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In honor of tonight's State of the Union, i'd like to post this track by Anitbalas, a Brooklyn afrobeat group. it has prescient anti-GOP lyrics to help rile you up.
Their album (Security) is pretty great, helped in part by producer John McEntire of Sea and Cake fame. As such the percussion sounds great. the whole thing sounds great. go John.
i've recently discovered afrobeat (Fela Kuti, etc.), so expect more posts on this subject.
While I'm on a semi-political rant, and i am now vaugely asserting that we should be able to post beyond music related issues (agree or disagree as you will in the comments), here is a great article by Christopher Hitchens on the recent Clinton/Obama scrape in SC.
As Quinapalus knows, i have a conflicted relationship with Hitchens. Despite that, i am allowing him to help me become more and more anti-Hillary.
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3 comments:
I'll reserve comment on Christopher Hitchens, but I have issues with him (though he gets in some good jabs in the article).
I look forward to more posts about Afro-beat though. Ever since I got seriously into _Remain in Light_ a couple years ago, I've wanted to explore afro-beat a little bit more. The problem is, at the end of the day, I'm a pop guy-- that's what I like about Talking Heads. They take those interesting polyrhythms and harness them to more of a pop song structure with great hooks. When I look at a Fela Kuti album and see that it has two 25 minute tracks on it, I get kind of scared off.
I enjoy reading Hitchens for his sheer rhetorical flair. Even in the (many) instances in which I totally disagree with him, he's high in the running for the most literate and talented pundit out there. And I actually enjoy him most when he's writing about literature; he has consistently interesting book reviews in the Atlantic Monthly, for example.
I like that Antibalas track a great deal, even though afro-beat sounds like only one part of their make-up - it sounds like trad jazz at one point, but I think that variety made me like this even more. Did we go see them at the Prospect Park bandshell one summer?
Eric, I know what you mean about Fela - I will say that his records sound amazing - very spacious and almost ominous, but they almost function better as background music. I find it very hard to give my attention to half-hour compositions/improvisations, especially when they center around one groove. This goes for alot of Miles Davis' 'On The Corner' sessions, too.
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