Friday, August 7, 2009

Butts and Accordians



I'm happy to see funana filtering onto everyones radars, it almost makes up for your non-zouk loving-ness, you heartless souls. Funana featured recently on Uproot Andy's new mix and got a full out assortment by Radioclit. It makes sense, as cumbia surprised me in its popularity, introducing err 'folkier' sounds to a fast beat loving scene. So funana with its hyper accordians seems a natural "new genre" to embrace, opened up as well by new connections made to the lusosphere with funana's popularity in Angola & Senegal.



Whats cool is that the hipster pattern is moving pretty much in line with diaspora intrests. At least in the francophone world bloggery, ive seen increasing intrest and mention of funana, from messageboards to kaysha. My guess This is due as well to lusosphere love and kuduru crossing borders, but probably more so from its proximity in sound and dance to zouks enourmous global popularity.



It all begins to feel full circle, as funana looks and feels like one of the folkier genres embraced so far. Of course, our understanding of folk should have been one of the ways we imagine these genres, as wayne raises so elequently here. What is global ghettotech is also folk music, although its bleeps and beats distracted me. I certainly don't know enough about funk carioca to make a point there. I'm not sure how it applies to my understanding of zouk or coupe-decale, genres so multi-country and globally consumed I'm less inclined to see it as folk, although I'm sure one could make an argument. I'm curious if i'm more inclined to see local-er genres like funana or mbalax as folk b/c of how they sound and feel to me vs. how they function.



So full circles. What seemed to me a grab for globalized tech as hipsters got bored of freakfolk, or white-ish underground rap, or whatever y'all listened to, seems more nuanced, like ears are bigger now after hipster mad global dashes. from freak folk to freak folk. cept this time its happier. cuz its the recession. and we need butts and accordians.



ps. can we discuss packaging like this at some point?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

DJ UMB here from Generation Bass.

Nice work here, good to exercise the brain :-)

Dave Quam said...

Great blog, will be checking this regularly

Canaille said...

Hi Rachel, wow, you made me stress with your expectatives... Well, hope they are not too high, but beeing in Colombia its so rare to hear conscious reggaeton that even 5-6 originals tracks make the mix something special. There will be some funny things anyway...
(The mix should be done at the begining of september.)

RevitaDerm Wrinkle Cream said...

Well, hope they are not too high, but beeing in Colombia its so rare to hear conscious reggaeton that even 5-6 originals tracks make the mix something special.