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Reppin’ Salone (Sierra Leone), Wisconsin (Milwaukee and Madison!), and the Bay Area, DJ Boima<\/a> holds down a whirled music<\/a> dance party in San Fran, moving the massive with a mix of (pan-)African and (pan-)American pop \/ hip-hop \/ club \/ etc. Readers of this here blog might have noticed his name in a flurry of comments w\/r\/t “No Te Veo”<\/a> not long ago. Boima’s keen, open ears sensed all sorts of West African dancepop resonances in that hopped-up, reggaetony banger.<\/p>\n Thanks in part to that stimulating conversation<\/a>, laced with YouTube links, and given that “Slow Music from West Africa”<\/a> (via \/rupture<\/a>) has served so sweet as a late summer soundtrack, my appetite was well whet for the uptempo, Sierra Leone-centric mixtape Boima zshared me upon return from offline land<\/a>—<\/p>\n DJ Boima, “Diamonds from Sierra Leone”<\/a> | tracklist<\/a> | notes<\/a> <\/p>\n The mix came with an invitation:<\/p>\n since others have Before I tell you what I hear here, tho, allow me to quote — at some length — Boima himself (via email) describing the poetics informing the mix:<\/p>\n It’s a real interesting Oh.. and another thing is that reggae has always been As far as the mix goes, I included a variety of songs I hope you enjoy it, and let me know what you think.<\/p>\n -DJ B-<\/p>\n —————————————— Of course, I’d like to know what you<\/em> think, too (as would, I’m sure, Boima). <\/p>\n But here’s what I think at the moment. I really dig the way “Diamonds” offers up such a deeply personal & explicitly perspectival (if u will) sonic representation of Sierra Leone, mixing so many disparate styles and making it all make sense (of place)<\/a>. In that way (if I may) it’s not unlike my own attempts to represent the Boston soundscape<\/a> and, accordingly, to revisit and revise my own (and maybe some sympathetic others’) imagination of our fair (and unfair) city. <\/p>\n It also occurs to me that to ask a question which reared its ugly head in my own ugly head at a certain juncture in the mix — i.e., is this mixtape utterance (if u will again) an African or an American And, yuh dun know, a Jamaican accent too. Indeed, the prominent way the Caribbean figures here reminds me to remind you that when I say American<\/em>, I mean that in the broadest sense. Once again we hear how hip-hop travels together with dancehall, crossing roots and routes as per usual. <\/p>\n So, that’s a few of the things I hear here (or to be precise, a few of the things I heard<\/em> as I let the mix move me on a sunny afternoon in Cambridge). But what about you? & where and when and why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reppin’ Salone (Sierra Leone), Wisconsin (Milwaukee and Madison!), and the Bay Area, DJ Boima holds down a whirled music dance party in San Fran, moving the massive with a mix of (pan-)African and (pan-)American pop \/ hip-hop \/ club \/ etc. Readers of this here blog might have noticed his name in a flurry of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,26,1,7,5,18],"tags":[410,413,404,402,12,408,14],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-af-am","category-africa","category-uncategorized","category-hip-hop","category-jamaica","category-reggae","tag-af-am","tag-africa","tag-hip-hop","tag-jamaica","tag-mixx","tag-reggae","tag-soundscape"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8691,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions\/8691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nbeen asking you for what you hear, I might as well ask
\nfor you to share what you here from what the youth out
\nin Salone are doing.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nsituation with the youth. Supposedly A LOT (maybe
\nmost) of the youth in Freetown aren’t just unemployed,
\nbut also not in school so they pretty much don’t have
\nmuch activity for their time. I’ve also read that the
\neconomy is basically run by the diaspora sending money
\nback so there’s a definite idea that the U.S. (by
\nextension hip hop) is kind of like a gold mine. It’s
\nrecently urbanized (last ten years) because of the war
\nand the refugee camps that have turned into
\nneighborhoods in the city. So maybe it’s a situation
\nthat has the danger of becoming like Brazil, or the
\nBronx in the 70’s (or Luanda, Soweto, Kingston, etc.)
\nI hope not, at least to spare the violence associated
\nwith those places . From what I gather right now
\nviolence is low, and apparently elections went off on
\nSaturday without a problem.<\/p>\n
\npopular in Sierra Leone, but there’s a interesting
\nclaim to reggae and dancehall that many Sierra
\nLeoneans make, due to the fact that the Freetown
\nColony was settled by former Jamaicans, British and
\nCanadians. Many Sierra Leoneans think of reggae as
\ntheir native music and that Jamaica is a fraternal
\ntwin of sorts, So much so that when the war happened
\nin 97 and I was supposed to go visit with my father
\nand brothers, we cancelled the trip and ended up going
\nto Jamaica instead, because my dad felt like it was
\nthe next best thing.<\/p>\n
\nfrom my dad’s old songs that I listened to as a kid,
\nthe new youth stuff, and rap from 50 cent and
\nJuvenille. I included American hip hop for three
\nreasons. One is the names of the songs. Just a lil’
\nbit, Casualties of War, Get your hustle on are all
\ntitles that evoke thoughts of the current state of
\naffairs over there. Second, American hip hop is
\npopular in Sierra Leone. And third American hip hop
\nis popular in America. (So de people dem buy.)<\/p>\n
\n“DJ Boima”:
\nwww.ironmilitis.com<\/a>
\nmyspace\/cheifboima<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nspeech <\/s> music act? — is to employ the wrong operator entirely. It’s not a question of or<\/em>, I don’t think. Better to hear it as what it is, or at least what it sounds like (to me, yes): as Africa and America intimately & inextricably intertwined, in constant if uneven conversation, vividly voiced by Boima in his own idiosyncratic way & contemporary accent — an American accent as well as, as dead prez say about 12.5 minutes in, a African<\/a> accent. <\/p>\n