What do you thinkkkkk / Trolls & Baiting

blah, Im trying to hash a lot of things out here. As much as 'ghettotech' grows on me as a scene, it certainly involves a lot of reckoning, doesnt it?

I want to avoid a common attack theme tho, which often raise issues as 'gotcha' moments proving the supposed huge racism/sexism of those spoiled hipster kids.[here,here,etc] Hipster audiences might have complicated and jarring relations and our fair share of delusional bigots, but I'm not convinced its so much more complicated and fraught than race relations in America as a whole. It also ignores the mixed backgrounds, huges #s of PoCs, women amoung them.

Mad Decent in particular seem especially prone to this attack, in part becuase they seem most inclined to be pressing buttons and putting out outragous marketing. (and :.?) they are also the biggest and thus attract the most conversation/heat. Them & Radioclit certainly jar me the most.

I think there is certainly a difference between something snarky / cheeky / hitorical / self-referencial like these:


which highlight ideas of orientalism and audience and seem to draw the conversation out vs. take it to this level:



Which seems, at least to me & please tell me how you all feel, as just offensive, the only sort of convo i see coming out of it would be some old ish on 'irony'.

Mad Decents recentish post here shows they certainly feeling some hate. 'Pon the Floor's youtube has tons of comments, mostly in the range of - cool / WTF / disturbing / LOL / ugly bitches / crazy / gross / awesome. Confuzed people wondering : a joke? a parody of islanders? 'setting us back'? AIDS/Nggr comments!? One of those vids that attracts the worst of the internet..

I'm sort of surprised 'Pon de Floor' got it more than 'Hold the Line', in which 2 whitey + jewish guy make a vid of a macho black dude fighting vampires, having babes around his throne & saving them from switchbladed fat darker girl, inna space. All this makes me uncomfortable! and I'm certainly not the only one:

Comments @ Vimeo + Youtube
Comments @ TheFader
Comments @ Couch Sessions
GrandGood
Hipster Runofff
Passion of the Weiss
Cracked.com Messageboards
ETZZZZZ

I wanna try to link to as many convos on this as possible, feel free to add any...

A comment at mad decent states:

mad decent, you’ve played me for a fool. I followed the buzz for over a year now. downloaded the leaks. went to the shows. I bought the album with real cash money. I preordered that shit and hyped it just like I hyped every mix with diplo’s name on it since I first heard AEIOU, relaxed to Florida, and played the annie mac and essential mixes out.

My only question now: is the white vampire character our latest example of familiar and played hipster irony, or simply autobiography?

all this major lazer / racism talk distracts us from the misogyny of your project / record label / white boyz club.

yes, diplo, switch, et al. are carnivorous cultural tourists.

yes, major lazer is a perverse retro-futurist blackface project.

yes, ‘Pon De Floor’ video makes a all-too cartoonish and historically-entrenched spectacle of black sexuality and reproductive parts.

But are we surprised?

diplo, switch, et al. have made y’alls careers exploiting the creativity and musical genius of brown and black women (and children).

And the diplo jock-riders at fader and pitchfork have been too busy praising white male deejays while muting the sweat and brilliance of the brown and black women at the mike.

(Please revisit M.I.A.’s interview before Kala dropped.)

Face it, mad decent, you wouldn’t be shit if it weren’t for the sweat and talent of black and brown women. And how do you thank these females that made you so dope?

You shove camera up their skirts in Rio and call it a Documentary-on-Blast.

You plaster images of bare-breasted black women to promote your ‘Mid-Summer Bash’ a couple of weeks ago.

And you mask a blackface project behind anonymous black hype men and rump-shaking teenagers. Hipster gods diplo and switch lay in the cut at shows in three-piece suits like cowards, hiding behind homoerotic [?] cartoons of a muscular black Jamaican minstrel they spent their careers impersonating.

And now hipster gods diplo and switch are mum and out of sight, anonymous behind the pussy lips on an unsigned video that doesn’t even credit vbyz kartel. But why would he want his name on that garbage anyway? diplo and switch obviously don’t.

Forget the nonsense questioning whether it would be okay for a black or West Indian man to make this garbage. Black male artists have been catching hell for years, and rightfully so, for their misogyny. Ask Tricia Rose. Ask Patricia Hill Collins. Its also an insult to the West Indian dancehall culture you are trying to ‘spread,’ ‘praise,’ appropriate, digest, and regurgitate to say that it is essentially misogynist, authentically exploitative of women, women’s labor, and women’s bodies. And even if it were: this is your album, and it doesn’t belong to an amorphous foreign, exotic, and fictional ‘culture.’

Own your shit, mad decent. Take responsibility for your product.

I agree with some, certainly not all of the sentiment there. Its interesting b/c it seems exactly like the sort of comment they were aiming to get on that post. Esp when they post nonsense like this, proudly attaching this video.



Its as if
a. they really believe they are somehow responsible for crazy dancehall videos shown on TV.
b. its a good thing that a clearly creepy 'look at this shocking behavior' video is representing daggering & "our main dude Skeritt Boy" throws a large table at some young woman. Like they see themselves as heroes in some grand controversy.

And thats where i get frustrated. Because it seems like 'trying to stir up controversy' clouds out 'trying to stir up a conversation'.

Butts and Accordians

I'm happy to see funana filtering onto everyones radars, it almost makes up for your non-zouk loving-ness, you heartless souls. Funana featured recently on Uproot Andy's new mix and got a full out assortment by Radioclit. It makes sense, as cumbia surprised me in its popularity, introducing err 'folkier' sounds to a fast beat loving scene. So funana with its hyper accordians seems a natural "new genre" to embrace, opened up as well by new connections made to the lusosphere with funana's popularity in Angola & Senegal.



Whats cool is that the hipster pattern is moving pretty much in line with diaspora intrests. At least in the francophone world bloggery, ive seen increasing intrest and mention of funana, from messageboards to kaysha. My guess This is due as well to lusosphere love and kuduru crossing borders, but probably more so from its proximity in sound and dance to zouks enourmous global popularity.



It all begins to feel full circle, as funana looks and feels like one of the folkier genres embraced so far. Of course, our understanding of folk should have been one of the ways we imagine these genres, as wayne raises so elequently here. What is global ghettotech is also folk music, although its bleeps and beats distracted me. I certainly don't know enough about funk carioca to make a point there. I'm not sure how it applies to my understanding of zouk or coupe-decale, genres so multi-country and globally consumed I'm less inclined to see it as folk, although I'm sure one could make an argument. I'm curious if i'm more inclined to see local-er genres like funana or mbalax as folk b/c of how they sound and feel to me vs. how they function.



So full circles. What seemed to me a grab for globalized tech as hipsters got bored of freakfolk, or white-ish underground rap, or whatever y'all listened to, seems more nuanced, like ears are bigger now after hipster mad global dashes. from freak folk to freak folk. cept this time its happier. cuz its the recession. and we need butts and accordians.



ps. can we discuss packaging like this at some point?

Ghettotech - Ghetto ?? + stuff showing up placessss

I tend to agree with one of Johan's points here about ghettotech. While democratization of digital technologies helped produce ghettotech, it means that its going to be looking less and less 'ghetto'. Not in where it comes from, but what it looks/sounds like.

There's huge differences recently, some stylistic changes which favors a cleaner sounds, as well as tech/production changes. There tons of examples, but i admit my new interest in Namibia's music industry which seems to have blossomed crazy in the past few years, with flashy new video..



Lady May won best dance video for that song, its a really fun video. also this!

Namibia produces a lot of artists/sounds, and its rising to join ghana, nigeria, senegal, kenya, S.A., etc as a strong african music industry. I'm a huge fan of Tate Buti, who calls his genre Kwiku, "a music put together by Tate Buti and his producer Pedrito between 2000 and 2003. The two mixed traditional-oshiwambo dance music, known as shambo, with Western-Africa's sounds of Kwassa kwassa, to create a quick ovambo music." I hear kwaito in the mix too flowing up from South Africa.



!!!!!!



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+

These are old videos, so i dont know what happened to this uzbek reggaeton group, but it might explain why its showing up in uigher music.

Its not subtle at all, notice the PR shirts they're flaunting @ :37



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i missed this. I guess Olu doesn't shy from the controversy.

Wondering about connects.. the little lamp looks like the RaiNB symbol, which involves actual connect between N & S Africans, all the silly magic lamps and camels associated with that packaging vs this which seems similarly/ yet differently fetishwise & maybe says something.. tons of nolly stars are lebanese mixes, i dunno.. the song makes no attempt to sound arab.

hold up

I just saw Dj L-Vis 1990's new video on Mad Decent. In the video he used basically unedited footage of the popular congolese dance videos by the Soukous Vibration Dancers.



from:


Generally, i dont have a problem with mixing dance videos. Theres a huge number of videos like this on youtube, often producing interesting results. But If youre a professional musician, and you release that as yr official music video, and you have a "growing career as a freelance video producer", shouldn't you at least give the ladies a holla?



And when does something fun get creepy? When does appreciating the seriously sweet dancing and lofi creativity of african music videos go wrong? When is it just using them to give a video some exotica/arty flair with the bodies of POCs? Im sure there could be ways to use and get inspiration from these videos in ways that seem less off, I'm thinking in the lines of MIA's Boyz video.

And does it matter? After all, the original video has 194,158 views while L-Vis 1990's has 5,821. Which might mean they have more clout than he does. I'm not sure those dancers have anything to fear from niche Djs. Either way, I think we should expect DJs to use the same respect & give appropriate credit to video makers and dancers as well as the musical artists they use and work with, vs. assuming it doesn't mater, b/c those 'are the real artists, not like those endless, expendable video girls'.

Zouk!

You know whats sad and sort of endearing?
The amount of hits ive gotten recently from poor souls searching "lalala halehelohalow" like "english translation for lalala halehelohalow", "lalala halehelohalow helabalahehelebalo meaning", "arab money hook halehelohalow", "main chorus arab money halehelohalow", etc. I have no idea why he thought he could get away with that chorus in this day and age..

Over @ Ben Loxo, Matt recently had a guest post about Zouk, a genre worth defending. The english wikipedia zouk article is meh (but the french article is fun) ex:

"Zouk is a style of rhythmic music originating from the islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique and the former French colony of Haiti. Zouk means "party" or "festival" in the local creole of French with English influences. In Africa, it is popular in franco/luso countries, while on the African islands of Cape Verde they have developed their own type of zouk. In Europe it is particularly popular in France, and in North America the Canadian province of Quebec."

Im no expert, but does 'rhythmic music' mean anything?

Usually id post all my fav videos, but I doubt i'll win any converts. Sadly zouk is not a genre about to be featured in Fader. Esp zouk-love. The most saccarine of afro-carib 'post-colonial pop', to me its the panultimate slow dance music, influenced heavily by other sweet musics like Compas (and :. cheesy french chanson music) as well as american RnB. Its a music I probably wouldnt dig if it hadnt been such a staple in west african clubs, accompanied by riskee-for-senegal intricate grindin.


francosphere/lusosphere

There are a number of reasons zouk is fun for me to dig a bit into. For starters, im always curious as to how music spreads thru spheres, and zouk in particular leaves me with a million questions. Why does zouk travel across francophone and lusophone countries but completely misses bordering language spheres? If the music isnt bound by one language sphere (sharing french and portuguese) why has it practically never crossed into anglo or spanish speaking territory? - especially when zouk has been so localized /adapted and embraced differently by various regions in these spheres, as Neva Wartell says:

"Today we can hear the influence of zouk in dance rhythms around the world, from Brazilian lambada to Caribbean styles as diverse as merengue and soca; from Cameroonian makossa, Congolese soukous and Cape Verdian funana to zouglou from Ivory Coast and even zouk-mbalax from Senegal."

Zouk-Mbalax : Philip Monteiro - Gainde njaay



Cape verde and west african zouk are closely linked, sharing some of the same artists (similar location, not language?). In Angola, zouk is known as Kizomba and shares a similar dramatic dancing style with brazilian zouk (language link, not location?) West African and Angolan zouk operate totally independantly (um, continant not country!) Also, Zouk is popular in France, with many crossover hits and steady influence on french RnB, but is much less visable in Portugal (France is closer linked to former colonies?). Finally, some stars tour thru / crossover everywhere. Congo-Brazzaville Zouk/coupe-decale star Kaysha's 'REPRESENT' tees and tour locales are give a good image of the widest possible zoukosphere, or Coupe-Decalesphere.



I also hear zouk in Akon's singing, subtly influencing while being influenced by the current sounds of hip-hop and RnB. Not just in its super slick vocals, but also because along with rai, zouk is something I associate with interesting autotune uses, esp as its becoming an RnB staple, as it has been in zouk for the past ~ 7 years.

old pop-zouk french crossover hit, sweet video : zouk machine - maldon



gotta say, those ladies are pretty rad..

ring ring ring

Global cell phone use at 50 percent

"At present, Africa has the largest growth rate of cellular subscribers in the world, its markets expanding nearly twice as fast as Asian markets. The availability of prepaid or 'pay-as-you-go' services, where the subscriber is not committed to a long term contract, has helped fuel this growth in Africa as well as in other continents." ~ wiki

To people going global south, esp Africa, i'd say avoid internet & get a cell! a. You can integrate / meet up better b. they are cheap and c. as Carlos recently reminded me, its the main way virals and memes and such get spread. Its youtube, boombox, AIM. Plus, its the only way to learn text languages. Im particularly fasinated with Arabizi, which is easier for me b/c I can't really read arabic w/o harakat anyway and I gratefully <3 the simple grammar.

Being able to understand chat language is really useful & surprisingly hard to get w/o traveling. Ive been really pissed off at wordreference.com, whose message boards have always been godly while trying to write french papers or translating messages at work. But the moderators have actually deleted my recent posts asking about west african french e-speak b/c they 'werent inquiring about correct french grammar', proving once again how commited most of french language academia in the US is to maintaining their own irrelevency. porkoi?!!



Above are the strangly appealing graphics of Kosovar youtuber Legoistat, who contributes to a long line of 'local' refurbishings of universal tech noises,in this case Nokia ringtones. He also made an amazing nationalist / homophobic video which gays up all the the flags of countries that did not recognize Kosovo. Somehow the hate ends up as a magical art.

These refurbs appeal to me as a nerd and lover of what may be now "contemporary post-colonial urban electronic dance music"






msn carib/braziled:


and dancinggg

HELLO WORLD! part a

African Tonik + world + Internet = lovely fruitssss

I found African Tonik bouncing around here, on an amazing mix of reggaeton (/dancehall/rnb) songs, many quite arab/desi informed. The blog is bursting with electro reggaeton, and pointed me to a lot of interesting tracks ie FRESH FRESH global reggaeton. Also, check out the genres in the label list on the side : Reggaeton, RNB, Dance Hall, House, Elektro, Mamboton, Soca, Remix, Reggae, Hip Hop, Reggaeton Romantico, Caribbean, Latin, Rai'N'b, Bachata, Bachaton, Flamenco-RNB, Merengue, Salsaton, Slow RNB, Anime, Arabic, Cubaton, Elektro-Reggaeton, German RNB, Mixtape, Party Music, Spanish, Tropical!!! NU-Whirled indeed!

Thanks to DA-Cri-EM, aside from all the electro-reggaeton, Ive also found found AMAZING electro/desi/dancehall tracks by Baba Khan like Tonight:



(electro-reggaeton?)(electroton?)(electron?)Rakim Y Ken-Y Come On:



and African Tonik fits right in!

Coupé-Décalé

After rolling my eyes at the Fader's mini presentation of Coupé-Décalé, especially the comment "I could get all anthropological and delve into the context of it but other more knowledgable people have already done that" with a link to this wikipedia article with only a wee little paragraph on Coupé-Décalé.

I've seen a lot of write-ups which describe it as a 'hot new scene' (umm at least 5yrs late) & after searching the anglosphere for better sources i found a serious lack of info. I know that new documentary is coming out which will prolly give people a better sense of the music's context and history but i figured id try to help out by adding some francophone knowledge to the mix and give Coupé Décalé its own wikipedia article. It's very adhok right now, im hoping people add and edit to what i started.

Tech weh yuself

Wayne @ Wayneandwax.com has, as usual, written a really interesting post on chabbi and how it might/ might not fit into the 'ghettotech' umbrella.

If the guys in those chaabi videos were a street gang, holding guns & wearing kiffeyehs people would eat it up?

back when i was runnin my mouth, complaining about bizzarro distorted concepts of african music wayne quoted me (theantisuck) here.

I said - The roots obsessed decry Hip-Hop for losing touch with indigenous sounds. They blame American rap for destroying indigenous sounds yet they love ali farka toure, amadou &mariam, ethiopiques, ie. things that sound like American jazz and rock music. Then you have hipsters into African rap scenes, daraa j, kuduro, trying to find the music with the most dangerous street cred/booty beats and/or backpacker rap in Africa. Both “scenes” are perhaps dying yet so small and insignificant as to be nearly nonexistent next to the reality of African pop music and the actually huge scenes alive and well of coupe-decale, mbalax, swahili pop, zouk.

This isn’t to say that kuduro isn’t fascinating, especially from an academic perspective. It's just that I find it disquieting to see western audiences picking and choosing and making their own African celebrities and ideas of African music that seems so detached - in fact largely IGNORES much of the most popular African musical trends and artists celebrated across the continent. We seem to be creating our own African music scenes in our heads yet ignoring the scenes alive and kicking. Is this so bad or understandable? What are the consequences?

He responded by saying some legit points like we don’t have to listen to what's popular, shouldn’t worry too much about heisenbergian effects, and are coming from our own American, hip hop informed perspective.

Wayne asks: “Where are the Asian, Middle Eastern, or even European standard bearers for the global proles, if that’s what we’re repping?” global proles? I don’t feel like that’s what ghettotech is repping, even Wayne's stated bloggy interest is ‘American’ music, even in its broadest sense.

Ghettotech is music that is identifiably both ghetto (poor, urban, [hopefully black?]) and tech (what Wayne calls ““hip-hop logic” as well as the audibility of certain technologies and a set of sonic priorities weighted toward the low-end & the polyrhythmic”)

I feel like it would be hard to find Asian, Middle Eastern and Euro musics that fit entirely into that category. low-fi, urban, poor, sure. But they are just not engaged in the same intense dialogue with hip-hop as the Americas and Africa. I think that music comes from a totally different soundscape than that ol time triangular trade route of bodies/culture. Also not black. Race is probably an issue here.



Since runnin my mouth it turns out I was too cynical, at least about coupe decale. The mixtapes were already brewin. I can't even say I know mucho about African music anyway. Most of my knowledge is from living in Senegal in 2006 and the contacts I’ve maintained with friends there and diasporic shops/contacts. I think the distortion is also b/c African music is so mixtape/radio/adhoc spread. In Saint-Louis when I wanted to buy a cd I would tell shop owner Lamine what sounds I was interested in and ask about songs id heard at the club the night before and he would burn me a mix. no cd sales info. Even in JA, there’s trustworthy charts. So far I have been able to find no sort of trustworthy parallel African music charts. I feel like nobody has any idea what the people are actually listening to and so it’s hard to gauge context when discussing African music. If anyone begs to differ send me some links.

My orig point in that quote is that as somebody who just loves African pop music I love a lot of ghettotech music and the scenes occasionally awesome reflective engagement but find its limited scope frustrating. When I try to go to most clubs or music shops its arggg all marketed into that ol world music/nu whirled music ideas of African music. I wish there was a 3rd way audience dance/club scene that embraced global beats w/o always being ghettoed or downtempoed. But I dont think we are at a point where its easy to get direct engagement yet, so these scopes and ranges, i think, still matter. Not b/c of a few blogs influencing a music scene far away, but perhaps in terms of U.S. distribution.