dear West Coast peoples, this is a quick reminder that I’ll be playing at Portland’s Holocene tomorrow night (1st time in Pdx in ages and its only 5 bucks), and at a big Surya Dub party in San Francisco on Saturday.
tell a friend to tell a friend to form an army and march it on through:
my WFMU radio show will not be broadcast (or podcast) today, August 20th – because WFMU’s Free Music Series + Lincoln Center are presenting a FREE CONCERT at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch park from 6-10pm, featuring good friends The Ex & Gétatchèw Mèkurya (famous Ethiopian saxophonist with a contagiously great sense of humor). wow! also on the bill: Extra Golden (not that Benga – the other, far more popular Benga), and the Either/Orchestra with Mahmoud Ahmed & Alèmayèhu Eshèté.
last time i hung out with The Ex & Gétatchèw it was like this (… except that by the time I got backstage, Gétatchèw – a giant in the world of Ethiopian jazz, as chronicled in part by his Ethiopiques release – had crowned Andy with his monkey-skin headdress in exchange for Andy’s guitar)
the last time we all played together was in Flemish Belgium. I was slotted after The Ex & G̩tatch̬w, set changeover took awhile, and by the time I got onstage most of the crowd had left. I DJed to an emptying room. But then I realized: exactly one person had begun to dance Рa tall, gorgeous Ethiopian woman in short-shorts (who was there with her parents I think).
So that was a new, very interesting situation: playing to exactly one person instead of DJing to the kinetic volume of a dancing crowd. And that one person liked the cumbia/afro-colombian stuff. After several songs a few more people joined in (not that there were more than 15 or 20 of us) – by the end even Kat was dancing, and Afework Negussie the masenqo player kept passing me tunes from his mp3-thingy to blend in. That night became a strange, reassuring, ego-free ‘open secret’ afterparty in the heart of Flemish country, where our contingent reality was not only possible but present, embodied, aglow.
Sometimes you play a big rave-type event and you make a bag of money but it feels spiritually vacant. Sometimes you play for a handful of people and you don’t simply ‘strike a chord’ as we say in English, you find yourself within one.
I think this is what, from my perspective, makes The Ex so special: their ability to conjure up meaningful situations and community in ways that are no less natural or moving for being completely unexpected. (Gétatchèw asked them to be his backing band.)
This song came from the Afework’s mp3-thingy. Hulum Zero Zero. He is singing about the Ethiopian government…
[audio:HulumZeroZero.mp3]The (admittedly loose) theme of yesterday’s radio show was West African Aphasia – songs whose titular information was missing, largely due to bad xerox CD-r packaging.
Bootleg african CDs go for around $2 each up in Harlem – VERY AFFORDABLE.
here’s some soukous from Afro-Rhythme’s Soukouss Vibration vol. 6. The back info is illegible, the front simply says “Ancien Combattant”, with an image of a sun setting over miles of ocean… but the image has been copied so much (or so badly) that it now looks like a nuclear explosion over a dark, blood-red sea.
[audio:soukouss_vibration_excerpt.mp3]Soukouss Vibration – tracks 5 + 6 soukouss medley
this Saturday I’ll be dropping beats late (like 3:30am) at the Lose Yr Sh1t! Brooklyn loft party, alongside dutty hermano Geko Jones, and $mall Change & co. Party goes til the sun returns, apparently there’s a nice roofdeck, etc.
Fact is, when you DJ late at a loft party, the guidelines and expectations – already loose – become looser; expect surprises. Plus its my b-day 2 days later so, as Lil Jon says, “Yeeeaaah”.
“I’ll see your cotton candy pop star and raise you one jibaro de campo and a bag of plantain chips.” – Geko Jones on Tatico y merengue tipico.
to which I respond: (this music is too fast!)
[audio:La India Canela_Chicha.mp3]from her Smithsonian CD, with free liner notes by Sydney ‘Accordion Girl‘ Hutchinson
13 lovely minutes, stripped of identifying metadata
this time replaces that time
+ + +
(this is not a hint) Viva el colectivo! latin rips, catgut strings and a protest backbone, from Chile and elsewhere. Long live the collective!
My new mix CD, Porque Soy Sonidero Y Voy A Muchos Lugares (made for this last tour) is now available exclusively at Turntable Lab. An hourlong blend of now-thing summer bump.
[audio:DJ_Rupture_GO_BUY_THE_MIX_SWEETHEART.mp3]DJ Rupture – Porque Soy Sonidero excerpt (Shinehead riffing on Sting into a brand-new DJ Lengua refix)
I’ll have copies with me at live shows as well. Live shows? Like this one.
[image: R. Alkadhi]
Amid loose gravel and stray shoes, stains and rubbish, Action sees a grid parsing an Iraq in miniature. Within that microcosm, people wander around as if in a daze, pointing, staring, contemplating in silent disbelief. Action observes these miniature people, some of whom may in turn bend down to study the atrocities on the ground below them. – Rheim Alkadhi, Contemplation of Action
& memories pried from decades-old shellac give rise to an equally real & mythopoetic Baghdad as the one Rheim documents
[audio:Kementchedji_Alecco_Taqsim.mp3]from Give Me Love: Songs of the Brokenhearted – Baghdad 1925-1929. This article opens a window on this music. In a short time a city can swing from open to closed, from something fluid & made of multiples to occupied, divided, entrenched. What awaits us?
Izza Kizza – Don’t Stop Go! (prod. Koolade)
Koolade is from Croatia! i played in Zagreb (his hometown) once. People asked smart questions. Our hotel stood next to ‘Colonial Cafe’, lil negroes as the logo. After our party there was a rave that i didnt go to – they said there was a big rave scene — it sounds like Koolade might have dipped in from his super duper synths.
from Kizzaland, a free Izza Kizza mixtape by Catchdubs!
San Francisco, Portland, come on out…
on Friday August 22nd I’ll be @ Holocene, Portland, with E3 and Monkeytek. $5!
& on Saturday August 23rd it’s a likkle NYC takeover in San Francisco, with Dave Q of Dub War and myself guesting at the Surya Dub party. Hometeam lineup is large- Ripley, Kush & lots more.
Esoteric romantic mysticism and darkness floating over deep-sea-level of the christian mind.
their own words get it right, why bring in more description when what we crave is experience?
[audio:Paavoharju_Italialaisella Laivalla.mp3]Paavoharju – Italialaisella Laivalla
from the album Laulu Laakson Kukista
…and at another edge of Europe, rembetika, Paavoharju’s inverse, which also touches, even as it slumps forward. The dogma of addiction. Songs in 9.
[audio:A_Kostis_Stin_Ipoga.mp3]