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“la cumbia cienaguera” of samim’s “heater” fame (and a hit in its own right in south america for decades) gets yet another odd reanimation via shaggy and the euro 08 football cup :: and round and round we go
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documentary about vinyl (collectors)
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‘Simultaneously smug and beleaguered, “All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can’t Save Black America” raises the question: Who, exactly, is claiming it can?’ :: mansbach takes mcwhorter to task
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part two of the interview
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an odd but effective mashup :: wckd fckn awesome to heah jack’s bawstin accent :: e.g., “dean mori-ahty,” “dis-peah” (despair), & my fave, “faw-lawn” (forlorn)
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eek is right! :: the dancehall DJ dismisses an AIDS-children’s charity for which he’s to perform & decides instead to rail against the control of reggae by such “white bwoys” as UB40, Ace of Bass, and Massissawho
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weird/telling that dude never namechecks afrofuturism here (while quoting dery!); he’s hardly the first to discuss this thread among these artists; guess he’s hoping “afronaut” (which ain’t bad) will catch on & he can take the (space)cake?
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love this kind of thing; simple, wonderful remixes; also love that one might imagine this sort of thing exists and then instantly affirm that notion with nuff ex.s; mass culture = open source, like it or not (like it!)
videyoga ::
ugh, what a dull, vacuous piece in Slate! Was Mr Weiner PAID to write that?
i don’t know if weiner was paid to write that, but it does kinda read like a rushed essay for an intro to afroamerican folklore seminar. it doesn’t seem to go too far beyond, ‘these black musicians ALSO mention space! ACTUALLY, pink floyd and david bowie were both doing things black people had done before!’
at least it doesn’t through a crack undertone into the equation (which i feel is what often underscores white approaches to george clinton, kool keith/dr. octagon, or sun ra).
i also think wayne brings up a very good point by mentioning that this dude doesn’t really delve into ‘afrofuturism’ as a (canonized!) concept that has existed for, um, more’n a minute. it seems to me like replacing futurism with a space *fixation* is kind of racist, although maybe i don’t exactly know how to explain why… like, devo and kraftwerk and gary numan can sound futuristic in music reviews, not spacey or ‘loopy’ or ‘out there’ and thus inapplicable to ‘universal’ experience. just like hippies and avant-gardists and psychedelia heads and space in general with its floating rocks and giant light bulbs that we can’t even really use…
yes, the elision of afrofuturism in that piece is quite odd. part of me wondered whether the author simply didn’t feel the need to rehash the standard line on a_f in a short piece, but the omission is conspicuous nonetheless, suggesting (to me) a more nefarious motivation: pretending to have an original insight into all of this activity — never mind that the whole question of racism and alienation are pretty much avoided in favor of discussing, as carlos puts it, a loopy fixation. there are lots of holes we could poke in the piece, but why bother? except to say (to slate): c’mon, people.
somewhere, kodwo eshun is steaming.
Worst of all, the words “future” and “futurism” lurk like ghosts sprinkled through the text. The erasure is not accidental. And it doesn’t take that much to explain, even in a short piece.
Like you say, Wayne, c’mon Slate, L-A-Z-Y.