The world is a better place with music in it and this song in particular brightens my day. It’s apparently based on an older Indonesian political song, bu I haven’t been able to get any (detailed) info on that. I’d like to and, if that happens, I’ll update this post.
For now I’d like to present the latest single from my dear friend Filastine and his compadre Nova. Her voice plus his music equals stuck in my head. Gendjer2 ladies and gents and the rest of us from Filastine’s latest album, £00T. The whole thing is this good…
Back in December of 2010 I was part of a stage production that took an abstract look at the American Revolutionary War and American culture in general. Directed by Dayna Hanson formerly of 33 fainting Spells, Gloria’s Cause was a fun and messy assortment of scenes that sometimes appeared to come from nowhere. The show had multiple dancers and actors and a live band that almost all of us performed in. I fulfilled all three roles, some much better than others.
The show was co-presented by Seattle theater On The Boards and they paid for a film crew to document the work. That documentation can be seen at ontheboards.tv. There’s some small amount of compensation the theater needs for the production work to be cost sufficient so be prepared to pay. I’ve watched the video several times and it’s great; the film crew did a wonderful job!
My dear friend Eugene Fauntleroy is travelling around the world. I know him as an entrepreneur, a dj, a bon vivant; sometimes a dandy, always someone worth engaging with. I recently found that he’s established a Soundcloud page for a set of field recordings he’s creating: http://soundcloud.com/gene-lroy/tracks
There’s quite a few things happening here: Qawwalli vs bhangra (a natural combination); street sounds from Bangkok. My favorite is this track from Kuala Lumpur…
Somehow it appeals to everything I love about street music.
Whoa, Angolan production team Nirvanas & Beats fire up the heavy kuduro. I’d never heard of these cats until tonight, but I’ve listened to Buraka Som Sistema for a long time. Buraka is a Portuguese kuduro act that can break the night.
What I don’t know about kuduro could fill many books. Doesn’t matter, though. My only intention is to let you feel some joy.
What I like about the Vagabandas video above is that nothing is happening. These kids are standing in some tunnel in the middle of nowhere and singing and dancing for no one. The camera pans and shows desolation with a cityscape behind it. Sometimes we see a soul or two dancing for no one on a sidewalk. Then we are shown an entire neighborhood sitting on the steps looking bored. This reminds me of the early WuTang videos where the RZA, the GZA, Meth, Ugod, Ol’ Dirty, and company would pose in abandoned buildings and vacant lots doing nothing. By the light of oil can fires like classic New York bums. Surely there must be oil cans in Angola. Example 1. Example 2.
The Buraka Som Sistema video for ‘Aqui Para Voces’ is no better; it takes place in the ephemeral world of intercontinental shipping, but in its liminal zone the port.
Here we see deviants (dark-skinned mutants, psychedelic refugees, sexual fantasists) careening, performing, parading through the ever-so-popular world of the shipping container (but again for no one). The shipping container has come to represent a sort of Third Way for architecture to intervene on the behalf of the poor and provide them the novelty of shelter. The shipping container is also a representative icon of global mobility and anonymity in its ascendance. These things travel everywhere and no one knows what’s in them. Hundreds stacked end to end on boats that might travel under the flags of many nations or none at all.
In the end the police come and deliver the stick for their attempts at a night-masque of liberation never having shown the carrot.
