Gazakly

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) […]

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Follow Ups

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, […]

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World Music 2.0 (and W&W) on Afropop Worldwide

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 […]

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[val’er] vt+vint+vpr 1 to value, be worth

Tonight at Beat Research we’re happy to host another cosmo-bass booster from the Great North. DJ Valeo from Toronto is perhaps better known to readers here as DJ Khiasma from Montreal, also known as Guillaume, one of the bloggers and radio hosts at Masalacism. Whatever he’s calling himself at the moment, Guillaume has been one […]

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Nettles, Neighbors, and Nu World Music

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 […]

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Last Night MIT Saved My Life

Yesterday morning I wrote what I feared might be the last rent check I could write for the foreseeable future; by yesterday evening those fears had vanished, as I learned that MIT would be offering me a Mellon Fellowship for the next two years. Wayne saved! And not a moment too soon. 11th hour, really. […]

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Hungry Hosts

photo by Max Shay for The Hoot Nettle’s residency at Brandeis — a series of revelations for yrs truly — is now over, but we’re not done hosting geography-defying beatbreakery just yet. Tonight at Beat Research, we’re celebrating our 5th anniversary (!) with the help of Grey Filastine, pictured above playing percussion with Nettle, who’ll […]

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Music Unites Us, Gets Under Our Skins

I couldn’t be more thrilled to announce this — At a time when the arts community at Brandeis is feeling rightly beleaguered, it brings me no little satisfaction to know that we will be putting on a rather art-ful residency later this month, sponsoring the US premiere of such an exciting, provocative, and relevant group […]

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Modern Ancient African Music

Since the conversation continues about trad v modern in African music, and since we read something germane about it for class yesterday, and since I’m still tryna maintain that pdf-blog grind, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share another:       >> Monson, Ingrid. “Riffs, Repetition, and Theories of Globalization.” Ethnomusicology 43,       no. 1 (1999): 31-65. […]

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Arabic Ebonics

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: […]

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Flaneur Pajamas

Mute magazine – Culture and politics after the net | I Like Listening to Awesome Tapes from Africa nice conversation about african music, "world music," and new circulations thereof, featuring andy moor, other members of the ex, and /rupture (h/t wordthecat) :: my favorite sentence — "It's not fusion, it's collaboration." (tags: internet worldmusic africa […]

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Big Farma

WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Listener Fodder's Posts the awesome "mix machine" cassette rescue service continues, with several additional mixes from so-cal swap meets, plus some classic new jersey rap radio (world famous supreme team!) :: i can't get enough of this stuff (tags: digitized mixtape hip-hop radio mp3blog) Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in […]

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Nu Whirl Music, Blogged in Translation?

In a recent issue of the SEM Newsletter (March 2007, to be precise), Phil Bohlman addressed the issue of cultural translation and how it presents a paradox to ethnomusicologists — or perhaps more broadly, to those of us who mediate musical representations in myriad ways (including via links and mp3s): Should we understand our acts […]

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