busy days, these.
Artist Paul Chan will be joining me on the radio tonite. Kingdom held it down last week, Brazilian funk carioca/MPC wizard DJ Cabide the next. Paul’s playlist is tentatively titled “LOVE/sex: Marquis Muzak”. If I had time I would re-write this post with one of his fonts, maybe the Panther one or the Charles Fourier (!) one.
KEYWORDS: raï, autotune, eurotrance, instant familiarity.
[audio:houari_manar_feat_mafia_de_la_rue-hya.mp3]Houari Manar feat. Mafia de la Rue – Hya
so there’s this looooong ongoing trope of comparing various types of world/other music to black american music. “raï is the rap music of the Arab world” or “rembetika is the blues of Greece” etc etc etc. it gets a bit boring.
Between Timbaland’s synth arpeggios and sounds like the one in this tune, maybe terrible eurotrance should be the new go-to genre for ’00 comparative musical realness/authenticity.
“Timbaland brings Eurotrash to US pop!” “Raï is the eurotrance of Europe!”
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excerpt from Chan’s ‘ambient video essay’ Baghdad In No Particular Order:
Paul Chan’s fonts are the best thing ever! how have I not seen these before? His children’s book is also pretty nice – looking forward to hearing your show when iTunes pulls it in.
we should catalog these facile, neo-liberal comparisons. here’s an ol’ chestnut —
fado is the blues of portugal
Reggae is the Reggaeton of Panama