Beat Diaspora: Beats, Buses, Bricks

50 Years of Half-Smokes

2008-08-27T22:53:00.000-03:00

In a city short on homegrown icons -- because everybody, it seems, is from somewhere else -- D.C. quietly clings to the half-smoke as its only indigenous cuisine. And the city's best, or at least most stalwart, proprietor of half-beef-half-pork-half-Polish-half-smokes is Ben's Chili Bowl. It may sound questionable that a divey greasy spoon serving up the messiest, most ungraceful dish imaginable could anchor a neighborhood, but Ben's survived the 1968 riots that decimated "Black Broadway," the U Street corridor, and has been right in the thick of its since the neighborhood's (largely white) renaissance. In the dark days of the '80s, Ben's was about it for the birthplace of Duke Ellington.

As such, their 50th anniversary was not going to pass without notice. Between an outdoor street party last Friday -- 50 years to the day since they opened -- and a free go-go concert at the 9:30 club, not to mention a book launch, the half-smoke got its due.

I was particularly jazzed about the line-up of go-go heavy hitters: Trouble Funk, E.U., and Mambo Sauce. It's a damn shame I couldn't make it down for the afternoon and I haven't found any reviews posted, but getting all that for free, it's hard to complain. Go-go and half-smokes, that's D.C. in a nutshell.

I did my part to celebrate the anniversary, though. After Brazilian Rhythms, around the corner from 12th and U at 14th and T, I stopped by for a half-smoke smothered in chili. At 2 am, nothing else could have tasted so good.

Brazilian Rhythms: Distrito de Columbia

2008-08-20T20:03:00.001-03:00

Join me and DJ Neville C, proprietor of Som Records, a crate digger's mecca, for a night of, well, Brazilian rhythms. Expect samba & variations, tropicalia, MPB of all stripes, batucada, hip-hop brasileiro, and of course funk carioca.

Cafe Saint-Ex is at 14th and T Streets, D.C. No cover, so vem todo mundo.

[p.s. Post #100!]

Pictures don't need metaphors and neither does Go-Go

2008-08-19T15:29:00.000-03:00

50th Anniversary of The Pick of the Week: A Self Critique


~By Thomas Sayers Ellis

That joaint, especially, the title is kinda 'fusing. I mean confusing.

What you trying to say and why don't you just take pictures and shut the fuck up G.

You worse than Mambo Sauce.

Where's your photo book.

Where's your CD.

You should do like the rappers.

You should do like SharpShot and come by and photograph me and my kids and shut the fuck up.

Pictures ain't News.

Pictures don't need metaphors and neither does Go-Go.

TMOTT was cool as shit till you start dropping visual weekly-reader critiques on the scene.

I'mma steal your camera when I see you.

Still I be lookin' forward to these jammies and want to make a contribution to The Go-Go Pick of the Week fund
so you can start a Photographers Collective to show us how beautiful and how ugly we is all at once.

Where do I send the check? Sike move, fool.

I like this week's Pick. Looks like the kid is floating by on a skateboard.
w h a t the? He is. Damn and he looks like a young Barack too.

I imagine it must take a lot of luck and balls to walk around SE pressing people to take their photo
and bugging peeps for old Go-Go posters that you never get.

My dude don't quit. I seent some of your flicks on a Suttle DVD.

You must have gotten paid for that, cause I, myself purchased four.

Know what? The Pick of the Week is 50 weeks old this week, dayum, a milestone!

Where's the party.

Can I get a few flicks of Model Chick for my dashboard. I know you gots some.

If you had a nickel for every time someone thank you for a Pic, you might have a quarter, might.

That ain't now real job, flashing people while they danicng and shit.

Mr. G ought to kick yo a s s. Get off the stage nucca.

They say you talk to yourself when you shoot.

They say you hear the snare play before it plays.

They say you take pics just to get in free.

That you just using Go-Go to get a job at Jet.

Was that you coming out of the Metro in plaid on plain in Anacostia? You need a break dude.

Happy 50th young...

Go-Go Photo

2008-08-13T21:29:00.000-03:00

If you're looking for go-go, hip-hop, and R&B in the DMV (that's District, Maryland, & Virginia to you), then look no further than Take Me Out To The Go-Go. It's a one-stop shop that's been flooding my inbox lately with multiple daily e-flyers, mixtape announcements, and something that really caught my eye: TSE's pick of the week photo. TSE is Thomas Sayers Ellis, a photographer and poet. He's a co-founder of The Dark Room Collective, which has its roots in my recent stomping grounds up in Cambridge. In fact, I believe their Victorian HQ was around the corner from where I lived this year.

He's now working on a book of photography, The Go-Go Book: People in the Pocket in Washington, D.C. If the TMOTTGG pick of the week is any indication, he's captured a very rich slice of life in our nation's capital. And he writes a mean poem to boot --

The Return of COLORED ONLY

One of these badass,
glorious days,
the signs and negative sounds
that worked against us

will all begin their tenures
of service, their holy and complex repentance.
It has already begun with
"Nigger" and "Bitch"
and for this we have young folks to thank,
their disrespect and fearlessness.

Naturally, this will scare
the civil rights out of some
and, for a mad-moment, empower
a great many wrong-cultured others.

To this "The Return..."
will either code switch or hood ornament,
drama-drumming both––a cult-nats matrimony
of the vernacular re-mix: ain’t studin’ you,
nommo no more nommo,
stop studin’ us.

All yall who tell yall hearts Art,
your Bama Hour is, again, up-struggling
as we (credits and debits alike)
hang and unhang the old slanders ourselves

--not as segregationists
(although that wouldn’t be
that bad, given...) and not as Air Februarians
(.., given…) but as identity repair-people,
faders of trick moves, trope-a-dopes
and okey dokes,

laying our dice down like ( ) we love us.

Olympic Fury

2008-08-11T10:55:00.000-03:00

The 29th Olympiad is underway and all I can do is reflect on an article from two years ago: the destruction of hutong. To Chinese authorities, it was a form of slum clearance, an all too likely prospect during the Olympics. But as the author explains, it was a close-knit, functioning community.

Rail about pollution, corporate collusion, human rights, Tibet, authoritarianism. But don't forget the hutong.

Trinidad Nights

2008-08-07T23:18:00.002-03:00

I've closely followed coverage over the last couple months of the spate of violence in the D.C. neighborhood of Trinidad, which has ultimately resulted in two separate cases of the police setting up checkpoints and only letting in residents or those with documented business. I think of D.C. as a city in and of itself before adding in the federal government (whereas for most Americans its identity is exclusively the government), so I will set aside the obvious absurdity of checkpoints all of two miles from the Capitol, which was enough to ensure it international coverage. It is nonetheless a tragic breakdown of civic life when such a measure is deemed necessary -- and done without community consultation, I should add. Checkpoints are precisely the mechanism of urban segregation, stigma, and ghettoization. "Several years ago, Richardson said, she removed the steel grate from her center's front doors, and she plans on taking the bars off the windows. The checkpoint, she said, was infuriating because it suggested Trinidad has not changed." I can remember from my own experience in Rocinha the startling sensation of entrapment during a police invasion.

The outcry was widespread, and the legal challenges came quickly to reverse the status of "occupied Trinidad." While a Post editorial asks why there was more protest over the checkpoints than the murders, I can point to some compelling community efforts to the contrary, notably a mock burial for snitching led by the venerable D.C. anti-violence group Peaceoholics.

WAMU, the D.C. NPR affiliate, also ran a story on another anti-violence event (audio for RealPlayer & Windows Media), where go-go beats hover in the background as soon as it opens. It featured Anwan Glover, better known to many outside of D.C. as Slim Charles. In D.C., though, he's better known as Big G of go-go legends Backyard Band, credited with bringing more of a hardcore rap style to the go-go scene.

"Keep It Gangsta," if that gives you any idea.

Holding it down in Southeast D.C., very much the heartland for go-go. Audio is kind of rough, but the home movie feel is definitely charming. Now though, Big G is using his clout, the kind that only a go-go star who used to be a banger can bring to young black D.C., to bring home the message for D.C. neighborhoods that violence has got to go. Music is a way out of violence -- it was for Big G and it is for some of the kids interviewed in the story.

The GoTube commentators have it too. As TnUt00bLvr writes: "I'm with you for real, then niggas wonder why they gots to go all the way to Va.& Wheaton to see them play?STOP beefin in the local spots then y'all can party with Back!!You just taking GoGo farther & farther away from HOME because of bullshit!! Quit reppin hoods you rentin' or live with your folks in man!!" Inner-city violence is definitely another factor in the suburban dissemination of go-go.

The WAMU story is particularly penetrating for me, though, because of the comments by John Roman of the Urban Institute. He delves into the economics of the drug trade and then segues to a geographical analysis of how the neighborhood functions in the wider urban network: "At first, it's hard to see how this tiny neighborhood of brick row houses with wooden porches could be home for such violence. Bordered on one end by Gallaudet University and the other end by the National Arboretum, Trinidad physically lives up to its billing as a garden community. But as Roman observes, the layout of the neighborhood and its location have also made it a major hub for illegal drugs."

Parsing it down to one-way streets and proximity to particular avenues is a brilliant way of thinking about Trinidad's problems -- they don't exist in a vacuum, but rather at the core relate to how the neighborhood fits into the broader grid of D.C. On the flip side, the corner view is important too, and stalwart local columnist Courtland Milloy does what needs to be done: he drives into Trinidad in the hours before "killing time" to talk to residents.

On the blog-a-front, I was excited to discover inked, a blogger who lives in Trinidad. She writes at Frozen Tropics (Trinidad in a D.C. winter?), where the July posts are a frantic recap of hourly updates on shootings, checkpoints, and homicides. Digging through her archives, I found a great post on Trinidad houses that shows how picturesque much of the neighborhood really is. She is also a studious chronicler of the revival of the H Street corridor, still reeling forty years after the '68 riots. Her sense of both neighborhood pride and civic engagement is heartening, to say the least, and has already mitigated much of the hysteria that seeped through the media coverage of events in the neighborhood over the last couple months, which makes it all too easy for someone who has never visited the neighborhood to write it off on news coverage alone.

Enjoy your beautiful rowhouse, inked, and be safe.

Voting-a-Go-Go

2008-08-04T23:16:00.002-03:00

Any astute observer on the highways has probably seen D.C.'s provocative license plate, harkening back to Revolutionary-era complaints. It's true -- residents of the District pay federal income taxes, but their lone congressional representative cannot vote on legislation. It's long been a thorny issue, with the most recent best effort shot down just over a year ago.

The latest effort by the main advocacy group for District voting rights, DC Vote, definitely caught my ears. They enlisted a local gospel/R&B singer, Joe L. Da Vessel, to cut a go-go track on the topic.

Joe L. Da Vessel - Demand the Vote

Go-go is, of course, D.C. music to the core, but on a matter like voting rights, the precise boundaries of the city matter. Da Vessel, for example, gives an address on his website of Fort Washington, Maryland -- just across the line in Prince George's County (frequently touted as the most affluent black-majority county in the country). If that's where he lives, then he's got a voice (assuming he votes).

P.G. County is home to plenty of folks with roots in the District, dating back to a black middle-class exodus in the '60s and '70s. Wale, who I profiled from Rock the Bells, grew up in the District and moved out to Largo, MD as a teenager. Go-go's got a stronghold out there too, as an old online list of go-go clubs or the Take Me Out to the Go-Go message board can attest to. Addresses in NE and SE D.C. may still dominate, but there are plenty of Oxon Hill, Capitol Heights, Fort Washington, and Marlow Heights addresses too. The District's city line is definitely permeable, but I suspect go-go is going to move more in the county direction, as inner-ring suburbs become increasingly popular to residents squeezed out of cities by higher prices (or the dreaded 'G' word). The Anacostia River, a psycho-geographical barrier between affluent, cosmopolitan D.C. and everything else (aka black & poor) is even being crossed with some condo development in the historic Anacostia neighborhood. I glanced at some insipid condo newspaper full of marketing doublespeak on the Metro the other day and a real estate agent projected Anacostia is the next big market. This was unthinkable 5 or 10 years ago and, as it goes with the up-valuing of a low-income neighborhood, not something anyone can rightfully decry if they don't live there, but still something to watch -- change takes many forms, not always the ideal ones.

Back to the county, there is another dividing line in the Capital Beltway. As residents chime in on a City-Data thread about P.G. County, the inner-ring is aptly cordonned off the Beltway, the major highway enforcing its own kind of ghettoization. Meanwhile, go-go fans are getting squeezed on both sides as officials see club closures the solution to violence at go-gos in both P.G. County and the District. In an even further afield case, the suburban sprawl that has pushed black residents out of P.G. and into neighboring Charles County has seen police harassment bordering on racial profiling at a go-go night. Just as far from the District both geographically and culturally, I heard that Saturday night's show at Merriweather, where I saw Rock the Bells last weekend and where go-go pioneer and legend Chuck Brown was the undercard, went without incident.

All urban/suburban music, culture, race, and nightlife politics that are far more complicated than the fairly straightforward call for voting rights (it's a shame that Congress can't see how simple it is). On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that DC Vote shot a music video for the song. I'll scout it on VoteTube when it arrives.

"Now I know this is delicate / But I can go to war and all I can get is a shadow delegate?"

Are we in Baltimore? Are we in D.C.? Are we in Columbia?

2008-07-30T19:58:00.003-03:00

Columbia, Maryland is a planned community that appeared out of nowhere in otherwise rural Howard County in 1967. It may have improved on '60s suburban sprawl, but forty years later it's still plagued by suburbia's basic problems: car-dependency, low density, lack of mixed-use development.

I was born and raised here and the temporary return has been rocky, mostly the sticker shock of having to pay for gas while still gainfully unemployed in post-graduation limbo, not to mention the sheer time consumption of driving at least half an hour to access urban culture. Indeed, Columbia is positioned about halfway between Baltimore and D.C., a perk for reaching the two major job markets, or a drag if you just wish you were in one or the other.

I've watched that tension blossom over the years, especially as friends have gone in one direction or the other to settle down: Is it a Baltimore or a D.C. suburb? The answer, of course, is both, but I've made a parlor game out of watching the barometer in either direction -- how many signs for commuter buses to either city, which sports teams are getting repped in bar windows and on baseball caps, what newspaper does a particular house subscribe to, what local news channel do you watch. Despite a Baltimore orientation in high school, I've gradually recognized that I orbit the District -- from the Washington Post at the breakfast table every day to the Nationals game I attended last night. Of course, a particularly snarky commentator could say that even Baltimore is a bedroom community of D.C.

Perhaps Columbia's only saving grace -- certainly culturally -- is Merriweather Post Pavilion. The venue is second to none, an early Frank Gehry (c. 1967) outdoor amphitheater, most definitely an idyllic setting on any summer evening, albeit hot in the daytime under a sticky mid-Atlantic sun. The artists at Sunday's Rock the Bells, a old-school hip-hop spectacular, put on a show at Merriweather from noon till night, but damn if they couldn't figure out where they were. Between Nas, Mos Def, De La Soul, and Rakim on the main stage there were shout outs to Baltimore, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, even Pennsylvania. Music as relentlessly urban and rooted in a particular place as hip-hop just couldn't find a comfortable nesting ground amid the leafy groves of Merriweather, even if it was a convenient meeting point for black/white, young/old, urban/suburban -- although the lack of public transportation may have kept some citybound fans away (I did see one Zipcar, much to my delight).

Another way of staking out location, of course, was through the music itself. Baltimore has club and D.C. has go-go, both of which Afrika Bambaata spun in an animated DJ set on a rainy side stage. He namechecked both -- said he couldn't play a set this close to either city and not drop Bmore breaks or pots and pans music. But in the hype circles of 2008, it's not exactly a fair battle. Go-go can't stand on its own as DJ material the way club can, simply because it's live music. Of course, a little go-go inflected hip-hop might be the perfect repartee. So while DJ Blaqstarr did his best to animate a thinned out side stage the way he did at the Paradox the other week (god-awful hype girl Oxy Cottontail, a Columbia native and ultimate hanger-on, should not have been sharing the stage with the likes of the Zulu Nation any more than I should have), I would he say he was upstaged by DC/MD's own Wale, who performed early on the main stage.

His breakout single "Dig Dug" samples D.C. go-go band Northeast Groovers, chops & screws it just a little but mostly lets it play. "Not from Northeast but I guarantee I groove."

Wale - Dig Dug

On his most recent effort, "Mixtape About Nothing," he tackles the Bmore vs. D.C. controversy head-on, mostly in jest.

Wale - The Bmore Club Slam

Even K-Swift (R.I.P.) gets namedropped. But damn if her beloved 92Q isn't showing PG County's finest any love.

While the Columbia curse means I can't claim any more cred to D.C. go-go than Baltimore club, even if I get the chance to spectate every once in awhile, if I'm in the D.C. area rather than a Baltimore suburb, it's still gratifying to have an up-and-comer to root for (and rock out to). And his DJ, Alizay of WKYS (the D.C. answer to 92.Q), even did a Rock the Bells mixtape.

In the end, though, it was finally Q-Tip who got it right. As he hyped the crowd up for A Tribe Called Quest's full appearance on stage, he yelled out, "Are we in Baltimore? Are we in D.C.? Are we in Columbia?"

The answer, of course, is all three, in different ways. And for a Columbia native, however conflicted it makes me feel, it was the rarest of treats to have music I normally drive at least a half an hour to hear in my hometown, a short walk away.

K-Swift Be Unruly

2008-07-25T12:36:00.001-03:00

What could or should just be ruminations on this Bmore club massive that I attended last Friday is clearly overshadowed by the accidental passing of K-Swift later that weekend. It's chilling to have attended her penultimate gig at Baltimore's legendary nightclub the Paradox, a hulking warehouse in the shadow of Ravens Stadium, where freight trains rumble past throughout the night making for their own industrial air horns. It's an incredible club, exactly the kind of gritty space in a gritty part of town for either club -- Friday nights -- or the wilder side of house -- Saturday nights, especially the legendary Fever party (scroll down to episode 2) that put Baltimore on the map for electronic music.

The Paradox is the kind of place where you watch your back and ask someone to walk you to your car, so it was particularly galling to see a sizeable crowd of skinny jeans, ironic t-shirts, and asymmetrical haircuts. To some extent it epitomized the popularity of club music over the last couple years among a certain hip set. You can hear club tunes cranked out in just about any city across the U.S., Europe, and probably elsewhere, but how is it received nowadays in good ol' Baltimore?

The City Paper certainly noticed the mixed crowd, and it's impossible to get an exact read in the ebbs and flows of a nightclub -- who danced with who, who laughed at who, who earned respect -- it's hard to knock anyone for wanting to come to a line-up that huge. It was tri-state (MD, VA, PA) plus the District, and some NYC to boot. Orioles hats, Phillies hats, even a Nationals cap or too -- maybe it's no longer Baltimore club, but mid-Atlantic club, and in 20 odd years it's only logical that those Baltimore breaks have spread up and down I-95.

My Crew Be Unruly may not have been a Baltimore secret on Friday night, but it was still inner-city Baltimore in tone, and that's what counts. I suspect the out of town, art student, and suburban crowds (myself included on the latter count, at least for the time being) were unlikely to need to avail themselves of the services offered by K-Swift's sponsor (it was plastered all over the K-Swift t-shirts):

Therein lies K-Swift's greatest strength and what made her the rising star that she was: cross-crowd appeal with credibility, from her regular shows on 92Q to sharing a headliner spot with Diplo. Blaqstarr may be the next young DJ (and K-Swift was only 27, too) to look out for . . . he was there on Friday too, and I'll be seeing him on Sunday at the Rock the Bells Tour.
___

In conclussion, it was all the more depressing to receive a flyer for a K-Swift pool party, given it was a pool accident that caused her death.

For the time being, if you're local, there is a viewing today and a funeral tomorrow (see the 92Q link for details). And head to your local Downtown Locker Room to get any remaining Jump Off mixtapes -- they're going to be collector's items soon.

And on the DC side, check DJ C's tribute, then come see him live tonight in Silver Spring, MD. Gotta put the good word in for my house guest.

DJ Showcase Latinoamericano

2008-07-09T19:09:00.000-03:00

This week is the Latin Alternative Music Confernece in el Manzana Grande. As part of it, global music purveyor S.O.B.'s is hosting a DJ showcase of Latin America's musica digital-bass-club-mashup on Thursday night. I'll be holding it down for the Brazilianists with plenty of funk and hip-hop brasileiro, but the rest are a strictly castellano affair -- Mexico, Chile, and Argentina.

The Zizek boys and their cumbia digital should be a big draw, especially on the heels of their monster write-up in Urb. Toy Selectah also has been mining the urban/rural frontiers for many years now and has hopefully cooked up something special for the evening.

Meanwhile, Refusenik and I keep wondering how a couple of white Jews of Eastern European descent (or birth, in his case) ended up on the bill . . . until I discovered my secret identity c/o TimeOut New York. Apparently I'm now from Sao Paulo! All the reason to rep Rio even harder.

In all seriousness, I understand it's going to be the party of LAMC, so if you're in Nova/Nueva York, stop on by.

DJ Showcase Latinoamericano
S.O.B.'s at 204 Varick St.
$10, 21+
Doors at 8:30 pm, show at 9:30 pm

Neg Fondamental

2008-07-09T17:50:00.001-03:00

The death of Aimé Césaire back in April passed through with minimal fanfare in the U.S., whereas the French broadcast his funeral live on television. As a poet, politician, and philosopher, he stands immensely tall in 20^th centuries discourse yet hails from a comparatively small place: the island of Martinique. A former French colony and now fully-fledged department (formerly DOM, département d’outre-mer or overseas department, and now a DFA, départment française d’Amérique), Martinique has produced a remarkable number of noteworthy French writers in the last 60 years. Start with Frantz Fanon, then Césaire, then more contemporary authors Edouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphael Confiant, and Suzanne Dracius. It’s an impressive litany of forceful francophone writers from the colonial and post-colonial eras who have dredged their island’s history and its subordinate status to France to make powerful statements about the legacy of slavery, the effects of colonialism, the cultural bonds of the Caribbean, and the global black experience.

Césaire is, as he called himself, “nègre fondamental” (black at the core). The translation is tricky on both fronts. “Nègre” is a stronger term than “noir,” and has carried a derogatory connotation dating back to plantation slavery. It can still be used as an insult, but it isn’t nearly as ugly as English’s own six-letter word. While the hip-hop world has reclaimed that term to the Nth degree, I couldn’t imagine MLK or Malcolm X getting behind it. “Nègre” is something both rappers and writers use. “Fondamental” can be fundamental or foundational, both of which are applicable here. Rather than pick one and exclude the other, I like the notion of “at the core” as covering both the essence quality of “fundamental” and the building block notion of “foundational.”

In Martinique, where he was mayor of the capital, Fort-de-France, for an astonishing 56 years (1945-2001) and deputy to the French national assembly for another 48 (1945-1993), Césaire was the grand homme of the island. While his early days, especially his break with the French communist party in order to found the Parti Progressiste Martiniquais, made for contentious politics, he simply became more revered the more he aged. Supposedly he held court in a square near city hall up until even a year or two ago. It was my surprise to learn he was still alive when I first discovered him back in high school, by which time he was already in his 80s.

While his voice was assured as early as 1939 with the publication of his epic poem Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a return to my native land), he lived long enough to be criticized. A younger generation of French Caribbean writers saw Négritude and its emphasis on Africa as undermining the uniqueness of Caribbean heritage, which they lauded as créolité (Creoleness). It was a healthy debate, though, and especially upon his death their was universal reverence. Patrick Chamoiseau, himself a founder of the créolité movement, wrote a stirring memoriam (Fr only). Politically, a half-century can surely get corrupt, and the night clerk at my hotel told me he was accused of letting henchmen run the show as he got increasingly old and incapable of managing all the details of mayoralty by himself.

But the signs -- literal billboards, posters, and public displays across the island -- of appreciation for Césaire were ubiquitous across Martinique, beginning the moment you stepped into the airport, even before passport control. The airport, I should add, is incongruously named after Césaire, something he wasn't exactly in favor of. Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, pushed it through -- two years after Césaire refused to meet him in Fort-de-France for his support of a bill acknowledging the "positive effects" of colonialism.

My stay in Martinique was short, just long enough to give the island a quick pass, stock up on some Antillean books (including teach yourself Creole!) and CDs (francophone dancehall and zouk galore) although I hope to return one day for a longer research effort. But it was enough to recognize the richness -- cultural, intellectual, literary -- of this particular corner of the francophone Caribbean.

I'm currently reading Chamoiseau's Texaco, which tells the story of a shantytown on the outskirts of Fort-de-France (built on the remnants of a Texaco facility) as it faces demolition at the hands of the city's urban reform efforts. In this neighborhood founded by rural exodus, Creole is at its strongest, yet it is here that I found the "Merci Aimé Césaire" graffiti, the largest I saw on the island, written in French but signed with a Creole name. Here that Chamoiseau eulogizes 200 years of Martinique history as they have resulted in the establishment of Texaco but thanks Serge Letchimy, urbanist and now mayor of Fort-de-France, who led the effort to raze the shantytown. The novel won the Prix Goncourt, France's equivalent of a Pulitzer, catapaulting Chamoiseau, Martinique, and Texaco to fame.

Even après-Césaire, Martinique -- and by extension the French Caribbean (most notably Guadeloupe) -- are poised to remain a hotbed of literary and intellectual activity. If anything, the outpouring from Martinique's younger luminaries simply confirms the multi-generational strain is alive and well.

[My own merci to Mylène Priam for her wonderful teaching on francophone literature in the Caribbean. She spoke about her work here, which garnered a bit of blog press in the Caribbean-academico-sphere.]

Rush It Up

2008-06-29T12:49:00.000-03:00

This afternoon the Euro Cup final will be played between two continental stalwarts -- Spain and Germany -- who have a half dozen championships between them. The Deutsch ended Turkey's storybook run, which certainly would have shaken up the "European" championship. While the final is a bit plain vanilla, the keen ears over at The Heatwave have picked up on some serious transnational (and outer-continental) forces at work in the theme song.

Shaggy ft. Trix & Flix - Feel the Rush [via HW]

As they ponder:

Quite why the tournament organisers chose a Jamaican/American dancehall artist to record the official song for a European event in Austria in Switzerland is initially unclear. But it turns out there's a tenuous connection in the form of Swiss-Iranian producer Samim whose massive hit Heater is sampled here - Samim has remixed this track as well.
In fact, when you follow the global trail of samples, remixes and versions that Feel The Rush leaves in its wake, it may be a canny move by UEFA to give the song (and the tournament) as broad an appeal as possible. So we end up with a Caribbean version by a mainstream American star of a Berlin-based producer's smash club hit which sampled a South American folk song and was remixed by a San Francisco house/techno DJ.

And maybe that is just the right model for globalized European integration, a liberal attitude that everything (and everyone, post-colonial and diasporic) can be European -- the xenophobes be damned.

While I'd prefer to hear less "Love Generation" in my Caribbean chunes, Shaggy's job was to be a crowd pleaser and in the end I can only applaud the ambition of the soca-house-Alpine-reggae-mascot mash-up.

At least it'll have more broad appeal among football/soccer fans than Mr. M_nus' Olympic soundscapes.

Imitation is the Most Illegal Form of Flattery

2008-06-28T00:20:00.002-03:00

Disco isn't dead, thankfully, and I've been a long-time admirer of the DFA camp, especially el jefe James Murphy, for maintaining a disco sensibility that includes a deep reverence for the classics. While LCD Soundsystem is viewed as relentlessly contemporary and trendsetting, Murphy's DJ sets and pure compositional work betray a sense of lineage -- he isn't breaking new ground so much as updating and readapting it in another musical generation.

DFA often straddles the line between excessive commercialism and the underground music scene, however, and I downloaded up 2006's 45:33 with some trepidation. First EMI, now Nike? I'm rather fond of the often dreamlike, spaced-out epic, however, and honestly thought it didn't sound much like running music.

I'm late to the scoop, but it turns out I was right: The whole business about a jogging soundtrack was a sham. As the cover, which I hadn't seen before, makes clear, it's an homage to Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4, one of the finest proto-techno electronic compositions.

Having Nike finance your otherwise not commercially viable 45-minute electronic opus? Brilliant.

The story could end there, but the problem is that the reverence toward Herr Göttsching was not entirely appreciated. I dug up this press statement on the interwebs. After going on about the iconic status of "E2-E4," it paints Murphy as a johnny-come-lately:

This clearly doesn’t qualify his album as a tribute to the great role model.
He's just jumped on someone else's gravy train without buying a ticket.
What Murphy is doing is exploiting the album's reputation for his own purposes illegally
in the context of German Competition Regulations and also according to legislation of other countries, too.

Sadly, it boils down to a bristling about copyright infringement and the branding of the chessboard image. I happen to take Murphy's side in this one -- the world needs more, not less, E2-E4/45:33-esque études. Instead, it's another public case of an electronic auteur uncomfortable with the dance music progeny his work has spawned.

And frankly I'd much rather hear Murphy behind the mixing board than in front of the microphone. DFA has been experiencing a resurgence in the last year or so, as always on the strength of its tireless dedication to the 12" single, releasing dance floor favorites like Holy Ghost!'s smooth plaintive "Hold On", Juan Maclean's blissful "Happy House", and now a full-length from the mythologically-inspired Hercules & Love Affair (whose full-length dropped a few days ago on June 24, my birthday). They've gotten some high-profile press, and I think might represent a sea change for DFA. As Tim Goldsworthy explains in the article, "'It’s really honest,' Mr. Goldsworthy said in a phone interview, pointing out that most artists in the DFA world approach disco from more of a punk or new-wave sensibility. He said that, as a club kid, Mr. Butler 'understands disco and he understands all the little quirks of the music that other people would probably find cheesy.'" After years of mining the points in the late '70s and '80s when rock bands encroached on disco territory, they've finally acquired a flagship act who's loud and proud -- gay, campy disco with no shame, producing glorious diva house without a trace of irony. It might be just the tonic to pull DFA out of the post-ironic/hipster milieu and firm up their dance chops. Play another record, James.

Ela gostou de baile funk

2008-06-17T17:18:00.001-03:00

Casi from Flamin Hotz directed me last night to the Mad Decent blog, where with tremendous surprise and utter shock I learned that Adriana Pittigliani has passed away. I hadn't the faintest idea that she had cancer, as admittedly we haven't spoken much since last August, following a dispute about a DJ gig and disagreements over the Flamin Hotz CD. These arguments seem petty now, and in fact I had recently written her a letter to accompany her copy of the CD, in hopes that it would serve as a springboard to patch things up. She was one of the examples of how the transition from wide-eyed researcher and inquisitor to representative of a record label, however small and independent, unfortunately compromised social relationships. But I still recall with clarity the long discussions in her Flamengo apartment, overlooking Pão de Açúcar, where she chain smoked cigarettes and held something of a funk carioca salon. Adriana was one of the first points of contact for any foreigner coming to Rio with an interest in funk, from Diplo to Daniel Haaksman, British party promoters, Swedish journalists, Québécois radio DJs, or someone with an academic inquiry like myself.

As a middle-class white woman, she seemed a strange fit for a relentlessly young and predominately black scene built from the ground-up in favelas far from the tony high-rises of Flamengo. But I think her attraction began, in part, with her photographer's eye. (Her site no longer works, but if you get the Flamin Hotz CD, you can see her excellent work on the Carioca Funk Clube artist photos.) The movimento funk is a whirlwind of humanity at its most exuberant, and certainly she must have been drawn to photographic compositions rich with sweat and bodies, color and movement. She had a feminist tilt to her experience as a funkeira as well, and she frequently recounted a transformative experience back in 2004 in Vila Mimosa, the red light district of Rio, throwing a baile with a group of prostitutes -- not to drum up clients, just to enjoy. She saw something parallel in attitudes and mores, a thumbing of the nose at decency, in Vila Mimosa and the favelas where bailes are king.

Moving from grande dame of funk, making connections between foreigners and high-profile local DJs and MCs, to the manager of a "house of artists" (Casi's words) in Carioca Funk Clube, chief among them DJ Sany Pitbull, I kept wondering why Adriana dedicated so much time and energy to putting together tours, sending out promo tracks, and scouring the web (her imprint was everywhere -- MySpace, blogs, Wiki) to relentlessly promote CFC -- sometimes, in my opinion, at the expense of the movimento funk as a whole, which I began to think she didn't have a whole lot of respect for. Regardless of my personal gripes, she was decidedly on a mission, and certainly was promoting something new and exciting. It was not for nothing that Hermano Vianna, veritable written authority on funk (cf O Mundo Funk Carioca, c. 1988), called Sany's "Funk Alemão," and by extension the CFC aesthetic, "pós-baile funk."

Adriana's goal, I eventually realized, was to "break" funk the way that her father, Armando Pittigliani, had in part "broken" bossa nova. According to the Cravo Albin Dictionary of Brazilian Popular Music, he "was one of the ones responsible for the first releases by several bossa nova artists." I can't prove it, but I believe the royalties from those early albums, or at least his success as an A&R guy in the Brazilian music industry over the decades, in part allowed Adriana to have such a nice apartment in Flamengo without holding down a steady, full-time job (not that she didn't, I'm sure, earn her own keep from photography). And, in turn, she used the time bought by her father's success to pursue her era's own Brazilian popular music.

I never spoke with her directly about this idea, just inferred it from my own experiences talking with her and with Maga Bo, who introduced me to her and offers his own thoughtful tribute. She was truly a linchpin between Rio and the rest of the world, for me included. She was part of the encouragement that got me to my first baile, and I acknowledged her (as well as cited our interviews) in my thesis.

In a still burgeoning enterprise -- the dissemination of funk carioca abroad -- an essential fulcrum, and the opportunities that came with her, have been lost.

Genesis 1962 [from the now defunct Pitti Podcast, but the only hint she gave of nodding to her past]

Heat Waves

2008-06-16T02:00:00.000-03:00

The mercury kept climbing and summer doesn't even start until next week. I'm out of Boston for the foreseeable future and have moved to the muggier confines of the mid-Atlantic. On the train heading north last week, I saw hydrants wrenched open in East Baltimore, the classic cooling strategy on scorched city streets. The Johns Hopkins Medical Complex looms over the blocks and blocks of row houses in that part of the city, a citadel of air conditioning towering above the sweltering fields of asphalt.

In D.C., they kept turning on the hydrants till they bled the taps dry. "Quander-Collins said some residents complained that as soon as WASA employees arrived to close a hydrant, neighbors would return and open it again. Deborah Boseman of the 900 block of Barnaby St. SE had been without water for almost six hours. 'This doesn't make any sense,' she said."

The heat makes you do crazy things.

/rupture's got an early mix of the summer candidate, but damned if I don't keep coming back to La Ola de Calor from last year. Summer is all about memories anyway, right?

Textual Healing

2008-06-09T01:11:00.000-03:00

"Reading Place and Space Between Morro and Asfalto: An Itinerary Through the Contemporary Zona Sul of Rio de Janeiro" -- The thesis that, in part, got me across the stage last week
"Techno City: Race, Space, and DEMF" -- More organized thoughts on the 313, following the scattershot first impressions post-DEMF.
"The Anonymous as Exotic in Presenting Proibidão" -- My BRASA paper gets reprised elsewhere on the Interwebs.

Who Says Vinyl is Dead?

2008-06-02T18:57:00.000-03:00

Vinyl sales are up. Cycling is up. Public transit ridership is up. Nothing but good news today.

I've dusted off lots of vintage Chicago house and Detroit techno records for my farewell party tonight. Come by if life is thriving in the good life.

A Farewell to Boston, Beat Research Style

2008-06-01T17:08:00.001-03:00

Just as the fine New England summer is settling in, I'm passing through the crimson gates of the Big H (which some might mistake for the Potterish big H on commencement day) and out into the wild blue yonder.

Looking forward, though, to saying farewell tomorrow night at the place that has most exemplified -- and nurtured -- my socio-musical sensibility: Beat Research at The Enormous Room.

If you're in the Bean, and not too busy chanting "Beat L.A." (although the first Celtics-Lakers showdown since, well, the year I was born isn't till Thursday), come by for the always ear-opening beats of wayne&wax and DJ Flack, alongside Gregzinho as special guest.

Call it a goodbye block party, neighborhood style.

The Enormous Room
569 Mass Ave. in Central Square
Monday, June 2
9 pm - 1 am, no cover

Favela Keeps Getting Chicer

2008-05-31T04:50:00.005-03:00

Paris and London have long had their own corner favela serving up $10 caipirinhas made from $1 bottles of 51 cachaça. Tomorrow, the NYC crowd will be able to get its own first-world favela fix.

Among Brazilian immigrants in the U.S., at least in the plentiful Brazilian Boston (or more accurately Cambridge/Somerville) community, the universal referents for Brazilianness are fairly typical: futebol, Rio, samba. But it seems the CDD phenomenon definitely had an impact: Among the chic, favelas are the real stand-in for Brazil.

I don't doubt they deserve visibility, but consumer consumption at expensive nightspots is hardly a helpful way of getting it. When it comes to favela chic, this is more my style.

Nu Whirl Orgy

2008-05-30T02:13:00.001-03:00

The orgying continues! This is the last one I'm doing this spring after RVNG and Juan Maclean, and perhaps my last ever for WHRB, following such notables from years past as the roots of Chicago house and Detroit techno and Blogariddims.

I'll be sending it off with a theme very apropos to what's been blogged about here for some time. In this case, a spin on the "new world" music that wayne&wax aptly calls the nu whirl. Variations of it have been blogged in translation here, as well as by Wayne, who will be kicking it off with a show&tell of tunes&talk. Also interviews and mixes by /rupture and Bo. Plus a mix by Ghis de Ghis and Refusenik may be dropping by in the wee hours.

Tune in and dive into the brave nu whirl.