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."

Martha Rosler: Bringing the (Vietnam) War Home

Cleaning the Drapes

Rosler conceived Bringing the War Home during a time of increased intervention in Vietnam by the United States military. Splicing together pictures of Vietnamese citizens maimed in the war, published in Life magazine, with images of the homes of affluent Americans culled from the pages of House Beautiful, Rosler made literal the description of the conflict as the "living-room war," so called in the USA because the news of ongoing carnage in Southeast Asia filtered into tranquil American homes through television reports. By urging viewers to reconsider the "here" and "there" of the world picture, these activist photomontages reveal the extent to which a collective experience of war is shaped by media images.  (Text from MoMA.)

Balloons

View more in this amazing series here.

Bronx Photos

Some great photos of the South Bronx here, dating from the early hip-hop era.

Here's hip-hop pioneers the Cold Crush Brothers.

And here are the Cold Crush Brothers from the film Wildstyle. That's the Puerto Rican Charlie Chase you see on the deck, right at the beginning.

“Punk Rock is more feared than Russian Communism"

Check out this BBC current affairs show, from 1997, which gives a vivid sense of how much sections of the British establishment were nervous about the punk rock scene.

The invaluable Dangerous Minds posted about it, and has this to say about it:

What the fuck were these people thinking? What were they scared of?
 
Well, to start with, 1970s Britain was in a mess. It had high unemployment, 3-day working weeks, nationwide power cuts, tax was at astronomic levels, food shortages, and strikes were commonplace, and the Labor government feared a revolution was imminent.

To explain why this all came about, let’s rewind the tape to a mass demonstration at Grosvenor Square, London, March 1968. This was where an anti-Vietnam War rally erupted into a massive pitched battle between protesters and the police. Outside of the American Embassy 200 people were arrested; 86 were injured; 50 were taken to hospital, half of which were police officers. The Labor government of the day, were stunned that a group of protestors could cause such disorder, and near anarchy, that could have led (they believed) to a mini-revolution on the streets of London.
In fear of such anarchy ever happening again, the government decided to take action. At first, ministers considered sending troops out into the streets. But after some reassuring words from Special Branch, Chief Inspector Conrad Hepworth Dixon, they were convinced that the boys in blue could handle any trouble. Dixon was allowed to set up a new police force: the Special Demonstration Squad.

This was no ordinary police operation, the SDS had permission to be literally a law unto itself, where its officers could operate under deep cover, and infiltrate left-wing, fringe organizations and youth groups, with the sole purpose of working as spies and agents provacteurs. Harold Wilson’s government agreed to pay for this operation directly out of Treasury funds.

The SDS carried on its undercover activities against any organizations that they believed threatened Britain’s social order. This include animal rights organizations, unions, and anti-Nazi, and anti-racism groups. They were also allegedly involved in the planting incendiary devices at branches of department store Debenhams in Luton, Harrow and Romford in 1987; and one member was later involved in writing the pamphlet that led to the famous “McLibel” trial of the 1990s.
The workings of the SDS were on a “need to know basis,” and only a handful of police knew exactly what this little club were up to. But their presence fueled genuine fears amongst the British Establishment that there were “Reds under the beds,” and that revolution was a literal stone’s throw away.

This was all going on behind-the-scenes, while out front, muppets like the councillors and journalists lined-up on this program, pushed the hysteria of Punk Rock riots and civil disobedience, that reflected the very genuine fears at the heart of the UK Establishment. (Note London councillor Bernard Brook-Partridge mention of “MI5 blacklists.”)

And here's the vid of the show. Essential viewing.

Misrepresentation of history of US and Vietnam continued

Corey Robin put up a great post today (October 4, 2013) about the Washington Post's obituary for Vo Nguyen Giap. Full of misrepresentations, of course. Good thing that in this course we read H. Bruce Franklin's Vietnam and Other American Fantasies.

The Damned on the commercialization of punk, 1977

Via Dangerous Minds:

This spot isn’t a probing exposé on The Damned (nor does it have the best visual quality, sorry), but the segment actually gives a fairly astute assessment of punk rock as an exploitable business opportunity. In addition to giving a decent description of punk’s appeal to working-class British kids, the piece is genuinely insightful about the relationships between capitalism, identity, youth, and “authenticity.” You can actually hear concern in the narrator’s oh-so-sober-and-respectable tone as he bemoans that “it is now possible to buy a gold safety pin for up to $100 to go with a hand-ripped t-shirt, that sells for $16.”

 Watch the vid. And be sure to read the entire post.

Ian Penman reviews Richard Wight on Mods: Amphetamines, Jean-Paul Sartre and John Lee Hooker

He doesn't much like the book, but the review is rad, man. (I know, I'm not referencing the right subculture.)

 

Some snippets:

What Richard Weight calls the ‘very British style’ of Mod found its initial foothold in late 1950s Soho with the arrival of the jazz ‘modernists’, who defined themselves in strict opposition to the reigning gatekeepers of Trad. Modernists were wilfully brittle, stylish, working-class Cains, different in every way from the whoop-it-up trad jazz Abels. Trad – hugely and improbably popular in its day – had a predominantly middle to upper-class and purposively vulgar fanbase. In its ranks were Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin and George Melly, who all later wrote of this time as of a lost Eden. Larkin’s jazz column for the Telegraph ran from 1961 to 1968, a period roughly coextensive with Mod’s quiet rise and noisy fall.

Trads embraced a louche, boho scruffiness (silly hats, sloppy jumpers, duffle coats), where Mods dressed with considered exactness. Trads were British to a fault (real ale, CND, the Goons) while the Mods had a magpie eye for European style, from the Tour de France to the Nouvelle Vague. Trads followed Acker Bilk, Mods worshipped Thelonious Monk: even at fifty years’ remove, you can see how sharing the same club, city or country might have been problematic. If the Oxbridgey Trads had a philosophical pin-up it was Bertrand Russell, with Freddie Ayer for real deep kicks; Mods backed the darker horse of existentialism. How much the Mod crush on continental philosophy was a pose, and how much serious engagement, is a moot point. Even as ‘mere’ pose it’s a very interesting one. In the dourly socialist cinema of the British New Wave, working-class characters are portrayed as sooty beasts of burden, life-force bruisers, 12 pints a night men; Camus-rifling aesthetes are thin on the cobbled ground...

For the Mods, as with the Situationists (awol from Weight’s index), there was a conflict between rowdy group identity and individual slant. They mixed outdoor jaunt with indoor dissipation, group jamboree with sombre reflection, and they took very small things very seriously indeed, things other people wrongly perceived as frivolous. The Mod obsession with Blue Note album sleeves and Italian fashion had the quality of fetish, in both the Marxist and ritual senses. It required near-fanatical commitment to ‘source’ the materials required for a makeover...Early Mod shared with Bauhaus an almost puritan obsession with clean style and correct design. Early Mods had a deserved rep for sartorial aloofness, which shaded into a kind of radiant anonymity. Like the ‘man of the crowd’ in Baudelaire (and Benjamin) they were in the crowd but not of it, tracking sociability like spooks instead of being haplessly caught up in it like everyone else.

Early Mods could ‘pass’ between work and play without changing their suits, which is perhaps one of the reasons they were never sent up in the culture at large...

Mod’s ‘very British style’ was initially a tasteful synthesis of American flash and European savoir faire.

Robert Moses and the destruction of the Bronx

You can access the entire episode by renting it from Amazon.

On Eddie Adams' celebrated Vietnam photo

February 1, 1968. The Tet offensive. This iconic photo was one of the key images that helped turn US public opinion. As H. Bruce Franklin shows in Vietnam and Other American Fantasies, it was in turn an image that the powers that be worked hard to reverse. Hence, for instance, he argues that the infamous Russian roulette scene in The Dearhunter should be understood as part of the larger effort to transform memories of the Vietnam war, at the level of the image. The US ally, the South Vietnamese general who summarily executes a suspected 'VC' insurgent, is replaced with the image of the innocent US POW, forced by sadistic North Vietnamese guards to put a gun to his head. The victim of the war becomes the US soldier....Read about the history of the image and the photographer here. It's not the best commentary imaginable: the author's sympathy lies with Adams, the poor guy who viewed the execution up close. Not with the executed.