by on
shelden and 2nd, detroit

 

Detroit is a shell of a city buzzing with insanely creative activity. So many abandoned buildings and vacant lots, but so many incredible grassroots projects popping up and flourishing. The Allied Media Conference, where I spent the weekend, is just one example, and serves as a window into the larger context of what’s going down in “the D.”

And what an incredible conference – perhaps the best I’ve ever witnessed – a whole bunch of media geeks and radical shit-kickers coming together to share knowledge and dream the future. It was also exciting that so many people got into our DJ geek-out presentation and demanded that we do another one next year. Hopefully there is video out there somewhere, but in the meantime here’s the basic rundown:

“Behind the Music: Geekout Style” with DJs Trash and Mothershiester (mapping places that have left a musical mark)

“Mi Primer Amor: Chicha del Perú” with DJ rAt (on her personal relationship with huayno and cumbia in Peru)

“Pinoy Funk, Hanggang Magdamag” with the Pinstriped Rebel (exploring the development of Filipino funk & soul)

“Finding My Latina Punk Identity” with DJ precolumbian (up the ponx! …in peru and south america.)

“Didn’t Mean to Turn You On: The Unsung Women of ‘80s R&B and Shifting Black Identity” with DJ K la Rock (gender and racial politics via Klymaxx and Patrice Rushen)

“Reexamining Electroclash” with DJ Junebullet (questioning double standards in treatment of electroclash, as a genre dominated by female producers)

“Jamaican Mento” with DJ Prism (looking at different eras of Jamaican music, from mento to dubstep)

“The Many Lives of Dembow” with DJ bent (tracing the sound/word on its travels through the Caribbean and beyond, and her experience with it)

“D.C. Cover Discovery” with DJ Zombie (a foray into D.C.’s go-go music as it covers mainstream hits and gives them street cred)

 

electroclash vs the disembodied female voice

The event went off beautifully, starting with a brief description of the DJ geek-outs that we have been having, and building into a full-on dance party on the stage while we each did our piece (about seven minutes apiece). We had a projector for our visuals (some written text, some photos, some videos), a full dj set up, a mic for those who spoke during their set, a Twitter wall showing mentions of #djgeekout, and of course dancing. We are hoping to do a repeat of the session in D.C. at some point soon, so keep an eye out. We are also hoping to hear about more DJ geek-outs popping up around the country, since so many people seemed inspired by our model of meeting over food and drink to share music and our relationships with it.

Although working on the session took up a good deal of my time, I was able to get to a few other workshops. There was some great strategizing around the importance of radical media as well as social justice types working within mainstream media organs. I was inspired by one person’s use of “environmental” sounds (a door slamming, keys jangling) to make beats, rather than a drum machine or computer program. And there was the entire “Science Fictions & Movement: Imagining a New Possible” track which was amazing, and produced this incredible reading/viewing/listening list. It felt very prescient to be able to pop in on the Mudd Up Book Clubb briefly on my last day in Detroit, having agreed over the weekend with others to finally jumpstart a long-discussed D.C. Octavia Butler Reading Group.

Of course there were also the nights of music, which included amazing DJs, great rappers and singers, and a beatboxing/cello duet. Plus Tunde Olaniran (mentioned by TAL1ES1N), who blew me away with his “dark R&B pop” music and performance, complete with robotic back-up dancers. Mark down June 30-July 2 2012 on your calendar for the next AMC…

tunde olaniran performing with robot back-up dancers at AMC music showcase

 

by on

Dutty Artz Sweat Lodge Flier, Dre Skull, Matt Shadetek, Geko Jones, Atropolis

Last Sweat Lodge was our best yet!  Big shout to DJ Beto for coming through and throwing down with me, Geko Jones and Atropolis.  I had a blast.  The next one is approaching quickly and I am super excited to announce that we’ve got Brooklyn’s own Dre Skull as our guest.  Dre Skull runs the Mixpak label and just produced an amazing record with Vybz Kartel.  Kartel is to me one of the best and most interesting artists in dancehall music right now and I cannot overstate how impressed I am with Dre for his role in creating Kingston Story, their album.  Read all about it at Taliesin’s post here. On the night your’s truly Matt Shadetek, Geko Jones and Atropolis will be raising the temperature with your favorite tropical sounds so come dressed to sweat.

DUTTY ARTZ: SWEAT LODGE JULY

DJs:

Dre Skull

Matt Shadetek

Geko Jones

Atropolis

 

Friday July 8th 10PM-4AM

FREE PARTY

The Cove, 108 N. 6th St

Brooklyn NY

L train to Bedford Ave

by on

Kalup Linzy feat. James Franco, “Rising”. Matt Shadetek and I built the beat structure, then I labbed up with cellist/songwriter Brent Arnold who performs with me in Nettle (catch Nettle’s trio formation at Rome’s Maxxi Museum ‘the National Museum of 21st ct. Art’ next week) to further flesh things out musically. Kalup Linzy made the video which incorporates some footage from James. Enjoy! For more info, check out the Pitchfork post.

by on

JOHNFPETERS 3296B

[Rainstorm in Issafn, photo by John Francis Peters for The Fader]

The group blog over at our Beyond Digital: Morocco site has been lively as things accelerate. Each week John Francis Peters and I find time to join photos and text documenting some of our time here. The series is here, and you can go direct to this week’s post – Village Boys, Village Magic, and the Best Breakfast Ever.

excerpt 1

Issafn’s empty adobe houses crumble back into the rocky landscape. It’s newer self-built cinderblock palaces line a sliver of green—date palms, figs, monstrous olive trees—around a riverbed that’s walkable barring flash-floods. Ten years ago Issafn had no electricity. Powerlines were strung when the new king came to power, and now local hiphop crews post online videos of themselves rapping in Tashelhit. Hassan and his buddies put together an hourlong DVD (that’s genre-scramble seems inspired by Bollywood’s action-romance-spy-comedy-melodrama-all-at-once attitude) that they shot in the hills. The women still haul water up from the creek pre-dawn, and the cybercafe’s sign has been around so long that it’s rusted, nearly out of legibility. What’s gonna happen in the next decade?

Maghreb Mix Party, Track 9 (Sexy Back Blend) by The FADER

 

JOHNFPETERS 3358c

[The King’s Speech, photo by John Francis Peters for The Fader]

excerpt 2

Walking around Issafn, we are the aliens. Most of our crew doesn’t speak Arabic or French, not that those would help much. Tashelhit is the first language of everybody else here, and many of the older generation don’t speak Arabic. So communication turns into gestures and patience. We learn that the Berber term for beetle is iguiliguiz, a word impossible to pronounce without smiling. We learn that a great magic bird named Baz taught people in this land how to make music. We learn that honeycomb and homemade almond paste and olive oil and round bread is the best breakfast ever.

Maghreb Mix Party, Track 10 by The FADER

by on

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/10046418[/vimeo] h/t our newest contributor DJ Bent– who can hopefully give some more personal commentary on Tunde Olaniran
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDhGF14YoAg&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
D1 is the Bada Bada homie holding it down whether he flips it as a deejay or rapper. Check his mixtape from last summer at Dat PIFF.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2ShkQ1gpCs[/youtube] h/t to Siobhan Jones

If you really want something to relax though- pull up Lamin’s heartbreakingly skillful radio board running archive. set it & forget it.

by on

Today is the first full day of the always-amazing (or so I’m told, since it’s my first time, but holds true so far) Allied Media Conference in Detroit – in it’s 13th year. I’m here with an incredible crew from D.C., local DJs and folks from Radio CPR. The conference exists to “cultivate strategies for a more just and creative world. We come together to share tools and tactics for transforming our communities through media-based organizing.” And they do this in a way that’s different form most conferences I’ve been too – with a really solid grounding in their local community and context. In addition to workshops on media and organizing, there are tours of Detroit with various emphases like musical history or labor struggles.

For years my fellow compañeras from Anthology of Booty and other media types have been trying to get me to come, so I finally made it, along with like two dozen folks from our community. Ten of us are presenting tomorrow (Saturday) as an extension of a project we’ve been doing for the past year that we have dubbed “DJ Geekout.” We come together irregularly for food and drink in someone’s living room to share music we are passionate about, to share our relationship with it, its history, connections between musical genres and places/people, and so on. Here’s our workshop description (its at 2:10 on Saturday if you’re at #amc2011):

DJs bent, Junebullet, K La Rock, Mothershiester, Pinstriped Rebel, Precolumbian, Prism, rAt, Trash, & Zombie. Our Geekout Collective reps many DJ Projects: Anthology of Booty, First Ladies, Radio CPR, Girls Rock DC, She.Rex, and Maracuyeah.com, in DC and Philly.

This session will invite participants into a DJ collaboration/movement that exploded out of AMC2010, and has continued to grow, twist and turn with transformative power throughout the past year. About 20 of us, all D.C./Detroit/Philly underground DJs, have been doing living-room jams that include pecha kuchas, vinyl sharing, and storytelling. We are visioning & discovering together how we live the art of djing – as the power & responsibility to create, spark and sustain spaces, make community connections, and create change that there’s little language for. Here, we share our mini-movement in a matinee party with live DJ sets, geek video projections, pop-up video style captions, a DJ101 How-To corner, an interactive Twitter screen & other ways for you to jump in!

I am so psyched for this – folks will be touching on how D.C.’s go-go music takes pop hits and makes them “suitable for the streets,” electro-clash and the disembodied female voice, racial politics expressed through ‘80s RnB, and much more.

My part of the session will explore my personal experience of the evolution of “dembow” from Jamaica through Panama, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and beyond. “No Me Uses” by 2 Sweet (from Playero 38) will be in the mix, and we’re hoping to upload somewhere some (or all?!) of the songs from this geeked-out presentation so everyone can enjoy.

2 Sweet — No Me Uses
[audio:https://duttyartz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/07-2-Sweet_No-Me-Uses.mp3]

by on

As announced in this post, the Mudd Up Book Clubb kicks off this month. We have a time and location now: It’s going down on Monday June 27th, at 7pm on the rooftop near rue Jean Jaures in Gauthier, Casablanca. It’s a particularly appropriate place to sit down and discuss Maureen F. McHugh’s Nekropolis, a science fiction novel set in 22nd century Morocco involving biochemical slavery, immigration, genetic chimeras and more. See the original post for more info on the event and the book.

We’ll have a Ustream feed going for everyone elsewhere. I’m looking at a Filastine’s Barcelona rooftop for the next edition, let’s keep these pages turning..

by on

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elmoaw94Wcg[/youtube]

Last year we dropped Chief Boima’s epic bay-centric refix ep “African By the Bay.” If you never got it- DL it for FREE here. On that release he took some of his favorite African riddims and laced already fire jams with them- my favorite was his 40-water sampling delight “Shake Them Dreads”- and while I was bummed we didn’t get a Boima once over on D-Lo or Sleepy D- I still can’t help but pull from this release nearly everytime I play out.  Since then- Boima has been producing killer tracks for Los Rakas, running rampant with his group Banana Clipz,  all while moving to New York, starting the legendary Made In Africa party with Lamin Fofana AND hitting the books. “African In New York” brings more next level production from B- sorting details now, but looks like we’ll be lacing y’all with vinyl and digital on this one.  If you don’t already know- he  just kicked off a new mix series for Okay Africa. It’s a great intro for the breadth of Boima’s DEEEP knowledge from the continent and ability to go transatlantic like it was nothing.

Chief Boima’s Okayafrica/Ghetto Palms Mixtap by The FADER
 

TWO WORDS: PERCOLATOR DECALE

by on

Last Monday’s radio show is now streaming. I selected the tunes but hiccuping Casablanca wireless meant that last-minute I couldn’t add my voice — co-pilot Lamin Fofana helped out on that end.

you can subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast for downloadable versions, issued a week after FM broadcast: , Mudd Up! RSS. Also useful: WFMU’s free iPhone app. We also have a version for Android (search for “WFMU” in the marketplace).

tracklist: (more…)

by on

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyAhRPh6ETA[/youtube]
Bee and I drive for hours from Jeppestown looking for Nozinja’s house on the edge of Soweto. I’m using the GPS on her Blackberry- but keep fucking up and suddenly we’ve left the city behind and are driving for 20 minutes out into the countryside where sprawling townships blend in from afar with the yellow umber tall grass. The drive was supposed to take 45 minutes- but we arrive at dusk to his spot next to the rail tracks in a clean cut row of brick single story houses. A gleaming Benz sits in the dirt driveway and Nozinja, creator of the Shangaan Electro sound, is inside waiting for a BBC interviewer to call back. I apologize for being hours late- but he says it’s fine and just makes fun of Bee for not knowing her way around Soweto. Shangaan Electro is the new marketing title for the wildly inventive update on Shangaani music that Nozinja has been making and selling throughout S. Africa for years.

Rich from the Tshetsha Boys in one of his masks - Nozinja plans the costumes and a seamstress makes them
DIY Kitchen Distro At Nozinja's House

This is a classic untouched genre discovery story – weird computer music, hyperspeed dancing, clown costumes, youtube, serendipitous ringtones, cancelled return trips home from South Africa- but the music is mindblowing– and more so for all seemingly coming from the mind of one man. Nozinja gives me one of the his early releases from Tiyiselani Vomaseve- a group produced by Nozinja consisting of five women who dance and one who sings. The CD is hand screen-printed and comes off a spindle from his distribution/storage cupboards in the kitchen- it is hard to get all the way through, the midi music is relentless and exhausting for the uninitiated- but the rest of the Shangaani music that has been coming out via Honest Jon’s has been addictively listenable. After killer coverage of those releases, including a massive summer tour, Nozinja is set to start releasing his own music digitally to the world via his eponymous label. The first two releases are availble now from Tiyiselani Vomaseve (itunes) and the Tshetsha Boys, whose album is straight forwardly titled “YouTube Top Hits” (itunes).

Stream a couple cuts from the Tiyiselani album below.

Tiyiselani Vomaseve – Bombani
[audio: http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/Bombani.mp3]
Tiyiselani Vomaseve – Voseveni
[audio: http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/Voseveni.mp3 ]

If you want to keep up on Nozinja and his label- you can follow them on Facebook until their website gets finished.

More Photos and Tour Dates After the Jump.

(more…)

by on

last minute but hey – tonight we’re giving a free party at the Instituto Cervantes in Casablanca, Morocco. Info here (francais, arabic, espanol).

The party kicks off this week’s Beyond Digital series at the Instituto Cervantes. All events are free and open to the public, and will be conducted primarily in French.

BD2

[photo by John Francis Peters]

Tomorrow, Wednesday June 22, we’ll be having a work-in-progress presentation on our Beyond Digital project.

And on Thursday June 23, Fader photo editor John Francis Peters will give a photo workshop session, walking us through his editing process and approach to documentary photography. His growing body of work here is stunning, check our weekly Fader updates for a taste.

 

———————————–

PROJET MUSICAL BEYOND DIGITAL
www.beyond-digital.org
Mardi 21, mercredi 22 et jeudi 23 juin

Beyond Digital présente un projet qui vise la relation qu’il y a entre le digital et le traditionnel dans le monde contemporain de la musique chaabi et bereber. Avec la collaboration d’une équipe internationale d’artistes, le projet explore le monde de cette musique à travers l’usage de la vidéo, de la photographie et de la collaboration musicale.

Mardi 21 juin à 21h DJ Sessions avec DJ/Rupture et Maga Bo. Deux DJs de renom international qui proposent une soirée sans frontières. Maga Bo: basse transnational. DJ/Rupture : rythmes inattendus, intelligent + dansant.

Mercredi 22 juin à 19h Introduction: work-in-progress (travaux en cours). L’équipe de Beyond Digital partage un échantillon du travail accompli jusqu’à présent à Casablanca : fragments de vidéo, musique, photographie, encore inachevés. Une invitation à venir débattre et à participer.

Jeudi 23 juin à 19h Atelier: édition de photographie. John Francis Peters, éditeur de photographie de la revue new-yorkaise Fader et photographe de Beyond Digital, nous montre ses photos faites à Casablanca et avec ce matériel – en plus d’autres ouvrages de photographie documentaire – nous propose un atelier participatif sur le travail d’édition.

by on

It’s hard not to be jealous that Dre Skull has pulled off such a fucking dope coup as getting “Kingston Story” completed and out today. And by jealous I mean so happy and excited for him, the mixpak crew, and Adi. Full page coverage in the times(remember you can just turn off Java to get over your monthly limit), Hot 97 rotation, an eloquent Rolling Stone interview, and the fader cover. All without any real PR budget. Talk about zeitgeist surfing. I already told you the album was dope when I heard most of it, mostly completed, at Big Yard between sessions with Dre. I went to Kingston feeling so Gully- but I left with a rain-check appointment with Styles to get Gaza across my neck. BUT NOW YOU CAN KNOW FOR YOURSELF. BUY THE THING.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeQ0asfmvBs[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv3mZlDMMys[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9ANGxTBSVk[/youtube]

by on

Tomorrow, I’m kicking off my Sunday morning radio show on WFMU! All summer long, 9am to noon – I’ll be playing music, noise, and whatnots on WFMU 91.1 and 90.1 MHz FM. For the past couple of years, I provided extra oils to keep Rupture’s Mudd Up! wheels greased proper, all the while filling in, co-operating, and board-opping for everyone from Rob Weisberg to Glen Jones, and now I got a three-hour spot on the longest running freeform, independent community radio station in the United States! The show doesn’t have a name, and for now we’re just calling it Lamin. If you have a good name suggestion, let’s hear it! As for a description, let’s just say we’re staying true to WFMU’s commitment to unstructured-format broadcasting. Go here to stream my last Sunday morning broadcast.

by on

[vimeo width=”525″ height=”320″]http://vimeo.com/24175601[/vimeo]

This would be so incredible if the world wasn’t so insane. Still, an awesome video by Megaforce.

+++

Here’s something that deserves it’s own post, but the way things are going it doesn’t look like that will happen. So here it is “The World Needs Change” by Clams Casino, from his Instrumental Mixtape – which is quite amazing.
[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/07%20The%20World%20Needs%20Change.mp3]