This Friday Wayne Marshall aka DJ Wanye & Wax and I will be holding it down at Bembe in South Williamsburg Brooklyn. It’s my great pleasure to be able to play with Wayne in New York after he brought me up to Boston for so many years. Brooklyn Shanti will be holding down the toasting duties.
It’s also my birthday at midnight so get your marathon shoes out, and get there early!
Sonic preview for your enjoyment:
I’m headed off to Boston into a snowstorm that may leave me stranded, but I have the pleasure to be participating in two very exciting events this weekend, making it well worth the travel madness.
This Saturday I’ll be playing a very special show with Zs as part of the Ecstatic Music Festival here in NYC’s lovely sounding Merkin Concert Hall. (I recorded the twin pianos on my upcoming album, The Julius Eastman Memory Depot, at the Merkin.) Saturday will open with 2 half-hour solo sets from the Zs & I. Then — after an intermission! — comes an hourlong collaborative piece. This is where thing’ll get really interesting. Some notes from our brainstorm/plotting session:
We at iBomba are so excited to kick off 2013 this Monday, January 14th with the dope sisters from D.C – Maracuyeah! DJ Bent recently wrote a dutty blogpost about G-Flux’s new tune, Distrito Cósmico , reppin’ the D.C. scene and Maracuyeah’s critical role in uniting people through music and celebrating immigrant cultures in the capital.
If it hasn’t become extraordinarily transparent by now, I am an organizer. And on occasion, I like nothing more than to spin tunes for incredible people raising money for much needed causes.
Today , I’m spinning for the New York State Youth Leadership Council’s (NYSYLC) end of year party, which is raising scholarship funds for undocumented youth to be able to afford college. NYSYLC is an undocumented youth-led organization in New York City that empowers immigrant youth to challenge the broken immigration system through leadership development, grassroots organizing, educational advancement, and is also a safe space for self-expression.
If you are in the boroughs for the holidays, come get your post-Christmas, Mayan celebration of the New Year on with us. Immigrant communities are looking towards 2013 for big changes, with a real possibility of immigration reform. Why not start mobilizing with a dance party?
Location: Danny Screams Studios, 220 Leonard St
Cover: $10 (all proceeds go to NYSYLC’s scholarship fund)
Closest trains: L at Lorimer; G at Metropolitan
Doors open 8pm; Happy Hour before 10pm, goes til 2amÂ
For the past two summers I’ve traveled to Detroit for the Allied Media Conference, now coming up on its 15th year. This incredible happening pulls together a phenomenal array of folks from networks across the country (and a few internationally) working on technology, media, community organizing, art, music, and more. Several of my compañeras in DC have been going for much longer and established deep roots with the conference and Detroit – roots I have been happy to slip into. There are so many amazing things about the Allied Media Conference that it is hard to explain, but I’ll make an effort to do so, briefly.
*co-written by Boima Tucker and Thanu Yakupitiyage
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Photos in this series were taken by Sabelo Narasimhan (daytime photos) and Neha Gautam (evening photos).
On September 18th, 2012, Dutty Artz, Beyond Digital, La Casita Comunal de Sunset Park, La Union, CAAAV-NY, and the Arab American Association of New York presented the first edition of Beyond the Block at Rainbow Playground in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. Beyond the Block was a day-long music, arts, and community festival that took place in the crossroads between several major immigrant communities in New York. We had performances and participants from various communities in the South Brooklyn area, and invited musicians, artists, and organizers from outside the neighborhood in order to connect them. As we attempt to improve upon our efforts with future incarnations, we present the story of this festival with the hope that it can serve as an example of the merging of arts activism In-Real-Life with the ideals of a ‘globalized society’.
I have recently returned from a trip around Europe, where I played a few gigs, and attended Womex and the Impakt! Festival. Check out my tour mix, and an interview and mix I did for Africanhiphop.com’s radio show in Amsterdam’s Red Light District.
This week I’m back in New York, and I’m not the only one returning. New York is in for a big week showcasing some of Africa’s most internationally popular genres. Read on for a little round up of fun upcoming shows.
[originally posted at Mudd Up]
This Thursday, November 29th, I’m presenting SUFI PLUG INS at a special session of Wayne Marshall’s Harvard course on ‘Technomusicology‘. Taking this unusual sound-software-art project to Harvard University! Amazing – thanks to Wayne for the invitation.
I expect we’ll cover a lot of ground, from Morocco music research stories to interface politix to considerations of software-as-art and the relationship between non-western knowledge systems & creative expression in our digital era.
The two-hour afternoon event is free & open to the public, so come along and let your Boston/Cambridge art-sound-tech friends know. Check out Wayne’s post for background on the class, and head here to read more about (& download, for free!) Sufi Plug Ins.
[screenshot: Sufi Plug Ins Bayati synthesizer]
Music 190r: Technomusicology presents… SUFI PLUG INS a conversation with Jace Clayton (DJ /Rupture) Arts @ 29 Garden (corner of Garden and Chauncy Streets) Harvard University Thurs, Nov 29, 3-5 pm.
[youtube width=”525″ height=”360″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESj164wKc6I[/youtube]
Super excited about this new event, BomBeat, that I am launching with my crew Cumba Mela, and Nickodemus from Turntables on the Hudson. Its all going down this Saturday, November 24th at Le Poisson Rouge, in Manhattan. Expect to hear a wide range of global bass music: cumbia, dancehall, kuduro, house, moombahton, reggaeton….
We have Jeremy Sole coming from LA, repping KCRW, TheLift, and Afro Funke.
We are going to try our best to get a free EP for ever event. Be sure to check out the first one bellow!
Last week me and Atropolis played at the launch party for the new Dub Stuy record label and their home built reggae sound system. Â Playing on this system was really really fun. Â Physical sound vibrations, great bass and a great vibe. Big shoutout to the Dub Stuy team for having the vision to put this together. Â We need more people thinking big like this in our underground scene in Brooklyn.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/51964571[/vimeo]
[screenshot from Sufi Plug Ins’ clapping drum machine, PALMAS]
This Thursday evening, Bill Bowen & I will present SUFI PLUG INs at Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee’s Advanced Ableton Users meetup in Manhattan. Free with RSVP, live streaming. 7:30-10pm.
& on Friday Lamin Fofana and I are heading up to perform at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, where will be joined by DJ Rizzla for a night of ‘DJs on the Harbor’, throwing down at their lovely waterfront space. Come through!
This Friday, come to Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art to dance to DJs /Rupture, Lamin Fofana, and Rizzla. It’s the closing party of this summer’s DJs On The Harbor series at their beautiful waterfront location, and the music will be gooooooooooooood.
Dear Canada, this Sunday’s free lakeside event in Toronto looks to be truly epic. All sorts of multimedia installations & interventions, a pool & lake to dip in, and music provided by friends Venus X, Maga Bo, Poirier, Dos Mundos, and myself. See you there! FIRE ON THE WATER.
Here’s a thoughtful interview with organizers Christie & Marcus, and a chat I did with Toronto’s Now magazine.
