Palaceer Lazaro of Shabazz Palaces, better known as Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler of Digable Planets
Portrait by Kyle Johnson
[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/Shabazz_Palaces-anechofromthehoststhatprofessinfinitum.mp3]
Shabazz Palaces “An Echo from the Hosts That Profess Infinitum” from the upcoming album Black Up on Sub Pop Records. Considering how heavy we’ve been listening to the first two EPs, and how hungry we are for new Shabazz, this is obviously some some great news! A glimpse of things to come “An Echo from the Hosts That Profess Infinitum,” densely textured poems and verses delivered with that signature measured cadence, swirling and chewed up synths and samples, ridiculous beats and more mbira solos! Looking forward to seeing Shabazz Palaces at SXSW this week. It will be very interesting, even if they’re only giving abbreviated performances!
While Carl Craig and Derrick May were preparing to headline the show at Manhattan’s very fancy District 36 night club last month – to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Planet E label, their fellow #313 legend/producer Stingray (real name Sherard Ingram) unleashed this monstrosity in the form of a new Urban Tribe mix on Fact Mag! We have been jamming to this for weeks, and it’s only getting fresher with each listen. Indeed this is one of the best in the long-running series (the King Midas Sound was my favorite last year.) In their words: this is serious, serious shit, and we recommend that you listen to it LOUD, ideally while driving round your city at night. Don’t have a car? Get one. Nuff said!
Over two years ago Jace and I started talking about doing an artist residency project in Morocco. Five years ago Jace started talking to Maga Bo about how boring clubs and festivals are and what sort of more in-depth work they could do, as musicians, as DJs, as curators, as artists, and as friends. Beyond Digital is finally here. The future vision is an international non-profit that curates artist residencies focused on interesting localizations of international tech. Cell phone banking, Berber Auto-Tune, Mesh Networks in Cairo, Pirate Distros…..
In June Jace, Bo, John Francis Peters, Carolyn Lazard and I will go to Marrakesh. More people will come to help with documentation and to complete their own projects- this is the group that’s locked in so far. Everyone has different priorities- but we’ll be working together on everything. Bo is going to record an album in a DIY studio we build. John, who is the photo editor at The Fader, is going to complete photo-essays and teach digital photography. Jace is going to follow Berber Auto-Tune to its originary-point and beyond. Carolyn is going to film documentary shorts. I’m going to try and keep everything organized while doing my own research on small studios and DIY digital culture.
We will also be putting on skill-shares and media production workshops. Everything we do will be documented and spread out from Morocco through museum shows, lectures, dvds, streaming and just about every other format you can imagine translating a month into. On the ground we’ll interface with Dar Al-Ma’mûn cultural center and Arab Media Lab.
We are working behind the scenes and non-disclosure agreements to lock down some serious institutional, grant, and corporate support. BUT- right now we need YOUR HELP. We need to send Jace and Bo to Morocco in the spring to do preliminary organization and networking to make sure everything goes smoothly in June. The main cost here will be travel expenses (transatlantic flights, local car rental, frugal accommodations & food, translator). Part of the money raised will be used to create a website. Anything over the amount we’re asking for will be re-invested in the June portion of the project. Project donors can receive curated CD’s from Moroccan markets, signed prints from John Francis- Peters, instruments, custom mix tapes, and if you feel like balling the fuck out, you can even pledge your way to Jace and Bo djing your dinner party, wedding, or day at the beach. Help us get there.
So this Thursday, January 27th, Chief Boima and yours truly, along some good friends from Garbon, Ivory Coast, and Madgascar will kick off a new party in the southeastern part of Manhattan Island (a neighborhood commonly referred to as the Lower East Side of Manhattan borough) at Gallery Bar (art gallery by day, and lounge/party space when its dark.) We’ll be joined by very special guest, founder of Akwaaba Music and DJ, BBrave. Facebook RSVP.
Going Africa and Beyond. Though I won’t be popping champagne like my Ghanaian brothers Ruff-N-Smooth (they have all the money and the honeys!) I will be playing their music.
Nettle is a band I started in Barcelona which knows nothing if not change. This spring we will release an album — a soundtrack to a remake of The Shining, set in Dubai — on a label I’ve admired for awhile. (details soon…)
This Thursday we’re playing a free show at Zebulon in Williamsburg. It’s an intimate space where you can come get close to our strange music. There will be a little bit of singing and 100% no guitars. We use old instruments made from trees (Lindsay’s violin, Brent’s cello, Bill’s bendir frames), and homebrew digital tools (Sufi plug-ins, #mudd) and if you like to listen then this is your night. Icing on the cake: Lamin Fofana will DJ throughout the evening.
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 quilomboshave 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.â€
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.â€
“And in terms of cartography,” Robson continued, “The baobob connects all the quilombos in the networkto 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 quilombosthat 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 Rodriguesin 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.
My regular 9 to 5 – Dubspot put together an interesting mini-doc featuring dub pioneer Scientist, who recently dropped an album on Pinch’s Tectonic imprint, talking about the origin and meaning of Jamaican dub and the role dub engineer in sound system culture and 1970s/80s Jamaican recording industry. The video also featured our very own DJ /rupture, composer/electronic musician Badawi, Deadly Dragon Sound System’s Ticklah, and music supervisor Barry Cole. If you’re interested in the topic, and why it’s way much more than an “happy accident” I highly recommend Michael Veal’s Dub: Soundscapes & Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae. Check out wayne&wax’s analysis and review of the book + pertinent excerpt below, a little more context –
All the talk of circuits, knobs, and switches can distract one from the fundamental reality that what these musicians were doing was synthesizing a new popular art form, creating a space where people could come together joyously despite the harshness that surrounded them. They created a music as roughly textured as the physical reality of the place, but with the power to transport their listeners to dancefloor nirvana as well as far reaches of the cultural and political imagination: Africa, outer space, inner space, nature, and political/economic liberation. Nevertheless, this book will focus on those knobs and the people who operated them, in order to develop an understanding of the role of sound technology, sound technicians, and sound aesthetics within the larger cultural and political realities of Jamaica in the 1970s. (13-14)
Whenever I land in a new city, I go into town with three intentions.
*Find out if there is a really old and amazing music from the region.
*Find out what the locals are listening to at the pubs and clubs so I have an idea what my set should be like.
*Find something really new listen to.
Language barriers usually don’t usually impede this. You might go in with an idea of what you’re looking for but the skilled know not to expect anything. Just find something amazing.
Walk the streets with eyes and ears peeled. Somewhere some 14 year old kid that cut class today, came home early and is blasting a local mixtape so loud the whole neighborhood can hear it. On the metro, someone is rockin out their mp3 player so loud you can hear their headphones above the racket of the moving train. A restaurant owner from a foreign country is simultaneously playing the most amazing CD of music from his country to make his establishment feel like home. Music is everywhere and when its good, its usually loud.
I was walking around Oberkampf in Paris with Marie Maurin from Jacasseries Radio an area where a lot of the college kids go to get wasted for cheap and we ended up checking out a bar called International. We were just walking over to see what was playing because there’s always some live act going on in there but what we found heard from outside was amazing. I’m talkin Konono no. 1 on acid.
The street outside was mobbed with with smokers. Gotta love that you can walk out the bar with your beer there. We pushed through the crowd to get closer to the music. I spent the next couple minutes trying to figure out if what was on the projection screen of the crowd downstairs was really happening or if it was a tape. There was a bearded man in a faded santa suit throwing popcorn at the crowd dancing downstairs. When I realized it was real time I told my friend I needed to push through and check out the basement.
Congopunq as a duo are a fairly odd pair of dudes to behold. Dr Kong is a towering 6’2 dude jumping up and down and pulling all manor of tricks out his suitcase. He is happy to make you crepes on stage or bang a kettle with a broomstick or stare at one person menacingly for the duration of a song. His performance interacts with the crowd and makes the show more participatory something I’ve been looking for in new acts to book.
Percussionist Cyril Atef performs in a custom made jock strap and sits behind the oddest drum kit I’ve ever seen assembled. A djimbe for a kick drum, a random collection of random shakers and percussive instruments gathered from around the globe all microphoned through a sample station to loop and stack beats. There is a roland or korg synth which also ran through the loop station and probably a couple pots and pans. He’ll stack a few loops to the beat add a synth line then proceed to rock out the amplified thumb piano for 15 minute jam sessions of improvised dancefloor mayhem.
This is them performing live in Haiti. Watch how the crowd goes from chanting for the local dancer Chi Chi Man to going totally mental for Congopunq’s jump up carnival vibes.
Cyril, is the long-time percussionist for Mathieu Chedid (french megastar with the oddest haircut in the biz) and he’s also founded another project called Bumcello. He has been living in France for some 20 years now. I sat down with him to talk about the new project at his apartment and from what I can tell he’s completely insane in the healthiest sense of the word. Here’s the video for their single from the Candy Goodness album released on Crammed Discs. This guy should be rocking at tropical parties around the globe right now and no one seems to know about him. Promoters and Booking Agents… get on your P’s and Qs and BBM’s and twitter… I’ll be playing with him tonight at the same bar I met him at International 5/7 Rue Moret. Planning on bringing him to NYC soon so please hit me up if you wanna host them at your parties.
I got about 45 minutes warning that Los Gaitero de San Jacinto were performing in Paris the other night. The band has been active since AT LEAST 1940 so there’s only so many chances we’re gonna get to see them. I was hanging with percussionist Cyril Atef when I got the text. We had been discussing the african origins of colombian music and instumentation while going through choons for almost an hour. Him tagging along was merely a variation on a meme. I still have to download the video and flicks of the show from my camera but lemme go ahead and do a separate post to tell you about the opening act we walked in on, a cumbia-fusion meets visual trio from Bogota called retroVISOR
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/11532341[/vimeo]
On rhythm section you have Camilo Giraldo Angel & Luis Alfonso Cruz laying down some free range samplodelic tripiness but it was the work of the VJ and concept director for the bands videos, Carmen Gil Vrolijk aka Carmen Electrik that really got me interested in their performance. Criminally brilliant with a side of smokin hot she’s chopping some well fruity slices of video mango that illustrate the flavor of these songs amazingly
she has degree in plastics
In the above tune, Chicha! she collaborated with a EstefanÃa Barreto & Juan Camilo Quiñones to create an 8 bit video that deals with native inhabitants being pushed out of their lands by big industry, a problem Colombia still faces today particularly with the damage being done from unearthing gold which releases mercury, cyanide and arsenic into the soil and water table. I’m waiting for my copy of their retroVISOR VJ Sessions DVD while doing my homework on what else she’s up to and trying to convince her to come out and session with me when I play in Bogota again
So I’ve been thinking a lot about cellphones lately. Portland’s Gulls just did an edit version of one of the tracks from ‘Music From Saharan Cellphones’ which I’ll be playing on the radio show tonight. Along with a Rita Indiana exclusive, new Stuff From Europe, tribal guarachero, superdeep cumbia rebajada, and, as always, more.
More is my favorite type of music, actually. Then comes 128kbps, one of my favorite musical genres. We are releasing a compilation called New York Tropical in a few weeks. Lots of new material by myself + Matt Shadetek, Lido Pimienta, DJ Orion, Kingdom remixing Rita Indiana, and more! You can download the entire album as ringtones (iPhone, etc) right now.
moral of the story: tune in to Mudd Up!Wfmu.org 91.1fm nyc, 7-8pm TONITE.
In ‘Music From Saharan Cellphones’ the original tune is labeled ‘Niger – Autotune’. Chris from Sahelsounds has found out a bit more: the band is called Emsitka. They are indeed from Niger but live in Nigeria.
We are all curators and everyone gets to hang/post their 15 pieces. Interviewing Leeor Brown last week about his insider take on the world of P(A&)R we talked about how to tell stories through and across digital networks (HIS TELL ALL INTERVIEW IE #REALTALK VOL.! IS COM1NG NEXT WEEK). In a media environment where the biggest players are only a few re-tweets away we still actively police our digital social life with decorum held over from meat-space. Getting someones email address might be easy- but sending a message and opening dialogue are not the same thing. How many release announcements fall on deaf gmail accounts? I remember reading a few years ago that on A Small World (ie facebook for rich people) a user was banned for friend requesting Paris Hilton because he didn’t have a legitimate claim to be a part of her social network. Annoying promo emails don’t usually provoke active shunning, they just got ignored. It was refreshing yesterday, then, to see tucked away alongside “Artists On Tour! Interviews, guest list and more available!” and “What is a Pixelated Lazer Face Bass Monster?” a really honest no BS hyperbole promo email of sorts. It read:
“Greetings and much respect…thought you folks (certainly DJ/Rupture) would get a kick out of this recent essay: http://bit.ly/aRU34F
Keep up the fabulous work,
LC-S”
I AM VERY HAPPY I CLICKED THIS LINK. READ A SHORT EXCERPT ON THIS AMAZING ESSAY BELLOW AND THE REST HERE.
KOFI CAN HAZ SCAM
<EXCERPT> “…my people simply told him to call me home with the power of his ‘Invisible Missive Magnetic Juju’ which could bring a lost person back to home from an unknown place, how far it may be, with or without the will of the lost person. So having paid him his workmanship in advance, then he started to send the juju to me at night which was changing my mind or thought every time to go home.”
-Amos Tutuola, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
It’s fascinating to imagine how these blank-screened cadaverous wholes and frayed bits and pieces have all gotten here. There’s so much black glass that it is like the landscape of an indecisive volcano. These used computers have been donated by Western charity organizations and faith-based NGOs and given the Nigerian tendency to use things even beyond their given function or recognizability, their presence here is only temporary. A great many were brought from Ghana or up from South Africa while a steady stream arrived from China even before that country began its obsessive courting of West and Central Africa. But the vast majority of these machines, parts and components have been shipped by or brought in by enterprising Nigerians who since the late 1980s have known that what would mark this generation of West Africans more than blight, violence or corruption was a hunger for Web-based connectivity, that narcotic rush of shared information.
With almost no formal education whatsoever, many would learn how to rig, rewire, rebuild and master the essentials of computing in these glorified junkyards. They learned from ragged men with soldering irons in their pockets that pushed wheelbarrows filled with screens, wires and keyboards, with the wild-eyed look of juju men drunk on that vile moonshine called ogogoro.
</EXCERPT>
Louis Chude-Sokei is a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle- which means I used to sit endlessly in the skyspace 5 minutes away from the classrooms where he was obviously dropping serious knowledge. There are many powerful registers that he moves through in this essay- and when it is so easy to find cringe-inducing writing about poor countries- especially where tech and development are concerned- we must recognize the beautiful moment of being alerted to such powerful well written analysis (with bonus points for Tom “OH MY GOD I GET IT” Friedman pop-shots). Here’s hoping that when I write Prof. Chude-Sokei back asking him to contribute to DA he responds.
Discussion question: Can we learn from 419 Yahoozzzee boys about telling stories on the internet and building relationships out of digital ether? IE HOW TO MAKE $OLID ALL THAT IS MELTED BITS IN THE CLOUDY AIR . It’s time to start looking at alternative economies and networks and re-purposing/learning from their success. If such limited bandwidth can translate into this much cash and we arnt doing shit with our TI connections then it is time to employ a new model.
ADDENDUM. 1. : a thing added : DIRECT FROM THE COMMENTS BELOW AND OUR GENEROUS FRIEND MR CRUCIAL AKA TIMEBLIND IN CASE UR IN A RUSH AND CANT BE BOTHERED TO CLICK TO SEE THE COMMENTS
Neofuturism and the Economy of Affect, a Noise Primer for Nueva York.
Or, Why Are We Working For Free?
I meant to say: 11 years ago I did this Welmo remix and someone just took the time to upload it to YouTube along with a pic of kids sniffing glue. Or inhaling goldfish. The song is Pre-Tropical anti-cop anti-gunman Spanish language rapping with a piano, and wikipedia tells me that I can add proto-breakcore or salsa-edits to the list. I was living in the future back then; I still am. The future is incredibly humid, even in October. Not much works here, including me. The distractions are draining but fabulous, even better than the sunsets in White Noise. I think the guy who posted my song is Polish. I love you all just not evenly. Remind me to sell a version of 4’33 on iTunes.
Before, the advertisers had to guess; now, with all the information we provide with keyword searches, on social networks, and in emails, advertising can be more precise. On top of that, the “content†of social networks, email, search engines, blogs—it somehow magically produces itself, that is to say the users produce it, that is to say it’s free. The extension of advertising to the domain of private chatter undermines the competitiveness of anything that costs more than private chatter to produce. Marx blamed the below-subsistence wages of the proletariat on the reserve army of labor; the below-subsistence revenues of the Times can be blamed on the reserve army of the social networks. . . Today we Google ourselves to see what the world knows about us; tomorrow we’ll just watch the ads.
En ce temps Ninja Tune avait 20 ans
Spi a la crève d l’hiver. GreenDog le palu des tropiques. Barboza crie au loin.
Ces productions datent de 2003 Ã 2009
