Prez 2.0: The Cher Presidency

It seems a sign of a seismic shift in presidential-electoral politics, and perhaps a turn for the worse, that all of 08’s frontrunners are firstnamers. Barack? Hillary? Rudy? Mitt? Who’s the next Americal Idol? I mean, at least we all thought of Reagan, explicitly, as an actor. Get yer 3D glasses, folks, this is gonna […]

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Genometrics in G#

Alan Lomax’s “cantometrics” has long functioned as a Pandora’s box for conversation on the SEM listserv. Yesterday and today, fairly explicitly (literally?). We’ll see what happens tomorrow. Here’s the current string, in all asynchronous argument — Alexandre Enkerli to SEM-L Mar 27 Fellow music analysts, To be honest, when a student in my anthropology of […]

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yo google mzekezeke

them mans make mad money down south, no doubt (esp from a botswana perspective) … but who is this masked mzekezeke ?? bush? bin laden? mandela? tupac? watch and find out — (mp$)

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Calculater, Termigrader

Given my own pet peeve around encountering holidayaganda too well before — or at all directly after — one of our days of nationally ritualized good cheer, I’m sorry to leave that last post up so long. If you’re asking, “Did you have to let it linger?,” in a light brogue falsetto, well, yes, I […]

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May the Snow Rise Up to Meet You

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 […]

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Caribbean Music Seminar

On March 8-9, I’ll be participating in a Caribbean Music Seminar at Royal Holloway College (University of London). On the evening of the 8th, I’ll contribute to an open forum on Jamaican music. On the morning of the 9th, I’ll be delivering a paper about Jamaican culture, versioning, and the notion (and uses) of the […]

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Upside-Down International Sound

As I mentioned in the last post, I’m headed to London this week (tomorrow today actually!) to participate in a Caribbean music seminar at Royal Holloway College. I’m honored to have been invited to join in the proceedings, and I’m quite looking forward to the various papers, the broader conversation, and the feedback I hope […]

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Lament on the Death of Diplo

“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 […]

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Reggae(ton) Bangara

Went for an afternoon trip up to Devon Ave’s “Desi corridor” yesterday accompanied by an anthropologist who studies the circulation of pirated media in India (mainly Bollywood/Filmi), and who was, as you can imagine, a perfect companion for a brief tour of the strip’s numerous “record” shops (which sold CDs, DVDs, videocassettes, and even plain […]

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Pods i&i Cast

This is the post that will never get posted unless I just post it. Been sitting on it and adding to it for too long. So here it is, incomplete as it will have to be, as I seem to discover a new podcast or mix series or audio-show-thing every few days or so. So […]

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Linkthink #6573: AyAyAy Edition

/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. […]

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La Musica Negra (Hispana?)

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, […]

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Linkthink #57923

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 […]

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Late February, and the air’s so balmy

shaded by live oaks and bottlebrush trees In realms of dingy gloom and deep crevasse with visors. Their brave recreational vehicles Comes up with as a means to its own end. Everywhere, utterly. He never even dreams, being sheer snow; A frame of glided twilight뾋 to matter, for the flushed boys are muscular III. Chronology […]

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Brave You World

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to sound like Time fckn Magazine or appear too technoptimistic. Indeed, allow me to repeat here — for those who aren’t comment readers — /jace‘s well-put and well-taken anxieties w/r/t web2point0h: i think most of web2.0 activities is lil autonomous nodes — blogs, youtube uploaders & viewers, […]

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Twinkle Sprinkle

Not long ago, Mike Langlie (aka, Twink), one of Boston’s foremost toypiano musicians and remixers of weird kid rekkids (as smashed here), invited me to contribute a remix to a project he’s releasing on CD later this year. It’s a collection of, you guessed it, toypiano music remixes, and it’s called Ice Cream Truckin’. Although […]

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