Interesting edition of GompArts, Will Gompertz’s column for the BBC, on a recreation of Martin Creed’s Work No 409 at the Southbank Center in London. The setting is an elevator and the work is a piece for vocalists whose voices rise as the elevator ascends and descends as it falls. Creed became well-known after winning [...]
Extending the reach of the graphic novel
Asterios Polyp (Pantheon), the latest graphic novel by David Mazzucchelli is garnering excellent reviews and plaudits for taking the graphic novel into more firmly literary and adult territory. AND it just won the inaugural award in the graphic novel category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize: Mazzucchelli’s monolith is a beautifully executed love story, [...]
Yoga-Tainment for the BlackBerry Generation (@ East Bay Express)
Yoga-Tainment for the BlackBerry Generation A plethora of events highlights music’s growing role in yoga. By Jeffrey Callen // Late night in the Mission, the class begins with the sound of kirtans accompanied by slowly pumped chords on the harmonium. The class members respond hesitantly, repeating back the unfamiliar sounds chanted by the teacher. The [...]
Somali Rap and Radio (@ History is made at night)
Reposted from History is made at night From Waayaha Cusub (from Reuters Nairobi, 9 April 2010): For centuries, Somalis used poetry and songs to pass protest messages to powerful rulers they were too afraid to confront directly. Now, some young Somalis are using rap to speak out against Islamists who they say are using religion [...]
Billy Bragg explores what it means to be English in “Pressure Drop”
As part of the nine-month Identity exhibition at London’s Wellcome Collection (Identity: Eight rooms, nine lives – 26 November 2009 – 06 April 2010) Billy Bragg and his band are performing Pressure Drop, a play ‘of passion and prejudice” written by Mick Gordon. The play (19 April-12 May, 2010) explores what it means to be [...]
Tanya Tagaq — Crossing Genres & “Living Outside the Box”
Few artists cross genre boundaries as freely and seemingly effortlessly as Tanya Tagaq. Labeling what she does as Inuit throat singing inadequately describes what she does. Never easy listening, Tanya takes the listener “outside the box” of her or his expectations. In an interview in January 2010, Tanya discussed her work and her hope that [...]
French Fries in the Tagine — Moroccan Alternative Music
In 2002, I spent the year researching the emergence of an alternative music movement in Morocco. Made up of a collection of genres that lie on the periphery of mainstream culture — hip-hop, electronica, rock/metal, fusion — alternative music had yet to break through. 2002 was its year on the cusp. In 2003, it would [...]
Exploring the boundary between music & sound – 1:1
In Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1985), Jacque Attali wrote about the socially constructed and historically changing boundaries between music and noise. Brilliant, provocative but I think there is one missing component in Attali’s approach: the distinction between music and sound. It is outside the frame of the questions Attali was exploring at the [...]
Conference on Change and Continuity in the art of record production (reposted from IASPM)
Change and Continuity: transformations, innovations and tensions in the art of record production April 15th, 2010 · ARP 2010 Call For Papers The Sixth Annual Art of Record Production Conference will be hosted by Bob Davis and Justin Morey at Leeds Metropolitan University on December 3rd – 5th 2010 The theme of the conference is [...]
How the blues became folk music (@PopMatters)
Karl Hagstrom Miller’s new book Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow (Duke University Press, March 2010) examines the effect of Jim Crow on the perception of American musical styles. PopMatters excerpted a section on W.C. Handy’s role in redefining blues as a folk music. [9 April 2010] Excerpt [...]
