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[youtube width=”525″ height=”393″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27fQcatpWUg[/youtube]
Recent news report on Al Jazeera

It has been quite disheartening watching the post-election crisis in Cote d’Ivoire turn from yet another power struggle among African politicians to very dangerous and explosive situation. I’m watching this from a room in Brooklyn, a couch in Northern Virginia; seeing yet another African country on the brink of civil war after its leader refuses to step down gracefully following an election. Mind you, Ivory Coast is still healing and rebuilding from a recent civil war.

In late November, President Laurent Gbagbo, who has ruled the Ivory Coast for the past ten years, lost to opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara in the presidential elections, elections which Gbagbo has already postponed five times in the last six years, meaning polls taking place in 2010 should have happened in 2005! Gbagbo, backed by the national army and security forces/hired youths – “young patriots”/militias refuses to concede and hand over power to Alassane Ouattara, who is recognized as the clear winner by regional body ECOWAS, the African Union, the United Nations and most countries. Ouattara also has the support of former rebel forces (fighters from the civil war still armed and active!)

At the moment, tensions are high. The situation gets awful, more dire with each news report. With more than 170 people reported killed in the post election violence, thousands are fleeing into neighboring countries – with most people seeking refuge in Liberia and Guinea. ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) initially talked about armed intervention using its military wing ECOMOG (which was instrumental in bringing peace to Liberia and Sierra Leone albeit criticisms of abuse and property theft during the civil wars in those countries) but later open the door for more discussions with Gbagbo. In the Ivorien capital, Abidjan, Gbagbo’s security forces/militias are conducting raids, and killing dozens of Ouattara’s supporters, and also threatening to invade the UN-protected hotel in which Ouattara and his ministers are staying/trying to conduct a state business.

International pressure on Gbagbo is failing and the mediation/action from ECOWAS is providing immediate results. We hope for a peaceful settlement, but some sort of resolution must be reached soon so the situation doesn’t escalate. Something radical has to happen to turn this situation around.

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[youtube width=”525″ height=”393″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMjuzMcDeYI&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]
Streets of Abijan – CIAfrica’s Greendog “Afristepdub“

I’ve never been to Ivory Coast (not completely true, because my mother went to Abidjan several times when she was pregnant with me) and I don’t speak or understand french (well, I resisted learning another Euporean language through my high school and college years.) I mentioned these things because I want to say I don’t completely understand CIAfrica’s lyrics and the topics raised in their songs. If you don’t know, CIAfrica is a militant, pan-Africanist rap/reggae/bass music collective based in Abidjan. The collective came of age during the turbulent years of the Gbagbo administration, marked by civil and military unrest. According to the song descriptions/summaries of the tracks on their album on Dutty Artz, CIAfrica makes defiant music, speaks out against fraudulent, hoggish leaders who are determined to stay in power no matter how much blood is spilled, against corruption and brutalization. They are making music in this currently political chaos, and are hustling and trying to visit Europe and North America in 2011. Listen to the track “Negro Politicien” –

Barboza “Negro Politicien” (DJ rupture Presents CIAfrica) by Dutty Artz

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[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/4-The_Throning.mp3]

Hype Williams – The Throning

To cure post-holiday blues, smoke Christmas trees or listen to the new album from Hype Williams, Find Out What Happens When People Stop Being Polite, And Start Getting Reel on repeat – or just do both to further enhance that collapsing feeling as you watch people (including hard working class people) waste money and resources. Like a bouquet of xmas flowers on fire, the album is an absolute mess; a slow-burning, swirling, hallucinatory fantasy, a wicked affair involving Ms. Helen Folasade Adu.

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cross-posted to Mudd Up!

Check the latest issue of BOMB magazine for an in-depth interview with Kevin Martin AKA The Bug. BOMB has just upped an excerpt & audio clip. Here’s an excerpt of the excerpt:

Jace Clayton: You told me this anecdote: you were at a dub night in London; it was lit by one lightbulb. That’s how I remember you describing it—

The Bug: Oh, yeah. That was again a very pivotal moment for me. Just after I moved to London I went to see Iration Steppas and The Disciples do a “sound clash” together. I didn’t know what the hell to expect. It was at a warehouse in the East End. Literally, there was a sound system on either side of a quite small room with a lightbulb hanging above each, no stage, the audience trapped in the middle, and this head-shredding volume and over-the-top psychedelia. Every mix that each producer was playing would get more and more out-there. At first you would think, Oh, this is a nice reggae tune, and by the end you’d be thinking, Holy shit, this is electro-acoustic madness! People were looking stoned, shell-shocked, or both by what was hitting them. (laughter) It almost altered my internal DNA and how I appreciated music. Before I moved to London, I’d seen a very early Swans show and had realized just how much I loved physical impact in sound.


Photo by Niall O’Brien. Courtesy of Ninja Tune.

JC Funny, every time we’ve played together I’ve always tried to leave the building when you were sound checking. It’s massive volume and you take it so seriously; oftentimes if the sound guy is not up to speed, you’ll let him have it. Can you talk about the importance of getting the sound you want in a live situation?

TB Boy, I guess I’ve got a bad reputation for being a bit finicky and demanding. Once you’ve had the experience of what music can be like, if you are a perfectionist and obsessive (like I realize I’ve become), you don’t want to compromise. I don’t follow the idea of making any type of compromise in my life, and definitely not in my music: music is my life. If you’re happy to shut up and let someone water down what you want, then you really shouldn’t be making music. It’s not important enough to you, you know? I believe in a hard-core mentality. Any art should be a pure reflection of the intention of the person making it, and any degree of compromise along the way is just going to lessen the impact of what that person is trying to do. As far as I’m concerned, the physicality of sound is crucial; it takes you beyond intellectual discourse, to very primal, psychological confrontations. I like what it can do to you: it can be seductive, it can be sexy, it can be aggressive, it can fuck you up, it can flatten you, it can wake you up. Intense musical experiences have changed how I live my life, full stop. To some people this may sound a bit over-the-top. My passion is music, and that is reflected in how I approach the live arena. Now, increasingly, when record sales are shrinking, it’s important to leave a statement, to walk away having done something memorable. Volume in itself isn’t memorable; anyone can turn the volume up to 12 and crush someone with it. That’s not impressive. It’s the constructions within the music that are important.

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(partial synthesis of posts on Pirate Antropologies)

Just over a week ago, as I settled onto a couch in MC Doca’s living room, a Globo News reporter announced that funk MCs had been sent to prison for apologizing crime. A YouTube video of MC Ticão and MC Frank singing about how FB, the dono (owner) of the recently police-invaded Morro de Alemão was hiding out in rival faction Rocinha. The report next showed an armed blond police woman–with heavy makeup and perfect hair–shouting and banging on an apartment door. The camera revealed two shirtless, tattooed MCs, Frank and Ticão, who are brothers, blinking away sleep. Cut to a table with a watch, a ring, and a few chains. “The police encountered various gold chains” the reporter intoned. Tremendously successful MCs with gold chains?!? How incriminating!

MC Smith, MC Max, and MC Didô had also been imprisoned. They also lived in the two communities recently occupied by the police: Morro de Alemão and Villa Cruzeiro. The deputy accused the MCs of using the Internet to share music making “apologizing” crime and criminals, forming a gang (with the other MCs), associating with traffickers, and doing “marketing” (yes, she used the English word) for drugs and criminal factions.

Next the report announced that MC Galo of Rocinha had been arrested in a traffic blitz in Leblon. He had an arrest warrant for marijuana possession from 1998 and for singing “proibidão” (“very prohibited” music). The police evidence? A YouTube video of Galo singing in Leandro HBL’s and Diplo’s Favela on Blast. None of the press using the clips contacted Leandro to ask permission. And whenever Leandro has used Globo’s footage, he’s had to pay. A lot.

The video, which Globo used, is Galo’s top hit on YouTube.  The clip, they chose, compares the hard life of the MC to the hard life of a drug-seller. It’s not, even “proibidão.” So, why did Globo weave Galo–who had been arrested a day earlier–into the story? Perhaps to build sentiment against Rocinha, a community speculated as a target for police invasion and “pacification.”

Predictably, none of the reports look at the roots of “forbidden” funk–which refer to drugs, violence, and criminal factions. A common story among funkeiros goes that in the mid-nineties when the various judges prohibited bailes funk in clubs, typically in working class suburbs, the parties and the music moved into favelas. Farther away from police repression, some bailes began to be financed by criminal factions. At the same time funk’s base in Miami Bass & freestyle evolved into the Candomblé- and samba-influenced tamborzão beat.

I visited the MCs in prison yesterday along with MC Leonardo, the president of APAFUNK, and DJ Marlboro, who’s credited with recording the first “funk carioca” album in 1989. We met with the MCs in a classroom above the underground prison. After one guard allowed us to enter with cameras and voice recorders,  another returned to confiscate the camera and voice recorder of two human rights reporters. I hid my point-and-shoot camera. Until the guard came back shouting, “The meeting is over! Stop singing. No cameras!”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEZtdKteKm0[/youtube]

When asked if he ever expected to be jailed for his songs, MC Smith responded, “This is a political game that’s happening in Brazil now, so yes…. Ivete Sangalo lives in Bahia. And what’s that? Carnaval, carnaval ‘fora da epoca’ [out-of-season, all the time] and she sings about what happens. And I live in a community that was taken over by the state… one of the most dangerous in the world. And I live in a community with a high risk of violence, a criminal base, high rates of prostitution. And therefore I’ll sing what I live. And what I think. This is freedom of expression. Not only me, but for Max, Ticão, Frank, Didô.”

When will the criminalization of funk carioca stop? People point out how City of God is “proibidão” that was Oscar-nominated. Yet, funk suffers prejudice unlike high-class art. After the police invaded Vila Cruzeiro and Morro de Alemão and failed to capture “bandits,” it seems that they chose easier targets: MCs with “proibidão” videos on YouTube.
[audio:https://duttyartz.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Funk-Se-Quem-Quiser.mp3]
MC Galo-Funk-Se Quem Quiser (words MC Dolores)
[audio:https://duttyartz.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Aqui-o-Bagulho-é-Doido-2.mp3]
MC Smith e MAG- Aqui o Bagulho é Doido

"ABC of Citizen Jail: Graduating Citizens"
"Suffering and Smiling"

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navidadeneltropico2

[Navidad en el Tropico: Los Trovadores de Puerto Rico album cover]

first – next Monday’s radio show will be a two-hour special! so tune in at 6pm EST to hear special guest Marcus Boon discuss his latest book, In Praise of Copying. As he says: “Aside from talking about World Music 2.0, the global rise of Autotune, and how to live in a world of copies without originals, I’m going to play some music: expect Kuduro, Logobi, Saharan psychedelia, Ramadanman as well as some clips from other folks’ mixes and some archival hauntings.”

second – ELECTROACOUSTIC CAROLS was the title of last week’s radio show.
In the end I only played 1 or 2 villancicos, but it was a nice hour nonetheless, lots of deep flamenco & oud/vocal pieces:

tracklist: (more…)

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cross-posted on Mudd Up!

One of the most interesting books I read this year was Marcus Boon‘s In Praise of Copying (free PDF download). It’s a philosophically broad consideration of copying, informed by Buddhism – which has long considered essencelessness — and a really good soundtrack. Published on Harvard University press, it gives me hope for akademic writing: Boon’s prose is lucid and approachable, whether discussing “Louis Vuitton” bags or Taoist views on the ecology of copying…

Here’s an excerpt. After describing a breakdance battle between two dancers with highly divergent styles, Boon writes:

Of course ‘style,’ including hip-hop style, has long been integrated into the capitalist marketplace — and there could be no capitalist market at all without very particular organizations of appropriations of copia abundance. But to see style, and for that matter ‘copying,’ as mere epiphenomena of capitalist production is to invert things, and to radically underestimate the power of these forces. The power of hip-hop, and the five elements, which are five ‘styles’ of being in the world, constitute five types of magic, if you like — five ways of transforming things, and therefore five ways of changing what gets called a ‘person’ and what gets called a ‘world.’ I would like to think, though I can’t prove it, that folk cultures have always had this power, have always discovered it for themselves, insofar as folk cultures are always cultures to whom nothing belongs, from whom everything is taken.

The New Yorker described the book as: “. . .not an investigation of the ethical dilemmas of copying but a Gertrude Stein-like affirmation of the mimesis that happens everywhere and everyday. Boon sees copying as fundamental to existence, part of ‘how the universe functions and manifests.’ . . . Boon encourages us to rethink terms like ‘subject,’ ‘object,’ ‘different,’ and ‘the other,’ in order to “account for our fear of and fascination with copying.”

Marcus Boon has a great radio voice and will join me on WFMU 91.1 FM NYC next Monday, December 27th, 6-8pm, to discuss In Praise of Copying and share some music!

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Radio tonight! We’ll have some seasonal cheer in the form of aguinaldos y villancicos, some exclusive cumbia jams from Capitol K, a bit of Enrique Morente (R.I.P. – post coming soon!) and Leafcutter John — Over the weekend I realized that listening to good flamenco is strangely analogous to listening to good electroacoustic music – if you surrender, each can take you so deep…

And I nearly forgot to post up the stream from last Monday’s show:

Subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast if you prefer downloadable versions, issued a week after FM broadcast: , Mudd Up! RSS. Also useful: WFMU’s free iPhone app

tracklist:

The Ex Huriyet Turn
Kumbia Queers Celosa La Gran Estafa del Tropipunk
Cauto vs Caroline Bergvall Dante / version
Forest Swords Rattling Cage Rattling Cage / Hjurt
The Ex Theme from Konono Turn
Baby Huey Hard Times The Baby Huey Story
Tabu Ley Rochereau Exil-Ley The Voice of Lightness vol. 2
Foster Manganyi Moya Wanga Ndzi Teke Reindzo no. 1
Cabo Snoop Windeck Bluetooth
Los Askis Poco A Poco (DJ Luiggi Chosica 2010)
Grupo Saya Canita Canaveral
Shigeto Relentless Drag Full Circle
Natalie Storm Nuh Teki Bak Songs 2 Fuck & Fight 2
Natalie Storm Put a Spell On You
Natalie Storm Wuk Mi Nani Songs 2 Fuck & Fight 2
Peter Broderick Awaken/Panic/Restraint Music For Contemporary Dance
Diana Navarro Separaos Camino Verde rest in peace Enrique Morente
Peter Broderick Part 6: Electroconvulsive Shock Music For Contemporary Dance

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This week Google unveiled Ngrams, “a mammoth database culled from nearly 5.2 million digitized books available to the public for free downloads and online searches, opening a new landscape of possibilities for research and education in the humanities.” Which is the long view writ large.

Here in Brooklyn, Tahir Hemphill is cooking up something much more immediate.

wordcount

Tahir & I were resident artists at Eyebeam together, where he began constructing Hip-Hop Word Count, a crazily smart rap-lyric-geomapping datacrunch project which lets you do stuff like, say, locate the first mention of ‘champagne’ and watch it migrate across the boroughs and peak across the years. Tahir’s doing a Kickstarter to continue developing the “searchable ethnographic database built from the lyrics of over 40,000 Hip-Hop songs from 1979 to present day.”

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TC reached into the roots of one plants on the table. “It’s a baobob,” he told me, “My daughter brought me some seeds from Africa. This tree is also the symbol of Rede Mocambo.” In Portuguese “rede” means network, and “mocambo” is the traditional, thatch building of quilombos, maroon communities of escaped slaves in Brazil. Quilombos continue to this day. TC heads Casa Tainã, a cultural center and initiator of the Rede, in a “modern quilombo” on the periphery of a small city in the interior of São Paulo.  TC told me that he plants a Baobob sapling in each “quilombo” which is part of Rede Mocambo.

The project started when Casa Tainã gained partnership with state-backed Digital Inclusion programs with access to technological resources and computers, and began to set up Internet telecenters in quilombos in the Southeast of Brazil. From these social, knowledge, and material exchanges, a “Quilombo Network” began to take root. Now the Rede extends through almost all the Brazilian states (even though not all quilombos have Internet yet because some don’t have electricity).

How do you get computers to the projects? I asked. “With old computers we practice ‘meta-recycling,’ transforming the computers to give them a new life” Robson, also of Casa Tainã told me. In the quilombos they show them how to practice metarecyling, to install free software, to access the Internet, and to make a video or to record a song. And “the quilombo production will then circulate on the ‘rede,’ the Internet.”

TC said that “this network was created as a tool to fight for and ensure our rights. Communication in a network generates greater understanding of quilombo and black struggles. We have to use the new open technologies to construct with them.”

Robson added that the Rede’s goal is also “to discuss the right to land, the right to religion, the right to culture, not hierarchical culture, but horizontal…. And the goal of the network is to think of a new cartography of African identity.”

“And in terms of cartography,” Robson continued, “The baobob connects all the quilombos in the network to Africa. It’s a remembrance of who they were before slavery, when we were kings and queens.”

TC told me that he also brings seeds from each of the quilombos that he visits to plant back to Casa Tainã and in other quilombos in the network. He had just returned from a regional Rede Mocambo Encounter in Northeastern Brazil. Cacao pods from Quilombo João Rodrigues in Bahia were drying in the sun.

“Palmares was destroyed by cannons. Now the big cannon is the media. But with decentralization of the means of communication and with new open technologies, we also have cannons. Imagine if Palmares had had the Internet. We have a tool for revolution,” TC.

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Dre is one of Sharon’s (endless) nieces and nephews calling “Auntie Sharoooon” through the Solid office. He also runs Shockwave Inernational. They just dropped breaking point Vol. 3. I was driving with Timberlee to the re-opening of Kartel’s nightclub The Building last night and she kept pulling up on Mavado’s “Stullesha” which I hadn’t heard before and serves as a follow-up of sorts to long distance anthem “Stulla” – it’s on Stephen’s “Winnings Riddim” which is just perfect. I was trying to remember the name of the tune this morning when Dre linked me on FB to the DL of Breaking Point- BOOM. Not everything’s perfect though and I’m guessing most people will get annoyed at the break in mix that comes about two thirds through the mix. In my imaginary Jamaica, sessions never went off to Rhihanna or Nelly. But thats the real world music- so if you can bare through another teach me how to Dougie lesson- grab the untracked version. If you want to do some selective editing grab the tracked version.

Flexxx- “Stepping Razor”

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/flexxx-stepping_razor.mp3]

Mavado – “Stullesha”

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/mavado-stullesha.mp3]

grab the whole riddim pack c/o DZ HERE.  Below are a few photos from a Baby Cham, Bounty Killer, Tanto Blacks show in Portmore last Friday.

family watching Bounty in Portmore

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Matt Shadetek returns to “minimalist grime principles” this week with the killer Dutty House EP! Check out the addictive “Wonton Garden” riddim (which refused to die and here in its official/proper release) + the recent refix of Blak Ryno’s “Nuh Tek Talk” on Eddie Stats’ essential weekly roundup of heaters Ghetto Palms.

Blak Ryno – Nuh Tek Talk (Matt Shadetek Dutty House Rmx) by mattshadetek

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[youtube width=”525″ height=”393″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5scYXIvAr7w[/youtube]

…I catch a fever around the disbelievers
In a world of silhouettes, non can see your eyes.

Can’t find the meaning in all this late night scheming…

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So there’s another entry to add to the post-Screw canon: Expressway Yo-Yo Dietin. And, despite his wildly different sound (which sets him apart from the more accessible witch-house/drag scene and closer to the toxic sound of Houston’s small but sturdy noise scene), the methodology isn’t the wildest departure from DJ Screw’s lazy foray into the avant-garde. I may be wrong here but, advanced digital fuckery and ripped rap vocals aside, the thread that holds Expressway Yo-Yo Dietin’s Bubblethug together seems to be a simple delay. It actually sounds quite a bit like the default setting on Ableton’s Simple Delay effect, a nifty trick that gives rhythmic ‘umph’ to a lot of the weird excursions into various noise and drone territories that you’ll find on the album. So the results end up sounding like a Boredoms, Screw, Vibracathedral Orchestra and Sunroof! fan ingesting something nasty with 12 other people in an empty building of the warehouse district of your nearest industrial graveyard. The following track is my personal favorite, a dark dirge with nearly intelligible vocals that gains power from the track sequencing when listened to as part of the album’s messy whole.

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/05 Bubblethug 5.mp3]
Expressway Yo Yo Dietin’ – Bubblethug 5