Judgement Day and the Mumlers headline for the first time this year. By Jeffrey Callen From its humble beginnings in 1993 as a single club show of five bands, Noise Pop has grown into a week-long “celebration of indie music and culture.” It now includes a film festival, art shows, a music industry mini-conference, and [...]
NOTES FROM THE NOISE POP FESTIVAL (UPDATED AGAIN)
The Noise Pop festival of indie rock in San Francisco (23 February to 1 March 2010) for its 18th year. I’m checking it out and pondering what exactly is “indie rock?” NOTES FROM THE NOISE POP FESTIVAL (24 February) Wondering what exactly “indie” rock is? Is it a genre or a sensibility? Anton (violinist) of [...]
Addendum to: It’s only rock ‘n’ roll (Tinariwen)
The exoticizing of the non-Western other in World Music is a continuing phenomenon — freely used in marketing and eagerly accepted by most fans. “Music of resistance” is one sub-category of that phenomenon. In a recent preview of a San Francisco concert by Tinariwen, I avoided emphasizing their music as born out of resistance (it’s [...]
It’s only rock ‘n’ roll
Desert Rock — Tinariwen brings rebel music out of the Southern Sahara By Jeffrey Callen A slow Hendrix blues riff, deep, rough and insistent, slashes through the aural space. Broken down and repeated, the opening riff is joined by the offbeat upstrokes of a second, trebly electric guitar establishing a shuffle counterpoint. A fast rap [...]
"Desert Rock"
Desert Rock Tinariwen brings rebel music out of the Southern Sahara. By Jeffrey Callen A slow Hendrix blues riff, deep, rough and insistent, slashes through the aural space. Broken down and repeated, the opening riff is joined by the offbeat upstrokes of a second, trebly electric guitar establishing a shuffle counterpoint. A fast rap barely [...]
Abderrahim Askouri — Moroccan Pop Innovator
In 2002, I spent a year in Morocco researching the emerging alternative music scene in Casablanca. Most of my attention went to the creation of a new genre of Moroccan music that soon carried the label “fusion.” Heavily influenced by French fusion bands, such as Gnawa Diffusion, Moroccan fusion blended Moroccan genres (cha’abi, gnawa, houari…) [...]
This week’s genre transgressions (Swedish hillbilly/swing) (Canadian Arab pop/pscyhedelic/jazz/protest music) (European classical spa music) (Polish avant garde)
Swedish Hillbilly/Western Swing with some bluegrass tossed in? Bring it on! Fiddler Ralf Fredblad and company must have spent many a dark frigid Nordic night listening to the heart and soul of Appalachia. The Original Rockridge Brothers bang out some of the most authentic Hillbilly you’ll hear, without irony or any suspicious modern trappings. “Rockridge [...]
