like the moon
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 →TRANS #11 Revista Transcultural de Música – Transcultural Music Review new issue :: music & youth culture in argentina + zoomusicology (tags: academic journal argentina buenosaires youth identititity cumbia rock spanish) La cumbia villera y el fin de la cultura del trabajo en la Argentina de los 90 article (en español) on cumbia villera, youth […]
Read More →YouTube – Roots Manuva – Again & Again “With this record I was trying to tune into that old Channel One, Studio One aesthetic.” :: roots manuva hits that ball out the park on this lead single (prod. by shyFX?!) :: rodney da realest, u done know (tags: reggae hip-hop cricket caribbean video youtube london […]
Read More →As long as we’re on the topic of “Arab Face” I’ve decided to dust off and finish up this post that’s long been sitting in my drafts folder. (It’s post #100, and I’ve recently published #400, if that’s any indication of how long it’s been on a backburner.) There are countless twisty, tangly stories of […]
Read More →Oxford University Press: Foundation: Joseph Schloss “Based on interviews with many of the dance’s most significant figures as well as on four years of on-the-ground research in New York City, [Joe Schloss’s] _Foundation_ offers the first serious study of b-boying…” :: go joe! this gonna be good (tags: breakdance book academic ethnomusicology hip-hop dance) Der […]
Read More →Thx to my man Motaz, an Egyptian/Cairovian musician and activist currently residing in Cambridge, for pointing me to Jennifer Peterson’s excellent article — Sampling Folklore: The re-popularization of Sufi inshad in Egyptian dance music — which not only, beyond some linkthink, merits a post of its own here (for a few reasons), but inspires some […]
Read More →Arab Media & Society | Sampling Folklore: The re-popularization of Sufi inshad in Egyptian dance music | by Jennifer Peterson ‘Drawing on the context of mulid festivals and Sufi inshad, the “mulid” trend samples, imitates and remixes elements of mulid festival music, lyrics, and cultural references into a distinct form of boisterous, youth-oriented dance music.’ […]
Read More →Although my research/interests often turn to (trans)nationalism, lately I’ve been thinking less about nationhood and more about neighborhood — not in terms of an actual space or place (though that’s part of it), but something more akin to neighborliness, to being a good neighbor, to finding an ethics of neighborhood in an intensively globalized/mediated era. […]
Read More →As some might have noticed in a recent linkthink, “Ghetto Revivalist”® John Brown (aka, the King of da Burbz) — idiot-savvy hypeman extraordinaire — is promoting a new mixtape with a spoof commercial for a cereal product called “Ghetto Revive-Os” — Despite being at the center of a number of truly cringe-worthy moments in the […]
Read More →I’ve been meaning to share my reflections on the smut/slackness symposium I participated in @ Penn for some time now, but, well, you know how the end of the semester can go. Many of the themes that emerged in the panel have been ‘verberating in my head, however — ideas which seem to resonate with […]
Read More →J. Griffith Rollefson, “Musical (African) Americanization: Hip Hop and Minority Identity in Berlin” award-winning essay on hip-hop in germany by UW-Madison ethno grad student :: saw a version last month in iowa city (tags: academic essay pdf hip-hop berlin germany af-am europe ethnomusicology race nation) YouTube – BoomBapArchive’s Channel video archive dedicated to old school […]
Read More →Last week I gave a guest lecture in a “Global Pop” class at MIT. The professor, Patricia Tang, asked me to come in and do my thing where I show how various genres cohere depending on tempo and rhythmic pattern. It’s a shtick I’ve had going for years, using Ableton (or, previously, FruityLoops) to make […]
Read More →Tomorrow I’m participating in a symposium convened by the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m humbled and excited to be a part of the conversation. Check the lineup — Thursday, March 27th 12noon – 2:00 pm Smut/Slackness in Caribbean Music Carolyn Cooper University of the West Indies Shannon Dudley University of […]
Read More →Under the Musical Spell of the Sonidero; Mexican D.J.’s Relay Messages, on Dance Floor and to the Homeland – New York Times on the NYC-mexico sonidero circuit — cumbia shoutouts as greeting cards ! (tags: nyt newyork mexico cumbia soundsystem sonidero transnationalism latinamerica) From VOICES: The Sonideros of Mexican Youth Dances abstract & photos of […]
Read More →thx to all for the continuing cumbia convo, esp those who have left comments and/or sent emails (is it telling that not all can be aired here?) i guess this stuff cuts close to the bone, but that’s how we like it here at w&w — jugando con fuego desde 2003! & thx to KG […]
Read More →¿Qué reflexiones? Tonight in San Fran, DJ /rupture — never one to let his critical eyelids slack — will be digging thru his kumbia krates alongside the Zizek gang. Yesterday, Carolina @ Sound Taste framed her excitement around the neo-cumbia thing (coming soon to NYC) by noting that her “critical distance has gone out the […]
Read More →For any readers whose curiosity was piqued by the conga videos in last night’s del.icio.us dump, allow me to provide a little more context via Lani Milstein, a NY-based ethnomusicubanist, who brought them to my attention — Just a shout out to say thanks for being such an eloquent writer on reggaetón. I’m working on […]
Read More →Not long ago, w/r/t global gobbledecrunk, I referred to an interview I gave recently to a Brazilian journalist. The journo in question is Camilo Rocha, who doubles as a DJ (& has a fab disco mix over @ Spannered). The piece was just published in Folha de Sao Paolo, apparently Brazil’s biggest newspaper. I don’t […]
Read More →In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was […]
Read More →when i say that ghislain poirier is one of my favorite global ghettotechies®, i think i mean that unsardonically, but i’m not sure where that leaves us ghislain’s music, however, usually leaves me grinning if not spinning keep it blazin, g —
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