“Bollywood”, the album’s lead single, is downright bizarre. Phair raps about the close-mindedness of the music industry over a tabla and sitar-driven track. Sample lyric: “Let me tell you how it’s done here in Hollywood/Maybe you was thinking you was in the Bollywood.” Ugh. Hopefully a music video featuring Phair dancing around in a lengha isn’t inevitable.
You can listen to the song below. (Warning: it’s a bit painful.):
There is a particularly troublesome side-effect I have seen develop over the years as the internet has become an ever more powerful and effective tool in galvanizing and giving voice to the voiceless (in addition to amplifying the voice of those who already had a platform). I, and a few of the original bloggers and readers of SM, have had the chance to experience how the signal-to-noise ratio on our threads have worsened with time. There is much more reaction and much less reflection. I agree, my statement is laced with some nostalgia and my perception surely skewed with the passage of time. You will doubtless find examples of contrary evidence, but I feel it is true nonetheless. I also sense a generational rift growing wider. It is so much easier for people to be outraged nowadays, as compared to just a few years ago. And why not? We have so many tools at our disposal by which to express this outrage. And none require any thinking whatsoever. When op-ed columns were the only means to highlight an unreported issue, you had to carefully craft your message and had time to reflect on your claims and conclusions. By contrast, our websites/blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts all allow us to be outraged and share our outrage with others in an instant. Groupthink is also encouraged, since many of these platforms come with ready-made friend networks. If my 10 friends are outraged by something then I should be too or I will be the outlier and ostracized. I will be tagged misguided. Or worse. De-friended.
But what bothers me so much more than the frequency of our outrage is WHAT we get outraged about and what we conveniently ignore because it is too difficult to tackle or takes more energy than a mouse click. What bothers me is this new breed of lazy internet armchair activists.
Back in February of 2006 , I wrote a long post in defense of the Danish cartoon of the prophet with a bomb in his turban. I believe in free speech and oppose all censorship, as long as it does not actively incite violence against a group. Poking fun at a religion is all good. Yelling fire in a crowded movie theater is not. What happened on the radio in Rwanda before the genocide there was an obscene violation of free speech. Cartoonists, radio shock jocks, satirists, Borat, Glenn Beck, and others all have a right to say whatever they want just as we have the right to be upset about it and write their producer, station owner, etc. But when we do take that step we better understand exactly what it is that we find objectionable and why. We should be able to clearly and concisely articulate it and balance it with our other priorities and concerns. I am not saying don’t get mad about your local asshole shock jock. I did so here (same EXACT topic as Stein’s, but decidely different context and intent). I am just saying that every time you get outraged, you lose just a bit more of your effectiveness unless you are totally on top of your game. Look at what has happened to Jesse Jackson. One time civil rights leader, now a punchline. Look at what has happened to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). One time defender of animals now simply known as a promoter of gorgeous naked women. Look at what happened to the Tea Party. From grass roots revolution against the excess of government a year ago…to angry old xenophobic white people afraid of change. The lesson is that you pick and choose your battles wisely and understand and communicate your outrage in a cogent, unassailable and proportionate manner.
With news that King Khan’s band has broken up, I understand if your Alterno-Desi musical heart is a little crushed. Never to fear, Sunny Ali and the Kid have just dropped their first EP with enough songs to heal the pain away. You can download the full album for “pay what you can”. Or free. Your choice.
This Philidelphia based low-fi-cowboy punk duo of Hassan Ali Malik (that would be Sunny) and Abdullah Saeed (aka “The Kid” aka The Pork Adventurer) have just released their first EP, Try Harder. The band is relatively new having just started late last year but they already have a strong following. The EP has a fresh sound, reminding me of Texan deserts and dusty mirages. Recorded in a tiny 10×10 room on a “crappy program,” the album has a certain raw quality – but they guys are excited to share their music. You can check out my Q & A with the band a few months back on the Taqwacore Webzine.
What is odd to me is how this band is using a “pay what you can” model of distributing this album. Radiohead did this in 2007 when they ended their contract with EMI label. The idea is that even though most people will download the album for free there will be hardcore fans out there that will make a contribution to the band because they are invested. Takes costs benefits analysis to a whole new level. In Sunny Ali & The Kid’s case, people have been making donations for the album and the band has been fully appreciative.
A couple of weeks ago, another band also just dropped their new EP online for free, The Kominas. You can download mp3s off their album Escape to Blackout Beach for free OR for $7. I’m still confused as to what the $7 fee gets you, but I guess the hardcore musicians understand the differences in formats that the $7 gets you. Continue reading →
No word on if Janina’s working on an album, but it sounds like this Kanye cover was just a one off project. But I did learn that she was part of girl group Endera, which was signed on to the Cash Money Universal label. Which means, technically, she was the first Desi signed to the label, not Jay Sean. A singer and an actress, you may also recognize Janina from the L-Word where she played “Papi.” Her face will be all over your prime time television soon too – Janina is now playing police officer Leigh Turner on the new series vampire/werewolf/bump-in-night suburban drama The Gates which started last week.
I play Leigh Turner [on The Gates]. She’s a cop who is very good at her job but she has a pretty dark secret that she keeps to herself. The secret is rad, I couldn’t have guessed it in a million years…
> I think there is a small crop of us who are working just because we are good, not because we are good Indians. I am building a career on being as good as I possibly can be. I don’t want people to say, “She is a great Indian actress.” Like, you don’t say, “She is a great white actress,” or “She is a great black actress.” No one is saying that shit. There are a bunch of us who believe in this. Just be dope. I am just excited for the next generation where color doesn’t matter and they will be allowed to just be artists. The arts in general are just a huge part of the culture. [[complex](http://www.complex.com/blogs/2010/06/21/open-up-the-gates-actress-janina-gavankar-speaks/)]
What do you think? Has Janina locked you down? Continue reading →
Yesterday, you saw Part I of my conversation with jazz pianist Vijay Iyer (who, by the way, is playing at Birdland again tonight!). Herewith, Part II!
Video of Vijay Iyer Trio’s version of M.I.A.’s “Galang”
Vijay Iyer Trio’s award-winning album, “Historicity“
VVG: What does it mean to be someone not only interested in making art, but also in articulating what it means? How did you get into writing? In a dialogue with your longtime collaborator, the saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, you talk about being accused of being “full of words and full of himself.” (I have some sympathy with this, having once been described as “fast-talking.”) You say, “But I felt like, either frame the discourse with your own language, or else let them take it over and completely misrepresent you.” Does this get at why you chose to take on writing as another facet of your career? To what extent do you feel that you are required to explain yourself, your philosophies of work and your work itself more because you are South Asian?
VI: I didn’t frame myself as a writer at first, but I’ve been publishing things here and there, first in academic journals, then in anthologies, then in some online media, and then in print magazines. Most of it has been by invitation, and the last few times I even got paid, so I guess that clinches it!
But seriously, I think the space where I’ve strived to produce specific discourse about identity was in the liner notes to my albums. I’ve always taken this task upon myself, sometimes to people’s dismay. (The “words and himself” quote was from a prominent jazz critic who actually likes my music.) I think of it as a textual counterpoint to an album, or as a letter to the future. But also it’s a rare opportunity to reach a captive audience; people don’t necessarily intend to read anything when they buy an album, but now they’re going to have those words in their hands every time they take the CD off the shelf. (At least that used to be the case when people still bought and listened to cd’s!) So it becomes a way to reach thousands of people over many years. People who revisit the music will at some point revisit the words.
I did find that I had to contextualize the music and my relationship to it. For all the rhetoric of tolerance and inclusiveness, there are some things that just don’t go down easy for Americans, and a South Asian American jazz composer-pianist is one of those things. It also doesn’t go down easy for jazz audiences, or other South Asians, or for people in general!
It’s never enough just to solve the problem internally for yourself. You’re always encountering people who are at some other point in the journey of awareness, and so you are constantly re-solving it for someone else. So that discourse becomes pretty crucial; fragments of it are going to keep coming back into the conversation. Continue reading →
I have the album and love it and wanted to chat with him for the Mutiny; he was gracious enough to agree, and so here, in the first of two parts, is our conversation (which we did online).
(Tracks that are likely of special interest to some Mutiny readers: This track, a cover of M.I.A.’s “Galang,” has deservedly gotten lots of attention. An earlier album, Tragicomic, features a track called “Macaca Please.”
VVG: It’s been so exciting for me to watch your success, especially this year with “Historicity.” My older brother and I both played tenor saxophone relatively seriously when we were younger… Today, coincidentally, I am going to practice again for the first time in years! Your website describes you as “self-taught.” How do you teach yourself/practice? What’s your routine/process? How does your day as a musician work (when you’re not touring)?
VI: Thanks, Sugi! I am honored.
I’ve mostly grown musically over the years by trying new things. Sometimes that means trying to work through some existing musical idea that challenges me, and doing it very slowly; other times it’s about composing challenges for myself to try to play; still other times it’s through collaboration with others, whether in my area of music, in other areas of music, in other artistic fields like poetry, film, and theater, and even in less arts-oriented disciplines like the sciences. I don’t have much of a routine because I find every day is different – but my basic way of learning anything is by working on something for long enough that it’s not “practicing” anymore. As a player, I mostly practice being spontaneous; I practice improvising.
As for my day-to-day when I’m home, I spend an unwanted number of hours each day on business matters – emails, phone calls, paperwork, logistics. But I manage to make music every day, either playing or composing. And I spend as much time with my family as I can, especially my 5-year-old daughter. Continue reading →
Do you recognize the deli? I It’s that one place on 1st street in New York’s East Village where all the taxi workers go. I went with The Kominas after a show last fall. They have great saag paneer. The man providing the beats in the video is Duke Mushroom (not Derek Beres as stated earlier), both of EarthRise SoundSystem. Continue reading →
I’m not quite sure how I stumbled into Chaiwalla’s BOOMbox, but it quickly became my blog addiction. I looked forward to posts like like a fat kid to cake – I was guaranteed good music tinged with Desi flavor, sometimes with a video and more often than not with a free music download. I was beyond curious to see who were the chaiwallas behind the BOOMbox and to figure out how the heck they had found enough addictive music for daily doses. Little did I know that the six-month long project had taken off, going from blog to record label, with their first album by San Francisco based DJ Janaka Selekta dropping this July.
I got the chance to interview Umar Akbar and Tarun Nayar, the duo behind the BOOMbox for the mutinous horde. And for your listening pleasure, the chaiwallas are providing a FREE DOWNLOAD off of Janaka Selekta‘s forthcoming album “Pushing Air” EXCLUSIVELY for Sepia Mutiny readers.
Well CWBB is the story of a Boombox that’s been put under a spell by a Shaman. Unfortunately the boombox is still only 80 watts, so its not that loud but the blog can be heard on millions of computer speakers simultaneously, which is why we did it.
Who are the two chaiwallas behind the BOOMBox? Where are you based?
Well the real Mr. Chaiwalla is actually out saving the world from really bad music and villain’s, so he has entrusted us, Tarun Nayar and Umar Akbar with his sacred mission. We are based out of Western Canada.
Do you guys make your own music?
Yes, 1/2 of CWBB does. Tarun Nayar is a band member in Delhi 2 Dublin and is currently touring there new EP Planet Electric. Tarun is also scheduled to release his solo project sometime this Fall under CWBB.
Continue reading →
I’m wondering what readers think of the long profile of M.I.A. in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. The author of the piece, Lynn Hirschberg, seems to have gotten pretty much unprecedented access to the Sri Lankan/British/American star, who recently had a child.
For Hirschberg, the high point in terms of subversive M.I.A. performances was the Grammys in 2009, when M.I.A. appeared on stage with four male rap stars, nine months pregnant. Apparently her contractions started while on stage! But Hirschberg also has some pointed comments on some of M.I.A.’s recent work, including the strange (I thought, awful) video to “Born Free.” Here is Hirschberg’s account of it:
Unlike, say, her performance at the Grammys, which was a perfect fusion of spectacle (a nine-months-pregnant woman rapping in a see-through dress) with content (Maya’s fervor was linked to the music), the video for “Born Free” feels exploitative and hollow. Seemingly designed to be banned on YouTube, which it was instantly, the video is set in Los Angeles where a vague but apparently American militia forcibly search out red-headed men and one particularly beautiful red-headed child. The gingers, as Maya called them, using British slang, are taken to the desert, where they are beaten and killed. The first to die is the child, who is shot in the head. While “Born Free” is heard in the background throughout, the song is lost in the carnage. As a meditation on prejudice and senseless persecution, the video is, at best, politically naïve. (link)
I’m not so much interested in M.I.A’s particular politics, which I’ve disagreed with in the past. Yes, she has a very emotional, oversimplified account of recent events in Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers in particular — let’s not have that fight again.
I’m more wondering what kind of image of the artist and performer we get from this article. Does M.I.A. really know what she’s doing? She’s had an album that was a big Indie hit (“Arular”), and one major commercial success, with “Paper Planes,” (off “Kala”); and there were several other solid, highly creative tracks off that second album. Given how important her producers are in her creative process, is it even fair to say that she’s at the helm of her own ship? Do you think she’s due for another success with her upcoming third album, or is her current direction a musical misfire, born of too much self-indulgence?
Finally, what did readers think of the second single off the as-yet unreleased new album, XXXO? Continue reading →
