Documentary: British Asian Sound Systems

Call it Bhangra managements: in a period stretching from the 90s to the early 00s, a musical and social phenomenon took place within the UK’s Asian community. A sound was developed that incorporated the pleasures, pains and politics of second and third generation Asian Brits. From the remixes of classic Bhangra tracks to the creation of drum & bass this period of time encapsulated a movement where cultural identities where announced all through the audible soundscapes of incredible music and the vital heart of youth nightlife. 

From Dazed magazine, via Shocklee Entertainment Universe. Here.

Vice: Mexican Mods Helped to Reshape the Cartel-Ravaged City of Tijuana

Very interesting article from Vice (Dec. 15, 2014) about the mods of Tijuana.

"The mod scene in TJ is small, but being a Mexican mod isn't all that different from being a regular Mexican," says Tijuana a Go-Go DJ Astronauta Jackson. "We all like to get fine and dandy, shake our hips to the oldies but goodies and get wasted by the end of the night. It's all about the music mainly. If you want to pop on a Fred Perry and some shiny shoes, cool. It's all the same people getting together and listening to the music."

The New Yorker's Alex Ross on Adorno, Benjamin, and popular culture

Benjamin once wrote, “Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.”

More here.

Afrika Bambaataa's archive

Bambaataa's record collection, amazingly, is now held at the Cornell University Library, in its Hip Hop Collection. Learn about it here, as archivist John Kugelberg shows it to us, and Bam himself discusses it and how his method of collecting and his incredibly eclectic use of it onstage.

Crocheting gangstas

Reading: 

Angela McRobbie, "Settling accounts with subculture: A feminist critique."  

Screen Education 34, 37-49 (1980).

Semiotics explained with hipster beards

This is soooo great, and it is a wonderful complement to the first chapter ("From culture to hegemony") of Dick Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style.

The post is actually called "Post-Structuralism Explained With Hipster Beards Part 1," but in fact it explains structural linguistics, or semiotics, and Part 2 gets into post-structuralism.

Please read, you will enjoy, and you will learn.

Queer Hip Hop Clips From 8 Countries

Via Norient, some queer video clips from around the world: Angola, Argentina, Cuba, Germany, Israel, Serbia, South Africa and the USA.

Go: here. 

Abu Ghraib 'Nam

Dennis Draughon, 2004

accessed here

Questlove (of The Roots) on the Failure of Hip-Hop

Kufiya'd ?uestlove in promo material for "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon"

Writing in Vulture on 22 April, 2014, Questlove observes:

Hip-hop has taken over black music...

Once hip-hop culture is ubiquitous, it is also invisible. Once it’s everywhere, it is nowhere. What once offered resistance to mainstream culture (it was part of the larger tapestry, spooky-action style, but it pulled at the fabric) is now an integral part of the sullen dominant...

The music originally evolved to paint portraits of real people and handle real problems at close range — social contract, anyone? — but these days, hip-hop mainly rearranges symbolic freight on the black starliner. Containers on the container ship are taken from here to there — and never mind the fact that they may be empty containers. Keep on pushin’ and all that, but what are you pushing against? As it has become the field rather than the object, hip-hop has lost some of its pertinent sting. And then there’s the question of where hip-hop has arrived commercially, or how fast it’s departing. The music industry in general is sliding, and hip-hop is sliding maybe faster than that...

When hip-hop doesn’t occupy an interesting place on the pop-culture terrain, when it is much of the terrain and loses interest even in itself, then what? 

Generic advertisement: how to 'brand' almost anything

Here's the text, courtesy McSweeneys.

We think first
Of vague words that are synonyms for progress
And pair them with footage of a high-speed train.
Science
Is doing lots of stuff
That may or may not have anything to do with us.
See how this guy in a lab coat holds up a beaker?
That means we do research.
Here’s a picture of DNA.
There are a shitload of people in the world
Especially in India
See how we’re part of the global economy?
Look at these farmers in China.
But we also do business in the U.S.A.
Or want you to think we do.
Check out this wind energy thing in Indiana,
And this blue collar guy with dirt on his face.
Phew.
Also, we care about the environment, loosely.
Here’s some powerful, rushing water
And people planting trees.
Our policies could be related to these panoramic views of Costa Rica.
In today’s high speed environment,
Stop motion footage of a city at night
With cars turning quickly
Makes you think about doing things efficiently
And time passing.
Lest you think we’re a faceless entity,
Look at all these attractive people.
Here’s some of them talking and laughing
And close-ups of hands passing canned goods to each other
In a setting that evokes community service.
Equality,
Innovation,
Honesty
And advancement
Are all words we chose from a list.
Our profits
are awe-inspiring.
Like this guy who’s looking up and pointing
At a skyscraper or a kite
While smiling and explaining something to his child.
Using a specific ratio
of Asian people to Black people to Women to White men
We want to make sure we represent your needs and interests
Or at least a version of your skin color
In our ads.
Did we put a baby in here?
What about an ethnic old man whose wrinkled smile represents
the happiness and wisdom of the poor?
Yep.

Hipster Music Index, 2013-14

From priceonomics, the first "scientific" study of hipster musical tastes.

How was it done: (1) albums that Pitchfork likes. Data gained through analysis of Pitchfork's "best new album" section). (2) albums that are obscure (my fave band, you've probably never heard of them). "Obscurity" factor determined by seeing how many times a band is mentioned Facebook. A "hipster" band will gain less Facebook attention.

The results:

Hipster-approved: Sun Kil Moon, Fuck Buttons, The Field, and Julia Holter.

Not hipster: Daft Punk, My Bloody Valentine, and Arcade Fire did not.

Vampire Weekend's position: ambiguous. 

Read the full study, with graphs, here.

#1 most "obscure" and therefore scientifically-proven hipster artist: The Field (Axel Willner, a Swedish electronic music producer and DJ currently based in Berlin). As a Swedish-American: I am so proud.

A lesson on reverse racism from Aamer Rahman

South Bronx, '80s, from Photographer Steven Siegel

Siegel is another well-known photographer who documented the look of the South Bronx in the eighties. I'm not sure of the provenance of this photo.

 

This is the source of the one below. 

Rap lyrics research tool: Rap Stats

"Rap Stats...can help you figure out the migratory patterns of drug dealers, when hip-hop became big business, and whether money really is over bitches

Perform your own searches at http://rapgenius.com/rapstats and tweet your favorites with the #RapStats hashtag!"

For example, an illustration of the decline of "conscious rap":

"Babylon": the Black British sound system/reggae scene

The Vimeo post describes Babylon thus: "A film of sheer sound and fury, the uncompromising subject matter (it all but anticipates the race riots that engulfed inner cities soon after release) and classic reggae soundtrack helped cement Babylon's reputation as one of the most powerful and historically significant documents about the black British experience ever made."

BABYLON from psychomafia on Vimeo.

I found the film via Dangerous Minds, which has this (among other things) to say about the film:

"The soundclash scene with Jah Shaka near the film’s end is just a flat-out great piece of film-making...I lived in Brixton in 1983-84 myself...and walked past a couple of outdoor Jah Shaka parties that I probably would not have been all that welcome at (his PA system was so loud it felt like the music was thicker than the air, like some kind of dub humidity)... Babylon perfectly evokes the growing racial tensions—and intense feelings of doom—of inner city London life during the late 70s/early 80s that ultimately culminated in the fiery Brixton riots."