like the moon
Mil gracias a Marisol LeBron, who not only first brought to my attn the wonderful nueva-media phenom of “Watagatapitusberry,” but who has offered some interesting thoughts on its homosocial joi de vivre (check her initial round-up of home videos) and has kept up on the latest developments around the song. Most recently, the launch of […]
Read More →Pacey Foster has a great post over at his blog detailing a recent discovery of — and creative engagement with — a 1914 book published by Vernon and Irene Castle, perhaps the premiere dancing couple in the pre-jazz age and crucial players in the formation of the “society” dance scene in NYC during the 1910s. […]
Read More →Since I’m in a syllabus sharing mood, I figured I should finally get around to posting the one I put together in Spring 2008 for a course on “Global Hip-hop.” A series of case studies examining how hip-hop travels outside the US, what it carries with it, and how people adapt its forms to their […]
Read More →I suspect some dear readers out there, much as they like me, are getting sick of seeing my bristly face when they load the page, so I figured I’d get something else up here at the top, though I don’t have time for a proper post right now. One thing about those beard shots — […]
Read More →First, tomorrow @ MIT (5:15pm, 14E-310): What can we learn about contemporary culture from watching dayglo-clad teenagers dancing geekily in front of their computers in such disparate sites as Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, and Mexico City? How has the embrace of “new media” by so-called “digital natives” facilitated the formation of transnational, digital publics? More […]
Read More →When Guillaume was here last week, we discovered in conversation that we both had long been sitting on posts that centered on the question of Africanness and UK funky. I joked that we should both finally get around to finishing these posts and drop them on the same day, causing a ruckus on the ol’ […]
Read More →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 →Not sure what to make of the casual misogyny (metaphor?) at the heart of this — a generalizing of hoe — but, that aside (if I may), I gotta say that I can’t get enough of dudes dancing lithely on their front lawns (wait for 1:10 in the video below). Apparently, this joint’s on some […]
Read More →Tomorrow night — come party under the stars highway with me, a few of my favorite DJs, and a whole host of spacey Somervillains! Project MUM Space: the Final Frontier An intergalactic outdoor dance party Under McGrath Highway in Union Square, Somerville Saturday, August 29th, 9pm-1am (rain or shine) $10 Suggested Donation Crew: MC: Dr. […]
Read More →White people can’t dance, you know — to be more precise, not if they’ve been raised in a place or community or family where they’re not socialized and enculturated into dancing, or don’t later make great efforts to correct such an impoverished upbringing. (& of course, that goes for ppl of any color.) This video […]
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’m heading to Seattle tomorrow to attend EMP’s Pop Conference for the second time (the last time was back in 07). I think EMP might have the best vibes of any music conference I’ve attended (and I’ve attended a few). The reason is simple: it brings together people — generally academics and professional music writers […]
Read More →I made a mix for modyfier! Go on get it, gig wit it, etc. If you’re not familiar with the modyfier series, here’s a primer, written back at the 50th episode milestone (mine’s #124). Rayna has commissioned tons of great mixes, with ruminations on process, from such lovelies & luminaries as Luomo, Philip Sherburne, Ripley, […]
Read More →Mediascape | A Curious Circumstance of the iPod Shuffle | by Bill Bahng Boyer cool click-thru piece by ethnoid bill boyer on the ipod & ipod shuffle & capitalism, subjectivity, etc. etc. :: "As a recovering liberal individualist who once unquestioningly subscribed to the epistemological framework posited by a Western, visually constructed notion of subjectivity, […]
Read More →todo mundo » Blog Archive » Crank Dat ROFLCon taken down from YouTube! kevin records a message for souljaboy, in souljaboy style (ms.xu = the new ayrab!), after the ROFLCon version of "crank dat" (in which a roomful of MIT folk / internet geeks did the dance) got served with a take-down notice :: ah, […]
Read More →Thanks to Christina for sharing this video via Google Reader — We spent Tuesday in my class (AAAS 171a: Reggae Representation, Race and Nation) discussing sexuality and homophobia in Jamaica, and I wish that I had stumbled onto this in time to bring it into the conversation. One of the things we talked about was […]
Read More →English Translation of Thoda Resham Lagta Hai Don't take this elegance as anything less than a disaster Oh my adorers, don't take me as made out of hard soil It takes a little silk, it takes a little glass Diamonds and pearls come together, it takes a little gold Such a fair body is then […]
Read More →GYWO – 23/6 Comedy News awesome! GYWO (i.e., get your war on), some of the funniest, bitingest anti-GWOT humor around, has gone video with its clip art conversation steez :: (thx, paul irish) (tags: humor video politics war election08 animation critique satire) Youth2 : Dancing in the streets local article on malaysian shuffle, a "legit […]
Read More →Since Curm asked some good questions on my previous post about dance video and music culture, it seems I should share my abstract for the presentation I’ll be giving at this weekend’s annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, which follows from a similar curiosity (my own) about how current circumstances relate to historical patterns […]
Read More →I’ve been on a serious YouTube grind over the last couple weeks, working up a couple papers/talks on black digital youth culture. Check the waxtube or my favorites to sink into a pixelated dance trance. Gave one version of this black-digi-youf chat a couple weeks ago at Harvard, which thx to a little bird tweet, […]
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