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lamin fofana brings percussive chamber atmospheriks for the new year with a three track EP on sticks and stones records. vinyl forthcoming on 30th jan. digital on 27th feb.

(there’s a soundcloud link and a youtube link. which to post?) the head of audio at the bbc thinks radio should offer more visual content. this is kind of reactionary. phones and tablets have screens so radio should use screens. but what do we put on the screens? a dozen bbc executives dip their heads in simultaneous consternation. ask youtube, it could be good.

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Big up the BBC and Brook Lapping Productions. Erykah Badu presents two half hours of radio on the Black Power movement and the aesthetics and music that accompanied it. Great montage and interviews with Archie Shepp, Amiri Baraka, Ornette Coleman, Sonia Sanchez, Lloyd McNeil and Talib Kweli.

Kweli describes a situation from around 10 years ago where he booked a plane ticket over the phone. In the background he was listening to Stokely Carmichael speeches. When he turned up at the airport the authorities were waiting for him. The lesson he takes from this is that white power sees no problem with violence in the ghetto, but when anger turns righteous and directs its attention out to a broader context it becomes a serious threat. Even someone listening to a speech becomes a potential threat.

Here’s the write up. links below:

“Singer and songwriter Erykah Badu presents a two part series exploring the extraordinary underground music generated by the Black Power movement of the late Sixties and early Seventies: radical, beautiful and rare

Black Power – with its symbol of a fist clenched in anger and defiance – politicised African American music in ways the Civil Rights movement had not. The desire for integration gave way to a new, fighting impulse of cultural separatism and self-determination. Politics and music became explosively attuned. From 1968 The Black Arts Movement – ‘the cultural and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept’ – flourished, dedicated to the foundation of an authentic Black aesthetic in literature, poetry and music. ‘The Black Power and Black Arts concept both relate to the Afro-American’s desire for self-determination and nationhood’ wrote the African American philosopher Larry Neale in 1968,’…a main tenet of Black Power is the necessity for Black people to define the world in their own terms. The Black artist will make the same point in the context of aesthetics.’

The quest for freedom had both a musical and political resonance. Musicians opened up new and unexplored worlds of musical possibility. Players like Ornette Coleman and Archie Shepp pioneered the ‘New Thing’ – an avant-garde in jazz, pushing the limits of harmony and rhythm. Music was explicitly pressed into political service: The Black Panther Party even produced its own album of underground anthems ‘Seize the Time’ and Black music as a whole became far more vocal in its opposition to white mainstream society. Poet-musicians like Gill Scott Heron and the Last Poets delivered stinging attacks on the political failure of Civil Rights and the reality of the black experience in cities across America. Meanwhile Africa became as a powerful symbol for a younger generation of black American artists, a source of political identification, spiritual sustenance and often exotic, musical inspiration.

Black Power transformed the way musicians negotiated control and ownership of their own music. The club and bar circuit gave way to performances in galleries, lofts, community halls and public spaces. The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians was inaugurated in Chicago (and still thrives today) and other collectives followed. Radical independent labels flourished with very limited vinyl release. Many of these records, infused with the Black Power ethos, are extremely rare, and are featured throughout the series.”

Black is a Country pt1

Download audio file (black_is_a_country_pt1.mp3)

Black is a Country pt2

Download audio file (black_is_a_country_pt2.mp3)

There’s some more music from these times in this old post.

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Anne Briggs, heavyweight vocalist of the 60s/70s English folk revival sings an acapella rendition of ‘young tambling’, a song about a woman who is ravaged by a mysterious man in the woods and left pregnant. Later, as she ventures out again to the woods to pick a herb which will abort the baby, the man reappears and reveals he has been trapped in the wood by the vicious and capricious queen of elves. However, tonight being Halloween the elfin horde will ride out across the countryside. If the lady can pass a test then she can win the mysterious man’s freedom.

Damp, mossy darkness in northwest Europe… The song shows a series of supernatural threats on the body. Whether it be Tambling (the man)’s sexual attack on Margaret (the lady), where “he never once asked her leave” or the queen’s imprisonment (and accompanying disembodiment) of Tambling and her final curse which concludes the song: “I should have torn out your eyes Tambling, and put in two eyes of wood”.

I gave the vocal a new body of signals in this remix, adding frequency and re-supporting it away from absence and air onto new shifting material. In other words, I took the vocal, reverbed it out and put a load of synth and bass elements underneath it.

Here are the original and remix:

Anne Briggs – Young Tambling (original)

Download audio file (Anne Briggs – Young Tambling.mp3)

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York Hall, an old boxing gym in East London was bathed in darkness for Amadou and Mariam’s ‘Eclipse’ show on Tuesday night. The audience sat surrounded by audio roosters, fragments of speech and trains recorded in Bamako, Mali’s capital.

Amadou and Mariam are blind and the blacked out venue was designed to re-create their experience of their career. Spaces in between songs were filled with a booming narration (muddy in the large hall, near empty for this dress rehearsal) describing stages of their lives: schooling, marriage, touring Europe, getting three encores in Rennes etc. This was accompanied by field recordings (from Bamako to the world via aeroplanes) and smells, blown into the hall by discreet fans.

I spent a lot of the performance not believing the band was actually there and was pretty surprised when they were revealed for the final song. In the absence of visual information, I found myself trying to wean as much as possible from the sound: Are darkness reverbs heavier than lit ones? the sonic echo possibilities of Victorian ghosts. The staging threw up some conceptual questions too: the performativity of absence, can the ushers see trails of long-dead boxers with their night vision glasses?

The narration got a bit epic sometimes (”the people came from the depths of Mali to witness their union”), and there could have been more interaction between the live musicians and the soundscape elements, but this was a strong concept that shows that you can improve the quality of listening by cutting rather than boosting elements of the experience.

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More and more organisations are turning to beekeeping as a way to embed themselves into the urban fabric. The bees activity is a (embed) code which draws upon the urban environment, condenses it and transforms it into food. Pollen from plants 3 miles around the hive is collected and transformed into honey. People with severe allergies seek out local honey because the pollen from their surroundings, re-processed into something benign and absorbable by their bodies can increase immunity. Likewise, a bank or arts centre can embed itself into their physical locality quite easily by putting hives on the roof and having the bees forage in parks, gardens and window boxes nearby. Airborne urban farming which stitches itself into the city and re-processes urban materials into food.

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Here are some of our recordings manipulated and re-presented as a 10 minute soundscape. The bass is by “Variacoes em La” by Carlos Baretto.

Download audio file (wordthecat_-_bee_soundscape_2011.mp3)

bee soundscape

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“After they developed social living, they realised that diversity was a help”

The queen bee carries around all the sperm she will ever use after one mating cycle. The bees in the hive will share the same mother, but have many fathers. Genetic variety in the hive allows for more gradated behaviour: If it gets cold outside, several bees will stop work and concentrate on insulating the hive with their bodies, if it gets cooler still, more bees will switch to working on insulation. If all the bees had the same genetics they would be more likely to switch behaviour at the same point, abandoning the other tasks in the hive. “They actually operate like they care less about identity and more about function. The function being preserving the conditions required to make new life.”

“honeybees bring in spring”

Bees are pollinators. This is one of the reasons that people are so worried about the colony collapse disorder. Honeybees (as opposed to solitary bees) move in an organised mass, the weight of their pollination is one of the factors in allowing the change in seasons to be realised and for new plants to bloom.

this video of a woman (fantastically!) mouthing off is adding 100,000 views every hour:

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nick clegg, now in coalition with the ruling tories, speaking about how drastic cuts would lead to violence a month before the 2010 election which brought him to coal-ated power:

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also reports of hand to hand fighting between young people and riot police on the pembury estate in hackney. surreal mid-afternoon helicopter cam on people tooling up then fighting police by hackney central. a lot of this is received spectacle, especially when sky news keep cutting to car adverts, but capitalism gets the riots it deserves, and all those riots are centering on shops (and police in skirmish), not state buildings. people want fresh shoes, fuck it, i want fresh shoes too, and people can take them for free tonight. no-one on the telly can believe this is happening. that’ll wear off by the morning.

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These are really amazing noises. I want to say they’re unearthly, but that’s wrong. The noises are earthly, just maybe not from what many of us think of as the earth. Simple, but richly layered resonances, delays, echos and overtones give such a strong sense of place. Here are three pieces and notes from the Odds and Ends CD featuring his invented instruments. He’s installed and performed with the instruments in galleries, sound art events etc. around the world. some info on that here.

Voice “Analapos – ‘70″

Download audio file (Akio_Suzuki_Analopos_-_70_(1990).mp3)

“During the sixties I made nature my teacher. I visited different natural landmarks all over Japan, where I carried out a series of self-study events I called Searching for Echo Point. I would “throw” sounds out into nature and play with the resulting echoes. One day i came up with the idea of a machine that would create echos in a room.

According to a Japanese proverb, parents can learn much from their children. In the same way, the echo instrument I invented and named Analapos still continues to guide me.

In 1988 I held an event called Space in the Sun, the aim of which was to spend an entire day listening to the sounds of nature. I created a special space for this event in the mountains of Aminocho near Kyoto. The space consists of two parallel walls of sundried bricks which produce a unique echo similar to the famous “roaring dragon” walls at Toshogu Shrine in Nikko. I sometimes revisit this space, located right on the meridian, and am touched by how time and weathering is gradually causing it to fade into its surroundings.”

Aeolian Harp

Download audio file (Akio_Suzuki_Aeolian_harp_(1982).mp3)

“At the beginning of the eighties a magazine rang me up, saying that they would like to do an article about my invented instruments. I took them to the sand dunes at Hamaoka to take some picture for the article, and it was there that I discovered that Analapos played a weird melody when the wind blew across it.

These sounds depended on the direction of the wind and on the angle at which the instrument was suspended. I was also suprised to observe that rain and sand particles acted on the coil-springs to stop the sounds.”

Ancient Hill

Download audio file (Akio_Suzuki_Ancient_hill _(1994).mp3)

“After the Space in the Sun event, I began to think about the links between hearing, living and purification. Thirteen years have now passed since I first moved here to Tango. On three occasions during that period the hill behind my house has played host to a sound festival I promote called Festivity on the Ancient Hill.

The sounds here were originally recorded as ambient music for the Ancient Village local history museum in Tango, and feature me playing some of the instruments I invented during the seventies.”

from Carolyn Steel – Hungry City p.223

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Keep eating. Hype Williams on _tube is unfuckwithable:

a lot of this comes down to taste, but in terms of swag, lil b kills absolutely everyone. if we are going to draw an artificial comparison, tyler is technically very very strong but in an age of information, technical skill is only one piece of information. a highly prolific, chaotic, public profile is A LOT. think of wiley on Ustream… that’s a lot of information, but in these times, that chaotic information will organise itself (e.g. wiley’s strawberry jam endorsement) with a little help, or with an overarching narrative, like #BASED or #swag. all of a sudden tweeting “Ladies go suck that mans dick that works hard and is trying everyday to find himself work a job and stay positive, suck his dick – Lil B” is #BASED and the people say:

“Being based is being positive and not worrying about other peoples opinions about you. Keep hating, we’ll be here with Basedgod looking at the bigger picture, questioning the secrets of the universe on a based level. You’ll be on the computer insecure, unaware of your own flaws, dissing LiL B because you just don’t understand smh” countchunkula

this also ties together a really varied, experimental approach to producing content. whether it’s a dictionary book, mixtapes, or trying to turn himself into a god:

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the point is that in an age of manipulate-able information, you CAN turn yourself into a god. and that’s swag.

musically… there’s a lil b record of spoken word over beatless synth pad productions which is also #RARE called ‘rain in england‘. to re-emphasise, this is a long way from what is expected… and is from a record containing 67 minutes of this. you have to respect how uncompromisingly hard that is… here’s the final track:

Lil B – God Kissed Me

Download audio file (lil_b_God_Kissed_Me.mp3)

Sakawa: On Occultic Rituals and Cyberfraud in Ghanaian Popular Culture by Joseph Oduro-Frimpong [pdf]

this may sound obscure but let’s just think of occult practices as means to an end. when riki lake or oprah tells guests they must love themselves before they can love others, that is a form of re-imagining, a means toward an end which is itself a form of magic.

maybe this is a way to achieve success in the music industry, which all things being equal, is becoming a realm of hype (”collective fantasies”), and “emprically unproven relations between phenomena” which require will require “new magic for new situations”. in a world in which concepts, economies and tectonic plates are becoming increasingly unstable we no longer need a “coherent, ordered system”. in fact, ask the israeli army, who use deleuze and guattari to plan urban warfare, using means and ends alone is usually the most direct approach. this is itself an occult approach, bypassing accepted models to visualise a situation and force it into happening. ritual magic usually involves some kind of exchange. redemption/transcendence through sacrifice has been around for as long as there has been people. producers with an occult hustle should probably read the small print and make sure they’re not the ones getting crucified.

“It is in view of conceiving of occult discourses in our contemporary world as “new magic for new situations” (Comaroff and Comaroff 199: 284) that I approach sakawa narratives as ‘collective fantasies’ (Tholden van Velzen and van Wetering 2001: 18). In adopting this notion as a way of understanding these narratives, I am not suggesting that it is a coherent framework shared by all Ghanaians to explain the connection between the enactment of occultic practices and the success of cyberfraud. The concept lies allows for certain flexibility in exploring “new possibilities . . . with empirically unproven relations between phenomena . . . without the necessity of turning them into a coherent, ordered system” (Meyer 1995: 248). Within such system, collective fantasies “often employ the realm ‘realm of darkness’ in order to express and clarify existential questions” (Meyer 1995: 248). From this perspective, I demonstrate how sakawa narratives are popular in Ghana precisely because they express discontent with certain economic and social situations in the country. Such an expression, as couched in sakawa narratives, is a “retooling of culturally familiar technologies” (Comaroff and Comaroff 199: 284) of previously existing narratives involving religious beliefs and (alleged) practices that go with satanic/occultic riches (Meyer 1995).” (4-5)

the article contains analysis of the relationship between popular culture (video films) and the political elites to sakawa. i’m not ghanaian and i’m not an anthropologist so i won’t go too deep into it, but here’s the synopsis of the climax of the film Dons in Sakawa:

“At the Shrine of Calipha, Lord Bokka makes the supplicants aware that each has a “golden rule” to observe that ensures their continued success in the cyberfraud business. Although these ritual rules are not made explicit to the audience, as the film progresses, one becomes aware of them. Thus, for Mike, he had to find and be sexually intimate with a mad woman once a month. Justin had to be faithful to Stacy (his girlfriend for several years), and not have any other sexual affair. Hakeem was not supposed to use his wealth to cater for the health needs of his mother and younger female sibling.

However, all the friends flout these rules. Mike discontinues with his monthly sexual escapades with mad women, which results in his eventual madness. Justin becomes attracted to a young lady and jilts Stacy. One day while Justin and his new-found love were coming out from a fashion boutique, Stacy confronts him about his inconsiderate behavior but Justin snubs her. Stacy pulls out a gun, shoots Mike and then commits suicide. With Hakeem, although he initially refused to pay upfront, the needed funds so that the mother could be attended to, he finally gave in after reflecting on how his single-parent mother had struggled to see him through his university education. Soon after Hakeem’s mother’s was released from the hospital, Hakeem visited her at her home. On his way out, Lord Bokka appeared in the courtyard of Hakeem’s mother to demand Hakeem’s soul. A Christian pastor of the church Hakeem’s mother attends was present and the pastor decided not to allow Lord Bokka to take Hakeem’s soul. This impasse results in a spiritual fight between the representatives of Good and Evil where the latter lost and Hakeem redeems his soul.” (7-8)