The Same Question - Lady Gaga / Nicki Minaj "feel pre-judged"

Nicki's getting signed, Gaga's dealing with crazy rumors and I'm really struck by these two women, younger than me and forced to answer these questions regarding their work & their bodies...



Gaga (starts at :50) - Calls the interviewer out on his "concerns" about how her sexuality 'distracts/detracts/etc' arent concerns (ie shes already made it) for her but concerns that she *should* be worried about her loose image. makes a point about whose work is considered 'sexual' and whose isnt.
Backpeddling, she then goes on to distance herself from feminism, b/c she 'loves men' and has a nostagic view of americana masculinity.



Nicki - Prods him about his question, like what are you really asking me? Lets talk about my MUSIC, thnx. She sadly makes some comments about 'sluts not being on her team' as if this guy has any right to judge her/any girls sex life, but is trying to hit him back that you cant assume shes easy or whatever b/c of how she dresses.

Maybe theyre not saying everything I want them to be saying, but damn. Its hard, these girls trying to navigate their image when guys can flood the video wih writhing women, but the second a girl who looks like that steps out of the background and grabs the mike THEN its somehow sexual. Like, what does that say about how we see video girls, let alone female musicians?



Still I rise / Still I fight / Still I might crack a smile / Keep my eyes on the prize / see my haters tell 'em HI! / One day you'll remember this / One day when we reminisce / Nothing I do ever is, good enough for the music biz

ghettopolitique

A while back I posted about ghettoradio, an ngo who make mini documentaries on "ghetto culture" and host radio in different parts of Africa. They have a new piece called "The Ivory Tower vs. The Streets". Its a few interviews of mostly nairobi students about what it means to have a hiphop academia, their opinions of researchers, what research might look like, who can talk for hiphop, how involved do you have to be to write about a culture.

Again, I'm not a fan of the title and some of the assumptions in how its framed, and I still think 'ghetto' is a pretty poor description of urban africa or african hiphop - not only because it can be offensive but because of its limited applicability. That said, its def interesting and everyones making cool points. It also makes me stoked to visit fam there soon, any ideas on whats up around Nairobi or midwestern Kenya let me know. All three parts are below.







--------------------------------------------





I also recently emailed folks @ Nomadic Wax about their new Democracy in Burundi mixtape. "The concept for the ‘Democracy in Burundi’ was born after journalist-turned-politician, Alexis Sinduhije, was illegally incarcerated in November 2008. In response, emcees from Nomadic Wax have collaborated with presidential hopeful Sinduhije’s political party, the Movement for Solidarity and Democracy (MSD), to present this mixtape."

Previously, they profiled hiphops influence in senegalese politics suggesting hiphop was a tool to demand / organize greater accountibility from Wade. This time, they are actively promoting a politician, which I was curious about:

what is the point of this mixtape? ... Do funds given to nomadic wax help suppport alexis financially? Is his mixtape something that will be spread around in burundi, actually used as part of his campaign?

Initially, the mixtape project was focused on gathering interest and focus on Alexis' imprisonment and the elections in Burundi. In addition, through using different rappers from across the continent, it was an effort to get youth (who make up large percentages of the population in most african countries) interested and involved, across border lines.

The project, as it moved forward, worked in helping achieve the first goal. Alexis was released. Since then, it has become a good tool for gathering both local and international interest in his campaign. No other campaigns have pan-african hip hop mixtapes in their campaign arsenal/toolkit. ... We translated the press release into swahili, french, and kirundi and those materials have been used on the ground in Burundi by the campaign (some thing we at nomadic wax aren't involved in).
As the mixtape is a free download, no money has been made off of it or will be made off of it. None of the artists were paid- they donated their time to the cause, as did the music producers, and the graphic designers, and the translators.

I don't really know enough about Burundi to comment on this. Kinda weird, but Nomadic Wax seem like good peoplez.

------------------



For lovers of floral prints, race/gender examinations and nyc art, youre in luck. Kehinde Wiley has a show 'Black Light' sept 3-26 @ grand street - check out the slideshow here. Yinka Shonibare's show just moved to Newark <3.

An excuse for an Iran video dump

I've always dug Iran's changing national anthems, and its fun too look at them all together and figured Id post on it. Shifting Iranian patriotism seems kinda topical + feminist rappers & youts, old revolutionary/patriotic songs, etc




We begin with Iran's very awesome firat national anthem, Salamati-ye Shah, used until 1933. It was recently reworked with new lyrics by poet Bijan Taraqi.

best line: "Show your face in the sky / Like the immortal sun / Listen to the pain of my words/ I am your companion singer"




Second Iran Anthem, Sorood-e Shahanshahi, used 1933-1979 and chronicling the exploits of the Shah. imo grating, dreadful.

best line: "Of Right we've been and still are champions / What is right is all we ever demand."



3rd national anthem, the Soroud-e Melli-e Jomhouri-e Eslami-e Iran of the Islam Republic, only slightly less dreadful.

best line: "Your message, O Imam, of Sovereignty and Freedom / is imprinted on our souls"



And finally, Ey Iran, which despite immense popularity has never had anthem status, although apparently its occasionally used as such by opponants of the Islamic republic.

best lines: "The stones of your mountains are jewels and pearls / The soil of your valleys are better than gold / When could I rid my heart of your affection? / Tell me, what will I do without your affection?"
& "Your water, soil and love molded my clay /If your love leaves my heart it will become barren/ Your love is my calling"

+ with dope female vocals:



more vids..



No more lies - Etteham, with vocals by mahour. they say 'leave youth alone', clip includes scenes of iranians -- most of them women -- being warned or detained by police because of their appearance. over a million views..

Darbuka / Tablah / Tombak / Djembe & Reggaeton (!)

wikipedia says "The goblet drum (also chalice drum) is a goblet shaped hand drum used mostly in Arabic, Assyrian, Persian, Balkan, Greek, Armenian, Azeri and Turkish music. Its thin, responsive drumhead and resonance help it produce a distinctively crisp sound. It is of ancient origin, and is believed by some to have been invented before the chair."

In a recent entry, I posted sum vids of pnjbi/indo kids improving dhol beats over hh / global pop. I found a number of similar Turkish videos, featuring "darbuka mix" or "saz versions" of various global us/carib tracks. The videos aren't as fun because they aren't live, but the results are just as great.

& Missy,
Chris Brown,
Usher,
Speedy & Lumidee
wait.. Speedy & Lumidee's Sentello? I was surprised reggaeton was so big in Senegal & the Maghreb, who knows why was I again surprised Turkey & the balkins love it too?



a romanian Don Omar cover:


Folks in turkey folk/breakdancing to popi chulo, drunk dancing to Dale Don Dale at a turkish wedding, Sazin up Sean Paul:


Theres a part of me that wants to believe these finds aren't random but from shared Andalusian/ triangletrade/ Mediterranean music sensibilities. (what?) but who knows. After all, you find lambada in Japan. oh wait. reasons?

SeneRap, Rap Galsene : Hip Hop SeneGal

According to my stats, 'rap galsene' is currently the top search term thru which people find my blog, so I figured why not actually post about it.

Damn! It's so fun to see how rap galsene has developed since kicking around the region!

First of all, theres a lot more pure party beats than I remember. Senegal's never had a lack of dance music, so rap has often been free to be delightfully mellow. This seems to be changing, not that all hh is now 'booty beatz' but that rap galsene is becoming a more recognizable part of Senegalese dance music, largely by incorporating dancier pan-African or American hh styles. Here's a Snazzy video + serious crunky BASS:



Secondly, theres generally never been many Senegalese rappers who made my jaw drop in pure flow skill, and Ive been more interested in the beats, message, and incorporation of local soundscapes. A lot of early rap galsene, like a lot of old school American hh had a really simple rhyme scheme (every measure, etc). In the past few years I've seen seen more irregular, complex ryhme schemes for example Xuman & Amen-Ô-Fils' Bal Bi, tho it prolly doesnt sound worth noting to peeps with less galsene experience. It's another club track:



Im all for fantasy spaces, and I know its equally ridiculous in the U.S., but its lol to imagine anyone in Senegal actually living out that 1st video and cruising a street in a pretty conservative Muslim country and finding a babe in a bikini washing a convertible in public. Its not surprising that its got people talking.**(see below)

But hey don't let those videos give you the wrong idea of the current face of Senegalese hh as they exist within a really diverse roomy music scene & roots rap is still. dominant. esp when compared to Cote D'Ivoire, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, etc.. Xuman (above) is also responsible for some crazy creative tracks, such as the following about domestic violence, presented in a pretty humorous way. The wife here is a 'victim' but also pretty capable of defending herself ball twisting style. K.O.!!!
Xuman - buki ak mbaam:



Boima just posted some tunes from the new compilation Lessons Learned featuring Islamic hip hop from north and west Africa. My fav part is Sister Fa's catchy, breezy chorus of Selebou Yoon [mp3]. However my all time favorite Islamic hip hop song is an old one, Bidew Bu Bess's 'Baye' which my pot smoking, sufihead pals would BLAST from their dorm. The chorus incorporates Sufi religious chants, a major part of the Senegal soundscape:



Once every 3-4 weeks on campus at least one brotherhood would have a holiday or religious scholar / leader visiting. This merits setting up enormous speakers and echoey microphones under a tent and chanting (or sometimes walking in circles) ALL NIGHT MIND NUMBINGLY LOUD from about 7-8 in the evening till the first prayer call in the morning at ~ 6 am in the courtyards of dorm buildings. A pretty beautiful, amazing thing to witness the first 1-2 times but becomes incredibly aggravating if you want to say, write a paper or get some sleep before an exam the next day. Like this for 11 hrs:



**It's really fun when I find discussions in the comments on various African music sites engaging similar questions as the folks at wayneandwax.com and dutty artz.

smut/slackness and vacant lyrics (senegal)
negative influence of american pop (ghana)
debating "western" mbalax artists & audiences (senegal)
understanding lyrics (senegal)

Afrika Youtube extravaganzathon

French tecktonik meets Algerian rai meets Ivorian coupe decale meets Guinean Afropop meets Hip Hop in Mokobe's song 'African Tonik'.

What?! They made a new sexier video! (with way better sound) I was originally going to post this video with my commentary, got bored with the idea, but now decided to do it anyway with my comments from the old video b/c im LAZY:


:01 aiight with a french accent.
:09 yeediii yedeeii - tu te rapple? ouiaa but what is this word?? Hes referencing Mohamed Lamines chorus of 'un gaou oran'.
:18 old people schtick. yesssss.
:19 trancy araby technoey noize loop. rai/arab pop/eurobeatttt. I'm sure theres more of this, but where? amazing!
:41 Coupe decale style. yessss. oh wait, I barely recognized him all glossed up, thats DJ ARAFAT.
:50 again, Mohamed Lamine! to me, vocoder = rai so when all this t pain vocoder/autotone love swept up lately ive been sorta hoping rai might surface strongly up somewhere. yesssss. Lamine has some fun rai only vids.
1:05 harp/kora kicks in and Mory Kanté pops up. his voice style is that baba maal / uber mali/ senegal/ guinee/ gambia / the western sahel sound that can be be echoy, sweet and dizzying in mbalax or uber soul gutting in its folksier rootsy deserty "blues" expression (think Xala soundtrack, not Tinawaren) anyway, yesssssssss. Kanté is old school afropop.
1:28 chubby singing kid. very meme - y. very internet. also, he stole kanyes glasses!
1:41 fat people replace old people.
2:28 GAY! yeah we are all in spandex dancing like fools, but were not gay, ok??? see? look men touching oops ew. NOTE: this part is no longer in the new video, looks like somebody said something? or maybe cuz it obnoxiously stopped the flow?
2:37 again that nice noize. thnx to all involved in this techno/trance & hip-hop love affair fad thing.
2:47 fat people replaced by tecktonik lessons! yesss
3:05 um.. who invented this ridiculous urban day glo style? when / where did all that electroclash get hip hop filtered into this aesthetic? everybody mentions it, has anybody written more about it?
3:06 keffeyis attack! weird that its in a "rai" vid. or is it more duh than wow?
3:31 awww drumming kid
4:00 full dance party commences
4:05 again... wtf is Lamine sayinnnnnggg? :( so far I can't find lyrics yet.
4:27 cest ca! (qui a la verite)

It seems like Mokobe is continuing along the lines of his 113 rai'n'b fever work. RIM'K also released a solo album last year with an interestingly titled single "l'Espoir des Favelas", showing shots from across france of it's "favelas" mixed w/ shots of brazil and algeria.

The rai'n'b mixing seems natural, like if everyone in paris is mixing their national musics with hip hop, why not just start blending them all together? He does seem to have his hands in a ton of this years amazing stuff. I recently saw him pop up in a Alex dioufaniokhobaay video, whom AfricaHit.com calls "le bow wow senegalais" :


Alex also shows up in this video with AKON, showing his crazy popularity in senegal, i haven't seen much footage of him there:


Speaking of senegal's music gods, how sweet is Youssou's dramatic intro to his live dvd album? part fantasy, part real, he emerges:

stuff showing up places

I recently found an amazing kiswahili cover of Nancy Ajram's Yay, called sina hali by mask girls:



I heard whiffs of Arabic pop played in west afrique, and I always thought it was a Muslim Maghreb cultural connection. But this song is Tanzanian, and suggests perhaps a wider sub-saharan influence / linkages of Arabic pop in the continent. or perhaps a specifically tanzanian (&somali?) concoction? Im interested in how these links play out on the east coast.



I love the bubbling flustered girlishness jumping around these vocals. Nancy sings:

"yay, the charm of his eyes, his looks, once our eyes met ... I forgot my name"

also this:



Although this video's basic premise could beget major analyses, I'm less interested in what snoop is doing in the punjab (or australia?) and that now classic bhangra / hip-hop mix than I am in what hes wearing on his neck @ 1:38. After reading too many Hawgblawg posts Ive become a kuffiya hawk and was totally surprised to see one show up here on a Sikh character of a bollywood film.

Is this just the crazy aimless spreading of international fashion? Was it adopted obliviously for more 'punjabi' flair? Are kufiya so linked with edgy hip-hop culture its adopted as a signifier here? or is this a delibrate mashing of a new urban third/forth-world/global south pride chic? After all, with its sparta references and sarcasm it seems pretty u.s. culture saavy..

Coupé-Décalé

After rolling my eyes at the Fader's mini presentation of Coupé-Décalé, especially the comment "I could get all anthropological and delve into the context of it but other more knowledgable people have already done that" with a link to this wikipedia article with only a wee little paragraph on Coupé-Décalé.

I've seen a lot of write-ups which describe it as a 'hot new scene' (umm at least 5yrs late) & after searching the anglosphere for better sources i found a serious lack of info. I know that new documentary is coming out which will prolly give people a better sense of the music's context and history but i figured id try to help out by adding some francophone knowledge to the mix and give Coupé Décalé its own wikipedia article. It's very adhok right now, im hoping people add and edit to what i started.

Tech weh yuself

Wayne @ Wayneandwax.com has, as usual, written a really interesting post on chabbi and how it might/ might not fit into the 'ghettotech' umbrella.

If the guys in those chaabi videos were a street gang, holding guns & wearing kiffeyehs people would eat it up?

back when i was runnin my mouth, complaining about bizzarro distorted concepts of african music wayne quoted me (theantisuck) here.

I said - The roots obsessed decry Hip-Hop for losing touch with indigenous sounds. They blame American rap for destroying indigenous sounds yet they love ali farka toure, amadou &mariam, ethiopiques, ie. things that sound like American jazz and rock music. Then you have hipsters into African rap scenes, daraa j, kuduro, trying to find the music with the most dangerous street cred/booty beats and/or backpacker rap in Africa. Both “scenes” are perhaps dying yet so small and insignificant as to be nearly nonexistent next to the reality of African pop music and the actually huge scenes alive and well of coupe-decale, mbalax, swahili pop, zouk.

This isn’t to say that kuduro isn’t fascinating, especially from an academic perspective. It's just that I find it disquieting to see western audiences picking and choosing and making their own African celebrities and ideas of African music that seems so detached - in fact largely IGNORES much of the most popular African musical trends and artists celebrated across the continent. We seem to be creating our own African music scenes in our heads yet ignoring the scenes alive and kicking. Is this so bad or understandable? What are the consequences?

He responded by saying some legit points like we don’t have to listen to what's popular, shouldn’t worry too much about heisenbergian effects, and are coming from our own American, hip hop informed perspective.

Wayne asks: “Where are the Asian, Middle Eastern, or even European standard bearers for the global proles, if that’s what we’re repping?” global proles? I don’t feel like that’s what ghettotech is repping, even Wayne's stated bloggy interest is ‘American’ music, even in its broadest sense.

Ghettotech is music that is identifiably both ghetto (poor, urban, [hopefully black?]) and tech (what Wayne calls ““hip-hop logic” as well as the audibility of certain technologies and a set of sonic priorities weighted toward the low-end & the polyrhythmic”)

I feel like it would be hard to find Asian, Middle Eastern and Euro musics that fit entirely into that category. low-fi, urban, poor, sure. But they are just not engaged in the same intense dialogue with hip-hop as the Americas and Africa. I think that music comes from a totally different soundscape than that ol time triangular trade route of bodies/culture. Also not black. Race is probably an issue here.



Since runnin my mouth it turns out I was too cynical, at least about coupe decale. The mixtapes were already brewin. I can't even say I know mucho about African music anyway. Most of my knowledge is from living in Senegal in 2006 and the contacts I’ve maintained with friends there and diasporic shops/contacts. I think the distortion is also b/c African music is so mixtape/radio/adhoc spread. In Saint-Louis when I wanted to buy a cd I would tell shop owner Lamine what sounds I was interested in and ask about songs id heard at the club the night before and he would burn me a mix. no cd sales info. Even in JA, there’s trustworthy charts. So far I have been able to find no sort of trustworthy parallel African music charts. I feel like nobody has any idea what the people are actually listening to and so it’s hard to gauge context when discussing African music. If anyone begs to differ send me some links.

My orig point in that quote is that as somebody who just loves African pop music I love a lot of ghettotech music and the scenes occasionally awesome reflective engagement but find its limited scope frustrating. When I try to go to most clubs or music shops its arggg all marketed into that ol world music/nu whirled music ideas of African music. I wish there was a 3rd way audience dance/club scene that embraced global beats w/o always being ghettoed or downtempoed. But I dont think we are at a point where its easy to get direct engagement yet, so these scopes and ranges, i think, still matter. Not b/c of a few blogs influencing a music scene far away, but perhaps in terms of U.S. distribution.