Manora: Southern Thai Local Music (FLAC)

 

This is a remarkable--oddly remarkable--recording on a number of fronts. First of all, it purports to be a recording of music for manora (aka menora or nora), a classical dance drama practiced in southern Thailand and northern Malaysia. 

And, I assume, it is that. But it's more. Four bonus tracks more. At the end of each side of the cassette, we're treated to two tracks of electric Thai music. 

On Side A, the two end-tracks (6 and 7) feature electric guitar, bass, organ, and percussion. The style to my ears sounds morlam-ish, but not quite like any morlam that I've ever heard before. 

(Listen to track 6 here--click on "Phra Aphai" and hit Play.)

A very seasoned woman's voice leads track 6, with an male response? Chorus? A bunch of emphatic "Ah, ah, ah"s. It's exquisite. Track 7 reverses the roles, giving the lead to the male singer, the "Ah"s to the female.

Side B's electric tracks mirror the male-female switch-up, and sound more like what I would likely assume was morlam.

But it is worth emphasizing that, sonically, these four tracks have little obvious sonic relationship with the rest of the cassette, other than what sounds like the repetition of the word "menora" in the two electric end tracks on Side B. 

I'm hoping perhaps Peter Doolan of the legendary Monrakplengthai might be able to shed some light on what's going on.

UPDATE: Peter sends along the following information:

thanks so much for this, gary!

after a little research (thanks especially to the plengpakjai webboard archives) i have some findings to share:

this cassette is primarily of a re-release of a hat records LP from pricha amnuaisin and his troupe (A1-A5, B1-B5), which is classic manorah. tacked on the end of each side are manorah-style luk thung singles (and their b-sides) from thitthong nakhonsi and khwannapha ladawan, which seem to have had some degree of local popularity.

this is really extremely rare stuff! most of what i turned up was people asking if anyone had access to it, so i'll be hooking them up post-haste, thanks to you!

artist(s): various

album: เพลงพื้นเมืองภาคใต้ มโนราห์ (phleng phuen mueang phak tai: manorah)

tracklist:

01. ปรีชา อำนวยศิลป์ (pricha amnuaisin) - คำเตือนเพื่อนร่วมชาติ (kham tuean phuen ruam chat)

02. ปรีชา อำนวยศิลป์ (pricha amnuaisin) - กลอนเตือนหญิง (klon tuean ying)

03. ปรีชา อำนวยศิลป์ (pricha amnuaisin) - กลอนวอนพระอินทร์ (klon won phra in)

04. สังเวียน เอ็งเส้ง (sangwian engseng) - ทุกข์ร้อยแปด (thuk roi paet)

05. บำรุง จันทรศาล (bamrung chantharasan) - อวยพรปีใหม่ (uai phon pi mai)

06. ขวัญนภา ลดาวัลย์ (khwannapha ladawan) - พระอภัยเป่าปี่ (phra aphai pao pi)

07. ทิดทอง นครศรี (thitthong nakhonsi) - ปี่พระอภัย (pi phra aphai)

08. บำรุง จันทรศาล (bamrung chantharasan) - กลอนสอนเมีย (klon son mia)

09. บำรุง จันทรศาล (bamrung chantharasan) - กลอนสอนหญิง (klon son ying)

10. นกน้อย ปกาใส (noknoi pakasai) - กลอนสอนเพื่อนหญิง (klon son phuean ying)

11. สังเวียน เอ็งเส้ง (sangwian engseng) - ของแพง (khong phaeng)

12. สังเวียน เอ็งเส้ง (sangwian engseng) - อย่าหลงผิด (ya long phit)

13. ขวัญนภา ลดาวัลย์ (khwannapha ladawan) - มโนราห์-พระสุธน (manorah-phra suthon)

14. ทิดทอง นครศรี (thitthong nakhonsi) - พระสุธน-มโนราห์ (phra suthon-manorah)

Grab this one-of-a-kind treasure here.

Νοσταλγία | Nostalgia

On Wednesday, March 28, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spun favorite tracks from the Pathé 100 Hong Kong + Shanghai series, early Jamaican mento and R&B, Greek garage and laïka, Krautrock from Brain Records, 70s mor lam from Soi 48, and nascent hip-hop from the U.S.A.

Listen to the show now in the archives

Phimpha Phonsiri | It's Red!

Listen to the third track


Give track 11 some attention

Reupped  on May 24, 2015, by reader request here.

Have I really never shared this fabulous example of, uh, well ... what is it, exactly? I was going to use Peter Doolan's term, "work station luk thung," but it's not that, exactly. (And, thanks Peter, for the singer and title.) I'm no longer sure where I picked it up, but the most likely place is Thai-Cam Video (5230 Southeast Foster Road, Portland, Ore.), where I got most of my Cambodian and Lao music, and a bit of my Thai stuff as well.

Exhausted and wanting to catch a few quick Zs before heading over to friends' house to watch Project Runway--I baked a nice loaf of rosemary sourdough for them--or I'd stick around and talk longer. Maybe tomorrow; I've got the day off.

Nantida Kawbuasai | Jum Kun Bor Dai Ka

 

Listen to "Noi Noi Nhoi Ko"

Grab the album here.

Special thanks to monrakplengthai's Peter Doolan for singer name, track titles and a bit of info about the artist.

Nantida Kawbuasia, according to Peter, is best-known as an actor who was most active in the 1970s and 80s. Apparently, she also sang. These songs (which I'm guessing were probably first heard in films) sound like they were made in the 70s or 80s, and even have a bit of Hong Kong-y proto-Canto- / Mandopop to them. But, really? They're Thai. And pop. And they sound it. 

I love, love, love, love, love the horns. In so many more recent recordings, horns have been replaced by synths / Casios, so it's nice to hear the real thing every now and then, even if I'm not, actually, a synth / Casio hater. Here, they're simply lovely.

I picked this rather plucky gem up at the Vientiane Asian Grocery Store in Seattle's super-diverse Othello neighborhood. I should also tell you that I came away with a few dozen albums from Thailand, Laos and Cambodia--all from groceries / bodegas in Othello. Watch this space for more shares and a special Bodega Pop Live show I'll be doing soon, featuring some of the most amazing tracks from this ridiculous haul.

Oh! I also gave a talk at this year's EMP Pop Conference -- I'll have to write a bit about that, too. More soon; I gotta go get groceries and do a bit of laundry.

สุนทราภรณ์ แฟนคลับ รวมฮิตศิลปินหญิง | Ruam Hit Sin La Pin Ying

Listen to "Wang Nam Won"


Listen to "Cham Dai Mai"

Freshly reupped in 320KBPS because it's so ding-danged thrilling, here.

[Originally posted in late 2010.] Found in Manhattan's Chinatown, in a Thai book, music and knick-knack store just south of Canal. Mulberry, I think. I have no idea who these women are, or how old this music is, but it sounds like it could be 1940s-50s. Perhaps 1960s, given how good the sound quality is. It's sort of pop-y, sort of lounge-y, sort of jazz-y, with vocals that make my arm hairs stand on end. I've gotten teary-eyed and blubbery more than once listening to it.
What say you?

Joey Boy | Thailand Rap Hit

Reupped because it's just that good, here.

First posted in April 2010, days after I launched this blog. It's no exaggeration to say that this is precisely the sort of thing I opened Bodega Pop's doors to share with the larger world.

I had no idea what this was when I posted it. A poet friend of mine in Singapore hipped me to the artist's identity thusly: "Joey Boy is superstar." I got to work searching YouTube.


as well as Filetram and other file-sharing search engines. Over time, I put together Joey Boy's entire catalog. Which I listened to obsessively.

Having done that, I feel totally comfortable grabbing everyone who walks into the Bodega by the sleeve, sitting each of you down in one of my metal folding "guest" chairs and yammering breathlessly about JB's pop genius.

That said, I totally don't have time to do that, today. I'm due up in Saratoga Springs to oversee a print job for my work and I've been commissioned to write a piece about New York, bodegas and international music ... by August 22nd.

Given that, here's a short bio, followed by what I originally wrote about this CD three years ago:

Born Apisit Opsasaimlikit in 1975, Joey Boy began his career in the 1990s, recording his first hit, "Fun, Fun, Fun" (see video above) with Canadian reggae artist, Snow, in 1995.

Found last year in a Vietnamese CD/Video store on Argyle Street in Chicago--this is quite honestly one of the most bizarrely satisfying purchases of a musical nature I have ever made.

First, let's take a look at "what's up" on the cover. Note that "Rap" is in quotes on the back. As it should be. I have never heard rap like this. I'm fairly certain that, unless you have already heard Thailand's Joey Boy, you probably have never heard rap like this either.

Well, so what is it, then? I'll go out on a limb and just say that it's quite likely the single most carnivalesque melange of rubbery cartoon-y dance-y hip-hoppy trippy-y influences from around the world ever burned into polycarbonate plastic. It is simultaneously the flarfiest and rockin'est thing I have ever heard. I have quickly grown to love it almost as much as life itself. Could any language be less suited to rap than Thai, the most soft-spoken-deferential-un-pissed-off-sounding language on the planet?

But why is that woman in the sunglasses on the cover pointing to her nose like that?

Siamese Ghetto | Siamese Ghetto

Freshly reupped here.


[Originally published June 30, 2012. The NY Times piece never materialized.] Last night after work I met up with a writer who is interested in developing a story around music blogging and/or bodega digging in New York. He lives in Woodside, a couple of neighborhoods to the south east of me, and we decided to meet at Thailand's Center Point (63-19 39th Ave). I'd never eaten there and was told that they sold CDs. Given that my other sources for Thai CDs have all dried up, I showed up 15 minutes early so I could dig through the goods. (Plus, it would give the writer an opportunity to see the obsessed music collector in his element, forehead sweating, hands shaking, fingers slowly becoming black from the grime-and-soot-covered cellophane CD & VCD wrappers.)


We had a great time over dinner; for one thing, the writer brought along a six-pack of Brooklyn Summer Ale, which we quickly sucked down between entrees, each hotter than the last. (The entrees, not the ales.) When at last a dish arrived that neither one of us was able to take more than two or three bites of, it was so intensely spicy, we settled the bill and I went back through the CD stacks looking for something interesting. Given that everything was half-off ("CDs no longer sell," the waitress working the register told me, a fact underscored by my once-again blackened fingertips), I was admittedly a bit liberal what with the purchasing.


Once outside, we both noticed, on the next block and across the street from Sripraphai, a smallish Thai grocery store. I gave my dinner companion a quizzical look and we marched over to check out the goods. And there, in the glass casing beneath the register, I spotted the CD above.


I know nothing about Siamese Ghetto, other than that this CD appears to be their one-and-only full-length album and that they sound a bit like Thai hip-hop superstar Joey Boy, but with some of the playful, satiric energy of Hong Kong's Fama. 


Whether or not the article works out, I owe my near-neighbor in Woodside a thank you for a wonderful night of beer, ridiculously spicy food (which I'm paying for at the moment, if that's not TMI), great conversation ... and for leading me to this utterly fabulous album that you, in your gentle but persistent wisdom, dear reader, will have no doubt finished downloading by the time this sentence is complete.

Rungpetch Laemsing | Fon Duen Hok

Listen to "Chao Na Worn Fon"

At a reader's request I have reupped this totally great collection in 320 kick-ass kbps here.

Are you ready to rock? No, no; seriously, people: Are you RAY DAY to FROW king RAAAWWK?!?

I found this insanely great CD by luk thung artist รุ่งเพชร แหลมสิงห์ (Rungpetch Laemsing) below Canal Street on one of the north-south running streets in Manhattan's Chinatown at a Thai "curio" store several years ago. I visited the store regularly for a couple of years, mostly buying up hundreds of these things for work on this:

... a comics project that has taken me a ridiculously long time to finish, largely due to (a) working a rather stressful full-time job and (b) general sloth. (I'm actually just a couple of pages shy of finishing what will be about 200 pages of collected comics that is [crosses fingers, bites lower lip] supposed to be published late this year.)

But who cares? You're here for the la musica, la musica--the cha-hoo-nays, mang. And oh my fucking god are you going to be happy you stopped into the Bodega today. This album is so awesome I can still remember the weight of my lower jaw dropping moments after hitting "play" when I gave it its maiden, post-un-shrink-wrapped listen.


Laemsing's music appears on only one Thai CD compilation that I know of, Luk Thung! The Roots of Thai Funk. ("Ban Nork Dee Nae," which also appears on the CD above.) Other than that, Peter Doolan posted a luk thung compilation cassette on his massively fabulous Monrakplengthai blog, here, which features another song you'll find on the CD above, "Nam Long Duean Yi.")

I don't know anything about Laemsing other than that dude has been rocking--uh, excuse me--RAWKEN my world ever since I plucked this exceedingly cheeky disc of polycarbonate plastic from that long-vanished store in Chinatown. Perhaps if Peter stops by he can share what he knows about the man?


Until then, you don't really need to know much of anything, other than whatever it is you're gonna need to know in order to nurse your poor tender ass after the monster-kicking this sublimely talented dude's gonna give it.

Waiphot Phetsuphan | The History of Princess Suphankanlaya

Dig the first track 

 
Wrastle with the second track 

Come to papa. 

Um, Peter, could you come in here a moment, please? 

So, I got this CD at Thai-Cam Video (5230 Southeast Foster Road, Portland, Ore.) and it's not quite like anything I've heard before. I think it's Thai and am guessing luk thung. But the guy singing (whom I've taken to calling "Inset Thai Guy" or "Inset" for short) is doing something in some of these songs that I've never quite heard before, lots of long, drawn-out, occasionally flat or otherwise slightly off "uhhhnnn"s, "ahhhhnnnns" and the like, and a generally sort of almost exclamatory kind of half singing. 

Is it a style? Or is it simply The Magic of Inset? [Update: See comments, where Yoshio provides the singer's name and Peter provides context for the style and album.]

As I've been hinting (read: bragging) for several posts now, I totally scored while in Portland last December, much of the take coming from two visits to Thai Cam Video, a media and grocery store run by a woman named Nang who told me she moved to Portland in 1980 from Cambodia by way of Thailand. Nang is half Cambodian, half Burmese and, although I did not ask her, I assume she left Cambodia for Thailand in the 70s for what would be rather obvious reasons. 

Nang opened Thai Cam Video in 2003, which means she's been in business nearly a decade, a comforting fact, considering that I didn't expect the place would still be there on this trip. (I'd first discovered it on a trip to the west coast in 2009 and when I called in advance of this recent trip, there was no answer.) I wanted to ask Nang more about her life, but didn't want to pry too much, so I asked her if it was possible to get good Cambodian food in the area. It was: Mekong Bistro, 8200 NE Siskiyou Street, where I wound up having my first-ever taste of amok trey, which I implore each and every one of you reading this right now to seek out and try at least once before you exit your earthly form. 

Nang also told me where to find Cambodian and Lao temples in the area. (There is, I hadn't realized before, a sizable southeast Asian population in the area. For instance, block after block of Vietnamese businesses on the way to the airport that I only noticed, alas, on the way to the airport.) Nang asked for my contact info in case she ever made it out to New York; I was surprised to hear that she'd never been to the east coast. I bought an obscene number of Cambodian, Lao and Thai CDs from her, creating two sizable towers near the register before my friend Rodney returned to rescue me from taking another dive back into the stacks.

Yui Yatyoe | Cha Rot Mai Nia

Listen to "สองแสนแหวนวง"

Get it all here.

In his 1995 book Ocean of Sound, David Toop quotes Jimi Hendrix talking to Melody Maker during the last year of his life on the possibilities of expanded musical textures:

"I don't mean three harps and fourteen violins ... I mean a big band full of competent musicians I can conduct and write for. And with the music we will paint pictures of earth and space, so that the listener can be taken somewhere." 

Toop then describes how two of Hendrix's posthumous records, Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning, were assembled after his death, basically using a cut-and-paste sort of method to pull together unfinished tracks, speeding up or slowing down things to match keys and adding new parts where, say, a guitar track abruptly ended with no clue as to where it might have gone.

Reading this passage, one comes away with a sense of the real power of the studio, one that almost seems to contradict how the studio is so often used today, especially by the southeast Asian music industry. 

What we have here tonight is an example of what music blogger and Thai pop music cataloger Peter Doolan calls "guitar & keyboard workstation-driven luk thung." Listening to the sample above, it's difficult to tell what's "live" and what's "canned": the drums, for instance, clearly falling into the latter category; the guitar, voice and possibly the horns falling into the former. "Workstation-driven" seems like the perfect descriptor: these albums are cranked out, one after the other--this is, in fact, CD number 16 (Peter posted number 3 from what I believe is this same series on his great Monrakplengthai blog, here). God only knows how many total CDs there are.

But does this factory-output approach to pop music make it any less fabulous than something more "authentic"? Does it, in fact, make this music any less "authentic"? 

I would say no. The studio is a factory, no matter who's in it or how it's being used; I was blown away watching David Byrne and St. Vincent perform live on the Colbert Report the other night, so much so that I immediately went and downloaded the album, Love This Giant, that they were promoting. And it just didn't have the same oomph as their live performance. It sounded canned. And, in that case, it wasn't because they were substituting a drum machine for drums, or a synthesizer for horns. It just felt "cold" in comparison to the live performance.

I've always argued that there is nothing "authentic" about popular music. That authenticity is not a quality or attribute in any way relevant to the art form. But there is one way in which popular music can be said to be authentic, for, in order to become truly popular, it must offer an "authentic" reflection, simultaneously, of the dreams and real lives of those who consume it--the soundscape version of its listeners' life- and dreamscape. 

Thanks to the aforementioned Peter Doolan for transliterating this album and identifying the singer. The title, by the way, translates as "I Will Survive," at least according to Google's translation feature ...

Joey Boy | 67 Songs

Listen to "It's On"


Listen to "Censor" (best use of bleeps ever?)


Listen to "อวัยวะ"


Listen to "Books of the Bible"

Get all 67 songs here.

Born Apisit Opsasaimlikit in 1975, Joey Boy began his career in the 1990s, recording his first hit, "Fun, Fun, Fun," with Canadian reggae artist, Snow, in 1995:



I discovered my first Joey Boy record a couple of years ago in a Vietnamese media store on Argyle Street right off the red line in Chicago. (Get it here.) As I described it then, it was "quite honestly one of the most bizarrely satisfying purchases of a musical nature I have ever made." That still holds today.

The present mix includes everything I have by one of the more inventive rappers in the world, deduped for your downloading and listening pleasure.

Jintara Poonlarb | Krob Krueng Vol.3

Listen to "Sao toong kula tum ai"

Get it all here.

Found yesterday at Thailand's Center Point in Woodside, Queens. Jintara "Jin" Poonlarb is to contemporary mor lam and luk thung what Hakim is to shaabi: it's most prolific and yet distinctive practitioner. While I've yet to develop enough of an ear to immediately distinguish Jin's voice from any number of other Isan-born female vocalists, I can usually tell when it's Hakim being blasted from the morning bagel and coffee or halal lunch cart. But, then, I've been listening to Hakim for more than a dozen years and to Jin for a mere two or three.

In addition to picking up every one of her CDs that I can find, my other Jin-related mission is to someday, somehow find--online or on VCD--her music video "Arlai World Trade" ("Mourning the World Trade Center"), which, in an article titled "The Morlam, the Merrier," ThaiSunday.com described thusly: "The reigning Morlam superstar of Thailand laments the attacks of Sept. 11 while young, bare-midriffed Thai girls gyrate in front of a surging American flag."

Update: Peter Doolan found it; and it looks like someone literally just uploaded it 3 weeks ago:

Yui Yatyoe

Listen to the first track



Listen to track #4



Listen to track #9


Get it all in a single blaze of glory here.


My favorite New York music blogger, Peter Doolan, is leaving the city in a couple of days to spend the next year (at least) in Bangkok. He and his girlfriend and I had tentative plans Friday evening to take a trip together up to Arthur Avenue for Italian eats and Albanian CD store diving, but circumstances (mine, alas) dictated otherwise. So, tonight's post is dedicated to him, with thanks for Monrakplengthai (which I hope he keeps up while in Thailand), for all of the translation/transliteration work he's done for me here and, last but not least, for introducing me to Thiri Video where, as some of you know, is where most of the ungodly great Burmese music I've posted here over the last year or so has come from.

I've spent the last week on vacation, using the time mostly to finish up three or four writing projects I'd been asked or commissioned to do. As a reward to myself today, and partly because I was thinking of Peter's immanent departure, I took a bike ride out to Woodside for the spicy-hottest pork larb I have ever had in my life (at Thailand's Center Point) and to dig through their large selection of CDs, all of which are on sale for half price--or about $5 a piece. This one, by a Thai Country singer whose name I don't know, and a Jintara Poonlarb collection I didn't already have, were the clear winners. (I'll post Jintara a bit later. It's by far the hardest-rawqin thing by her I've ever heard.)


What struck me about the present album, in addition to this woman's rather marvelously rough-around-edges voice, is the music production/instrument choices, which at times are, frankly, eyebrow raising. Which is to say: sublime.

PS: Thanks, Peter, for identifying the singer!

THAIPOP! | A Bodegapop Original

Listen to an unknown song by Jintara


This actually sounds more Cambodian than Thai to me


Listen to an unknown song by Yui 

Get it all here. 


Most of this egregiously soulful collection came from Thai Thai (76-13 Woodside Avenue), a little bodega run by Noi Sila in Elmhurst, Queens. By request, Sila will burn copies of CDs from her personal collection for you for a mere $2 a piece. (I was unsuccessful convincing her to start a music blog.) Four of the songs came from a Thai-Cambodian store on SE Foster Road in Portland, Oregon, and may, in fact, be Cambodian.


If that weren't problematic enough, "pop" is undoubtedly the wrong word for this stuff, which I'm guessing is considered by Thais to be "country." But, sigh, I already made the groovy mix cover (image from, as you probably guessed, the cover of a Thai 5-baht comic book), and I don't care if some of it is Thai, some Cambodian and none of it is pop. Whatever it is, it's 100% rawk solid gold.

Cover Me | 2 Dozen Super Awesome Covers

Listen to Melt-Banana's mash-up/deconstruction of the Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA" and "You're Welcome"

Hear Crowd Lu fearlessly scale the upper registers of Minnie Ripperton's "Loving You"

Dig Anthony Wong's Lou Reedy take on Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind"

Let your jaw drop in utter disbelief as Kahimi Karie reconceives Jimmy Cliff's "Harder They Come" for the 21st Century

Thrill to Mika Nakashima's dead-pan run-through of Sid Vicious's version of "My Way" (Note how "fucking" passes the censor several times, but not a reference to killing her cat, which gets bleeped out)

Sweat and fret as O.N.T.J detonate The Runaways' "Cherry Bomb"

Grab it all in one big glop, here.

According to George Plasketes’ Play it Again: Cover Songs in Popular Music, there are an estimated 40,000 songs floating around out there with at least one recorded cover version. This strikes me as an incredibly conservative estimate.

Whatever the real number might be, there are degrees of covering, and not all acts of covering mean or resonate in the same way. There’s a significant difference, for instance, between a Cambodian pop musician of the 70s swiping guitar licks from Santana or Creedence Clearwater Revival and a contemporary Latino group in Los Angeles basing a whole career covering songs from The Smiths catalog.

Neither act is better or worse, neither more nor less interesting than the other. But they are, in terms of their meaning, different enough to note.

Likewise, and more recently, Gwyneth Paltrow’s covering Cee Lo Green’s “Forget You” (the clean version of “Fuck You”) on an episode of “Glee” exists on a whole other meaning-plane from that of Gnarls Barkley’s cover of the Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone,” despite the common denominator of Cee Lo.

Speaking of which, what is UP with Gnarls Barkley’s “Gone Daddy Gone”? First, take a look at this official video. (Sorry, you'll have to click the link; embedding has been disabled.)

The song was a huge hit in the 1980s for the Violent Femmes, who were, if memory serves me, THE voice of the geeky white ectomorph. Every song seemed, regardless of the lyrics, to be about the experience of being extremely uncomfortable in one’s distressingly reedy, pasty body. So, what could a rather larger-than-normal black guy possibly be wringing out of this song?

As it turns out: Everything. The video, which pictures Cee Lo as a plump fly, his band mates as other insects, emphasizes and expands on the discomfort of the original, even as the actual musicianship slickens and pop-readies the song up from the much more spastic original. Cee Lo’s and Gordon Gano’s meaning are not exactly trans-racial equivalents, but there are interesting echoes going on. In the context of Cee Lo’s later smash-hit “Fuck/Forget You,” the “Gone Daddy Gone” cover makes even more sense: both recordings pitch Cee Lo as heroic outsider, marginalized underdog. But Ceelo doesn’t feel uncomfortable in his body; it’s more about him wondering what your problem is with it.

So, getting to the mix at hand. While listening to one song after the next might make it all sound entirely random, there are reasons for each inclusion—though there was no one single criterion that covered everything. First, and at bare minimum, I only included a cover if, in transit, some significant border was crossed: ethnicity, gender, nationality, race. Beyond that, I chose sublime examples of reconfiguration, amped-upness and unlikely verisimilitude.

Bear-Garden | Mercy Killing

I don't know how vibrant Thailand's alt music scene might be or, to the extent that one might thrive, where Bear-Garden finds itself situated within it. 

I can, however, say that--here at the old Bodega, at least--Somsiri Sangkaew's post-Subnai solo project has attained near-superhero status since I discovered it a couple of months ago via a long-defunct Alt Asian Pop site.

I love, love, love, love, love this album. 

Listen! Just listen:

... to "Yesterday We Cried"

... to "เพียงผู้เดียว"

and then get it all here.

Rap Around the World | A Bodega Pop mix

Listen to "Phnom Penh Hip Hop" by The Khmer Rap Boyz (Cambodia)

Listen to "Haiti" by Elza Soares (Brazil)

Listen to "Eat Around" by Missile Scoot Girl (Japan)

Listen to "Γουστάρει Η Παλαβή" by Εισβολέας (Greece)

Listen to "DK Anthem" by Divided Kingdom Republic (Zimbabwe)

Get the 24-song mix here.

As anyone who has spent a bit of time in the Bodega knows, this here shop keep has a particular predilection for international rap and hip-hop--the further the language from English, the better. That said, rap & hip-hop from around the world comprise a small percentage of the CDs in my collection, maybe 1%, if that. But you wouldn't know it, looking at the BP tag cloud.

I'm not exactly picky when it comes to pop; though I suppose I do have some standards. But, while there is certainly a goodly amount of bad hip-hop out there--mostly stuff that simply mimics rap in the USA--there are people in all corners of the world who, picking up cues from Western examples, take it somewhere else, occasionally somewhere totally unexpected. 


I'm not going to sit here this morning and tell you that every hip-hop artist in this mix is some sort of insane genius, turning rap & hip-hop up to 11. But some of them are. And those that aren't, at least among what I've tried to include here, are at bare minimum making the genre their own.

If you visit here often and have partaken of the dozen or so hip-hop related CDs I've posted over the last couple of years, fear not: I tried really, really, really extra-special hard not to duplicate, whenever possible. So there's Fama in here, but not the Fama you can get elsewhere on this site. I didn't actually count, but I think maybe 4 or 5 songs in this mix can be found in other full CDs or mixes on this blog.

I also didn't just rip stuff from YouTube videos, although--Jesus God Almighty, it was certainly tempting. Everything here is from my own personal CD collection, with a few things I downloaded myself from other sites that I wasn't able to find in CD anywhere (e.g., the Khmer Rap Boyz).


Okay, I'm going to shut up now and let you get to this. Would love to know what you think. It's my personal favorite Bodega Pop mix, and--at some point in the future, assuming people like this--I'll probably put together another (or two, or three).