for a late-season Boston Nor’easter, but when your loved ones are back on the coast and your brutha’s offering to cook up a big boiled dinner, well, such trade-offs seem worth it. But whether you’re in Chicago or Boston or some other outpost […]
Read More →“It would seem evident that these two singers were friends of Diplo. The performance begins with a prayer for the repose of his soul and then the two singers exchange improvised decimas, ten paired couplets of eight syllables each. A powerful and moving eulogy and a wonderful example of the Puerto Rican Jibaro or mountain […]
Read More →/jace: I enjoy watching the notion of a mainstream dissolve into a trillion scattered data-bites. me: ME TOO! e.g., “enta omry = your my life ragaooney 3nak = give me back your eyes leh ayam elley raho = to the days we had and so on and so on… it would take forever to translate. […]
Read More →Having read no small # of reggaeton messageboard debates (esp over ?s of nat’l origin), I’ve developed a decent sense, I’d like to think, of when someone hits a good # of signposts. The following gem is quite solid in that respect — myths, misspellings, elisions and omissions, grammatical and historical slippage notwithstanding. Econowhimsical prose, […]
Read More →Another Crunk Cartology: if you happened to miss Ghislain Poirier’s African hip-hop mixes, you really need to track those down. For another perspective on the whole back-and-forth, see Daara J’s Boomerang thesis. Droid brings the latest blogariddimic spectacular: an hour of early 90s dancehall, an underappreciated but overwhelming (and deeply influential) era for reggae music […]
Read More →Hot off a week of steady jukeboxin, I got to see/hear/feel DJ Nehpets — Chicago radio’s juke ambassador — alongside localtronix partyrockers Flosstradamus Friday night at Sonotheque. It was a treat to hear those bassy beats through something other than my laptop, and I love that juke — at least as represented by Nehpets — […]
Read More →Solo Plena: a frequently updated Panamanian “plena” blog (that means reggae there, y’know), showing that Panama’s reggae scene, as reinvigorated and reshaped as it may have been by the reggaeton explosion, continues apace. &nuff Pma plena pon YouTube too, classic a nuevo here’s El General doing his best Don Dada — and Aldo Ranks puttin […]
Read More →Got a brief review of Pitbull’s El Mariel in this week’s Phoenix. As it happens, I also have a quotation in another, longer review by Jose Davila for the Miami New Times, also published this week. In short, I like the album, esp any tracks propelled by Mr.Collipark’s ATLien Afro-Cubist crunkstep, and i admire Pitbull’s […]
Read More →Sin duda, William Hung ain’t got nothin’ on Ecuador’s latest YouTuboSensación — Delfin Quishpe. I learned of Delfin via an Ecuadorian blogger named Jaime, who after seeing my own post (or two) on the subject, pointed me to a piece he had himself written recently about the ol’ Perreo Chacalonero. Here’s how Jaime put me […]
Read More →When the NYT prints something like this — Hamas, a radical Islamic movement that is considered a terrorist group by Israel and the West, , , , it tends to remind me of, The Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine, , , , & […]
Read More →Considering what a solid series it’s been so far, I’m quite proud to present — Blogariddims ¡Blogaritmos! 11: “Another Crunk Genealogy” crunkyclave / dembowsalsa / raggyton / bhangrabounce subscribe to series | download mp3 (60:54 | 83.6mb) Of course, given the all-around excellence of the contributions to date, never mind the massive mix Heatwave dropped […]
Read More →Some linkythinky things: Peter Scholtes just wrote an extensive piece on reggaeton for City Pages. Rather than simply rehearsing the well-worn narrative, Peter brings in the voices and stories of performers and enthusiasts in the Minneapolis/St.Paul reggaeton scene, giving new texture to a story whose contours have become all too familiar. He includes a large […]
Read More →Given that it pays homage, follows a venerable reggae tradition (see, e.g., the rankses, the bantons, the demuses, the cats), makes a pop culture pun, and invokes a myth of national origins, I gotta admit — Tainy Tunes is a fantastic name for an up-and-coming reggaeton producer. Kid’s only 17, so we’re not gonna judge […]
Read More →I was reminded this week of the wonderful work of Anthony McCann, an ethnomusicologist, among other hats, who now describes himself as primarily a “social ecologist.” I’ve been enjoying Anthony’s generous research on music and copyright/enclosure for a while now, but I was motivated to see what he’s been up to lately after reading his […]
Read More →That review of the new Tego album in the Phoenix that I’ve been telling y’all about has finally seen the light of day. You can find it in the digital fishwrap here, but I’m going to go with my standard practice of reprinting the original on this humble blog since inevitably a word or two […]
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