like the moon
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 […]
Read More →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 […]
Read More →Today the NYT reports that the Federal Trade Commission is not happy about the recent spate of horror films, some of which use torture as a central feature. Elsewhere, Slavoj Zizek argues that most of us can imagine a singular situation in which we might resort to torture — to save a loved one from […]
Read More →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$)
Read More →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 […]
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 →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 […]
Read More →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 […]
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 →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 […]
Read More →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 […]
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 →