This Saturday June 15th, Dutty Artz is participating in the Northside festival as part of Dub-Stuy Records’ independent labels showcase. Representing Dutty Artz are Brooklyn Shanti, Geko Jones, Atropolis, Old Money, and Matt Shadetek. We’ll also be selling merch in the pop up shop, see you in the sun!
Here at Dutty Artz we spend a lot of time highlighting our artists and releases, but there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. Stephen Bowles, aka DJ Still Life, did great work as lead-publicist for Matt’s The Empire Never Ended album – landing some great, well written features, by writers who really understood the context that Matt’s work is coming out of. The work of publicists is becoming more and more important in an age where artists can launch a career off of an online crafted image (removing the artist and their work from any greater social context). Stephen’s work definitely showed many of us here how a publicist can help craft stories in a way that speaks to a project’s form, content, and context, and so with integrity, without sensationalizing.
When Stephen sent over his great remix of Schlachthofbronx’s Apizaco, I thought it would be the perfect time to bring his great behind the scenes work into the spotlight. I asked Stephen to give me a little background of what he’s been up to in his DJ life, and he sent over a great story of his personal journey. Check out the track and story below!
The Fire in the Dark release party will take place this Saturday at Tammany Hall.
This past week, during our West Coast tour, Matt and I spent a significant amount of time hanging with Tendai Maraire of Shabazz Palaces at his home in South Seattle. He was a great host and seems to know everyone around town, so we got an impressive tour of Seattle’s cultural history and local music scene. One of the highlights of the week was being able to check Tendai’s proteges Malitia Malimob perform live at our gig at The Crocodile in Seattle:
Old Money and Lamin Fofana present the video for “Ethiopia” (shot, directed & edited by Olivia Seally), the single they released on Dutty Artz last fall. The video also includes the B-Side from the release, Nãga.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/1uAwtT8Qa3A[/youtube]
Matt explains a little bit of the process behind making The Empire Never Ended above.
Also, VIBE Magazine just premiered Matt’s version of French Montana and Waka Flocka Flame’s “Chopper Down“, one of his many secret weapon bootleg remixes, and it’s available for you to download here:
Geko Jones turns in a wicked mix for Societe Perrier, showcasing his unique take on Latin American, Caribbean, and electronic club music. On it, you get a blended combination of remixed Afro-Colombian folk styles that he’s known for, alongside Samba, Kuduro, Nigerian Pop, Dominican Tipico, Salsa, Dembow, Reggaeton and even Chicago Juke filtered through a UK Bass lens. You can almost imagine this as the part 2, or response from the American side of the ocean to the Africa Latina mix that he and I did last month.
It was a great full weekend of Dutty Artz performances and events. We started out partying hard at Glasslands for Matt Shadetek’s album release party, and ended up Sunday night all winding down over cheap drinks and stretching out our musical legs at Bushwick’s Bossa Nova Civic Club.
In support of Matt Shadetek’s The Empire Never Ended album, Dutty Artz is hitting the road! The tour kicks off in Brooklyn tonight with Matt’s album release party at Glasslands in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Details on individual shows below:
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCiEPsjRCi4&[/youtube]
I just wrote a long piece on the Somali-American Rap group Malitia Malimob over at Africa is a Country. I won’t write too much more here so you can head on over to check out the post, but you DA readers should know that Malitia Malimob will be playing alongside Matt and myself in Seattle at the Dutty Artz Showcase at The Crocodile on April 3rd. The show will be the first out of town stop for Matt on his tour to promote The Empire Never Ended.
This Saturday I’ll be djing between acts at The Apollo Theater’s Africa Now! Concert. Today, I had an interesting conversation with the Apollo’s director about the different African crowds in New York (last year they had Tiken Jah Fakoly to an enthusiastic crowd of Francophone African Harlemites), got a tour of the building, rubbed the tree of hope, and stood on the stage where every American black performer of significance in the last 100 years has stood. Besides the fact of my inclusion in the symbolic welcoming of a new generation of Africans into the folds of Black American history, touching the log (while the Apollo stagehand watched me unamused) is really all I needed.
Click through for all the info:
