When I interviewed Don Bigg in Casablanca in 2008, he told me that his goal was for his albums to be in the rap bins at Virgin and FNAC, not the World Music bin. Steeped in the hip-hop tradition, there was no place other than the rap category where his music belonged — still, as [...]
Race & Chinese Pop Culture
Earlier this year, China picked Ding Hui, a young man from Hangzhou, for its national volleyball team. Last month a 20-year-old Shanghainese, Lou Jing, made the last 30 in the Chinese version of Pop Idol. Neither event would have attracted unusual notice but for the one thing the two young people have in common: they are in [...]
Deciphering Watcha Clan: Interview with Jeffrey Callen
As the year wound down, I found myself thinking a lot about my favorite albums of 2009. They’re not falling into an easy categorization but there is a thread that ties them together. They all are based on crossings of musical boundaries. My runaway favorite album of 2009 is Omar Sosa’s Across the Great Divide, [...]
Genre Boundaries: World Music & the Space between Artist Self-Identification and Music Industry Categorization
A recent conversation with “Northern Roots” singer Tim Eriksen set me to thinking about the strategic nature of genre identification. Eriksen is an exception in that he has created his own genre label to identify his quirky mix of American “roots” material. For him it’s hopefullly a way-station on the way to defining his work [...]
Rock ‘n’ Roll & Ritual (’80s Peter Gabriel)
From the back of the concert hall, the five-person ensemble, four dressed in simple black clothing and one in simple white, proceeds through the crowd, playing drums. As they reach the stage, the synthesizer takes up the same rhythm and the band members pick up their instruments and don headsets. The singer, dressed in white, [...]
Queering Pop Music Studies
I had a female impersonator for years named Jean LaRue. I didn’t tell you about that. She was out of Oakland. I don’t know if she is living or dead. She was with me for years. Name was Jean LaRue. (August 14, 1998 Interview of Clarence ‘Little Red’ Tenpenny). “Little Red” was one of my [...]
"The Virtual Maghreb" (The Beat, Vol. 28 #1 — 2009)
The Virtual Maghreb: ”The digital world has created greater access for artists, particularly those from small markets whether due to geography, language or genre. Particularly good news for alternative artists in small countries and that brings us to alternative music artists in Morocco. The virtual world has created a platform for alternative artists in Morocco (hip-hop, fusion, rock, electronica, singer-songwriters) that was hardly imaginable [...]
Review of King Sunny Ade at the Independent in San Francisco (Afropop.org)
King Sunny Ade in San Francisco – review of King Sunny Ade in San Francisco in June 2009 and the re-release of Seven Degrees North.
"The Blues Metaphor" (Moroccan Roll column from The Beat, Vol. 27 #4)
_The Blues Metaphor_ (Moroccan Roll column from Vol. 27 #4) — discusses the often-tenuous use of the blues as a metaphor to describe and pigeonhole genres of popular and traditional music, particularly music from Africa or the African diaspora).
“The Sentir is a Whole Civilization” (Moroccan Roll column from The Beat, Vol. 27 # 3)
“The Sentir is a Whole Civilization” (Moroccan Roll column from Vol. 27 # 3) — A look at the use of Gnawa music, particularly the sentir (or hajhouj), in Moroccan pop music from the ’70s Folk Revival (i.e., Nass el Ghiwane) to “fusion” efforts of the last decade in Morocco, Algeria and beyond
