Bole2Harlem
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Technorati Tags: hip hop - Bole 2 Harlem
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Monday, October 01, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Ease Di Tension
Sierre Leone comes correct with hip hop dancehall group Dry Hai.
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Technorati Tags: Dry Yai - - Sierra Leone
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Monday, July 02, 2007
A Cacophonous Sound for A Cacophonous Age
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
The Golden Voice of Africa
Malian singer-song writer Salif Keita arranges layers of rhythm on this track from his fall 2005 album M'Bemba. Known as the Golden Voice of Africa, Keita is unique not only for his voice but also for his lineage. The albino singer is a direct descendant of the Mandinka warrior king Sundiata Keita who founded the Malian empire in the 13th century.
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Technorati Tags: Salif Keita - M'Bemba - Mali
Monday, February 05, 2007
Música Popular Brasileira
MPB maven Marisa Monte mixes it up on this hip hop infused samba tune Satisfeito from her 2006 album Universo Ao Meu Redor.
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Technorati Tags: Marisa Monte - Música Popular Brasileira
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Going South
New moon diva Cassandra Wilson updates her roots-y, Africa-tinged blues with hip hop inspired cuts produced by Red Hot's T Bone Burnett. From her spring 2006 album Thunderbird:
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Technorati Tags: Cassandra Wilson - Blue Note Records - Thunderbird
Monday, January 15, 2007
Afro-Cuban Sounds from the Source
After a near 15-year hiatus, Senegalese African/Latin band Orchestra Baobab reunited to cut their 2002 album Specialist in All Styles.
Technorati Tags: Orchestra Baobab - Senegal - Specialist in All Styles - Afro-Cuban - casamance - Wolof
Monday, January 08, 2007
Sketches of Spain
Ojos de Brujo, or "wizard's eyes" in Spanish, is a Barcelona based group that mixes flamenco with hip hop. This track comes from their 2006 album Techarí.
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Technorati Tags: Ojos de Brujo - Techarí - flamenco - hip hop
Monday, January 01, 2007
A New World Groove
The Brooklyn-based group Nation Beat combines two of the richest cultural syntheses of the Western hemisphere in their album Maracatuniversal. Fusing funky New Orleans second line brass with the rhythms of mangue music from Recife, Brazil, Nation Beat connects two of the more substantive variations of the New World's African/Latin (Yoruba/Catholic) amalgam. Some call it syncretism others call it transculturation. Socio-economics and politics aside, I just call it booty-shakin' fun!
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Technorati Tags: Nation Beat - mangue movement - second line - New Orleans - Recife Brazil
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Two for Tuesday
RIP...the Godfather of Soul (May 3, 1933 - December 25, 2006)
Technorati Tags: James Brown
Monday, December 25, 2006
Rubba-Dub-Dub Frenchmen in My Tub
Marseille's Massilia Sound System, from their album Occitanista:
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Technorati Tags: Massilia Sound System - Marseille - Occitanista - reggae - dub
Monday, December 18, 2006
K'Naan - Soobax
Sunday, December 17, 2006
A Streetcar Named Desire
At the crack of dawn this Friday past, I headed down to New Orleans to Desire Street where my better half lives in a funky little neighborhood called the Bywater. Dr. Bob, Christopher Porché West and the Flavor League are some of the better known artists who, along with Second Line Clothing, have taken up residence in this old Creole neighborhood.
We've been painting the town in his decked out limo, which he has been adorning with Mardi Gras beads for something like six years now. The infamous Mardi Gras car is stopped regularly by onlookers who want photos, like Bass Goddess Greta from whose site I took this shot pictured above. Vblogger Miss B Havens also included a couple of good pics in her flickr Mardi Gras 2006 photoset.
One might think that riding around in a car like this would make the passenger a magnet for some unorthodox adventures, and they'd be right! Over the last three days I crashed a film crew Christmas party where I met a midget double for Brad Pitt, I was smoked out by a couple of community housing activists and tricked into eating alligator at a New Orleans staple, and I danced with a group of trannies in a second line down St. Claude Avenue. Only in New Orleans!
Technorati Tags: New Orleans - Bywater - Bywater Art Market - Jacqueimo's - second line parade - Creole
Friday, December 15, 2006
Afropop's Picks for 2006
Afropop Worldwide has chosen their top ten "stocking stuffers" for 2006 - and might I say it's quite a nice selection!
Africando, "Ketukuba" (Stern's Africa) (Senegal)
Various Artists, "African Guitar Summit 2" (CBC Records)
Ali Farka Touré, "Savane" (World Circuit/Nonesuch) (Mali) - A giant of African music who passed this year.
Cheikh Lô, "Lamp Fall" (World Circuit/Nonesuch) (Senegal)
Various Artists, "Congotronics 2 Buzz 'N' Rumble From the Urb 'N' Jungle" (Crammed Discs) (Congo) - Don't bother with this second volume in the series...the Konono No.1 album is far better, but for the full experience you MUST see them live!
Etran Finatawa, "Introducing Etran Finatawa" (World Music Network) (Niger)
Marisa Monte, "Universo au Meu Redor" (EMI) (Brazil)
Salif Keita, "M'Bemba" (Decca) (Mali) - Love this record from start to finish...a moody trip that grew on me with more plays.
Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, "Living Like A Refugee" (ANTI- Records) (Sierra Leone)
Thomas Mapfumo "Rise Up" (Real World) (Zimbabwe)
Technorati Tags: Salif Keita - Afropop Worldwide - Congotronics
Thursday, December 14, 2006
American Underground #5
On Friday, December 15, Shrine for the Black Madonna returns to the concert stage for the first time in eight months. The gig is at Southpaw in Park Slope Brooklyn, and it's part of the American Underground Concert Series - meaning a full night of hip new music. Admission is $8. Come prepared for moving, grooving, and maximum lift-off.
American Underground #5:
Friday, December 15 @Southpaw8pm: DJ SPIRITHOOD of the Dustbin Brothers.
9pm: SANKOFA
10pm: FAITH
11pm: SHRINE FOR THE BLACK MADONNA
12mid: IFWHEN
Southpaw
125 Fifth Avenue (between Sterling + St. John's)
Park Slope, Brooklyn 11217
718-230-0236
2/3 to Bergen Street
4/5, Q or W to Atlantic Avenue
M or N/R to Union Street
Technorati Tags: Shrine for the Black Madonna - black rock coalition - Brooklyn - afropunk
Monday, December 11, 2006
Some Brazilian baile funk for your earlobes
I realized today that I've been quite critical about a lot of music/artists on this blog. Yet I've offered little in the way of alternatives. So I'd like to offer up a segment every week of music I DO like by artists I find interesting. Since I like alliteration I'll call it "New Music Mondays". Enjoy!
Guerreiro by Brazilian artist Curumin
Technorati Tags: Curumin - Quannum Projects
Saturday, December 09, 2006
The Political Significance of The Flavor of Love
Flava Flav's meteoric rise from sidekick rap hasbeen to pimped out leading man is not just another example of mainstream media's plunge into the depths of mediocrity. It just may equal the final nail in the coffin of Hip Hop as a mainstream source of positive social change in the lives of African Americans. Formerly one half of the most important political rap group of all time, Flava Flav presently takes minstrelsy to new heights as the monied mac daddy slumming among a harem of 20 video hos for a chance at finding true love. On its face the exploits of the clock slinging lothario are degrading and offensive for the stereotypical way in which women, especially black women, are portrayed as man hungry beasts and black men are hypersexual thugs with only one thing in mind. You won't be finding much in the way of black love on this show.
However, it is this caricature that has been catapulted into the popular culture juxtaposed against the waning significance of counterpart Chuck D that is most instructive. As the front man for Public Enemy, Chuck D was probably the most important political lyricist of the golden age of rap music. Flava Flav's yesman cooning was acceptable solely because it complimented the serious challenge Chuck D's nationalist lyrics posed to mainstream America. In the post Civil Rights era where integration was the (social) law of the land, Public Enemy's insistence on fighting the powers that be threatened not only the structural racism of white society, but also the efficacy of the Movement and its leadership. Flava Flav's antics confused some and offended others, but smart people understood that he took the heat off of Chuck D to enable those politically challenging messages to see the light of day.
Fast forward 17 years later...Chuck D has seen nowhere near the resurgence in popularity as has his sidekick. His lone regular media outlet bumped him out of a daily primetime morning slot in favor of Jerry Springer. Jerry Springer! The rap icon has been relegated to a Sunday evening talk show that reads more like a description of a James Brown godfather of soul revue than a serious analysis of the day's events. But one has to wonder how much of this is really him. The rank paternalism of a show that insists it's doing its audience (i.e. black people) a favor by delivering news "tidbits" so that they "won't be bored", and because "its positively futile" to think that "journalists can change your unique perspective" with "two hours and one beat to death topic" could hardly be called pro-black or nationalist. But can anyone be surprised of the content when it's produced by Air America - a group of aging white liberals who still haven't figured out that telling people that they just don't know what's good for them is not a winning strategy?
Divorced from each other, the political agency of either partner has been inverted. Chuck D's message of black self sufficiency and black political power has actually become the opposite within the framework of Air America's programming. True it's sad, but hitched to the wagon of the bankrupt station, his redlining has less of an impact than the explosion of Flav's cooning on the pop culture scene. Any political agency Flava Flav had, was by definition as Chuck D's dissembler. Severed from that role his playacting of minstrelsy actually becomes minstrelsy. One wonders when watching Flav today if he ever understood the nature of the game Public Enemy was playing. If not, he is one of the biggest dupes of all time. If so, he is one of the biggest sell outs of all time. Of these evils, can one really pick the lesser?
Technorati Tags: The Flavor of Love - hip hop - Flava Flav - Chuck D - minstrelsy
Friday, December 08, 2006
Free Speech or Hate Speech? I Report You Decide...
Found this NYOIL video on the blog Postgradute Musings. Apparently it was banned from YouTUBE in less than 48 hours. One might be inclined to reject the language and the approach, but isn't it about time more of us start having this conversation?
yall should all get lynched
Monday, July 03, 2006
Do black folks know how to dance anymore?
For 8 years now I've been watching black NYC's under 40 set slide into a pathetic display of unoriginal groovin'. You know what I'm talking about...the part grind, part wave-your-hands-in-the-air, part two step? Sure our folks have still got rhythm, but they don't know what the hell to do with it anymore except to simulate sex on the dancefloor.
We used to be free, letting our bodies be conduits for sensuous rhythms and beats. There was a time when black folks used to get down! Sure sexuality was always a part of our movement, but nowadays seems like all we want to do is profile. A jiggle here, a little ass in the air there, and voilá a video ho is born.
I recognized this as a serious problem when I was out dancing several weeks ago at a local gay club and there was no deep house, no disco, no R&B even. There were no fabulous queens tearing up the floor. Almost all the boys were thugged out, "dancing" to the only music playing: hip hop. What is the world coming to when fags don't even break a sweat anymore?
My worst experience to date, however, had to be at a barbecue I attended over this past July 4 holiday weekend. Things started out well enough with an early evening music mix of classic R&B and disco jams. Sure we'd heard them all god knows how many times before, but the sounds of Chaka, Yarborough & Peoples and Teena Marie can and do always get a Brooklyn party started.
As darkness fell and the crowd began to really feel the liquor, the atmosphere changed. A group of husky Latinas headed toward the dance floor. Feeling those several Kettle One and tonics I myself had imbibed, I was right behind them. Just then the DJ changed up the flow and put on some popular hip hop songs. The wind came right out of my sails as I watched the women light up with glee. With absolutely no shame in their game they proceeded to switch and tick in front of the entire group of men, women and (young) children at the barbecue. Oh not THIS again! Girl don't you know that all that long hair does not make you Shakira?!!!
The lascivious glares of the party's intoxicated men quickly curdled the vodka in my belly. Sure I had dealt with a meat market before, but this time it was different. Two young black girls grinded among the portly women on the floor. Our table watched the men watching these little girls move, and the implications were disturbing. I finally got up from my chair and approached the two pre-teens.
"Girls, how old are you?" I asked.
"Thirteeen," replied one who was engrossed in a handheld videogame. The other piped up, "twelve." Jesus these girls were young! Where the hell were their mothers? Weren't they peepin' how these nasty men were checking out their adolescent daughters' moves?
"Well ladies," I continued, "I think you are really great dancers, but you should be careful about the kind of attention you could be attracting with those sexy moves." The girl with the handheld pretended to ignore me as she took in my admonition, while the other focused intently. "I just want you two to be careful. Take it from me...I have been in situations before where I aroused interest from people I did not want to be interested. Although you may think you want it, you really don't want that kind of attention just yet. Leave that to the grown folks. Y'know what I'm sayin?"
"You mean grown folks like you?" asked the 12 year-old. The vidiot turned up from her handheld to catch my response.
"Well, I may be grown but I still don't want that kind of attention," I gestured over to three drunken men sitting along the edge of the dance area. I turned back to eye the pair's response and they nodded in agreement with me. Satisfied that I had made my point, I retreated back to my seat. The two young girls continued to dance - albeit in a more age appropriate manner. Finally the 12 year-old scampered off the floor. I felt relieved. Just then the vidiot wrapped her arms around one of the most egregious offenders on the floor.
"Hey mama, are we going home soon?" she asked the woman.
"In a little while baby," she replied, "I'm still getting my groove on!"
My friend leaned in close to me and said, "and now you know why them girls are like that, huh?" I turned to look at her and she shook her head in disapproval. "There ain't nothin you can do about it when her own mother's like that." I turned back to catch the young vidiot switchin and tickin right along side her mother, as a tall, boozy brotha sandwiched between them.
Technorati Tags: Soul Train - Brooklyn - R&B
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