Africans in Grime

[stelfox]

er.................

dont think so

ok, enlighten me, what is (the deliberately extremely loose category of) urban youth listening to, if not hip-hop, r&b, ragga etc?
even if i'm wrong (which i very much doubt i am), you can't deny that hip-hop is the point in the venn diagram where pretty much everyone crosses over. it gets to a lot of people.

re the soca/bhangra thing, i'm talking more contemporarily. right now bhangra is the indian element you can really hear, on the evidence of recent trends in the music - the dhol riddim, tracks like sharon darlington's (absolutely awesome) "bhangra" etc. (if i was trying to sketch out the outset of soca's development i'd have just said a much rougher "indian music", because i don't know much more than that, so it's good that someone's laid it all out clearly for future reference!) also interesting because it seems that bhangra has become the dominant "source" music there, not just to sikhs but to other sections of the south asian community, just as i was saying it had in the uk.

 

[ambrose]

just seemed a pretty london centric view

up north, all i hear from cars in leeds is bassline house, which is more rave/ hardcore influenced than any sort of influence from dancehall/hip hop. all ive ever heard from cars in scotland is brutal happy hardcore. seems that way in newcastle too but ive never been there.

 

[stelfox]

well it is where i live, so that would make sense and in any case, it's where good stuff happens.
i think, in terms of stuff that's actually important, you can rule the north of england out of any cultural discussion after acid house, anyway.
(i am a northerner, by the way, before anyone goes apeshit at me).
also, in the context of this thread, london is by far the most integrated city in the country, and perhaps one of the only places where an influx of african immigration could, within the span of one generation, begin to influence youthcult at large.
(i'm still sceptical about whether it has that much, but here i'm only talking about the environment indeed making it at least conceivable).

 

[Tactics]

i dont know how this relates but here I go: my production team, BreakBeat Productions, make all kinds of black music from garage/grime/NUKG to drum n bass to rap. I dont know how it happened but nearly all of us are 2nd gen Ghanaians- I am, so is V.I.C, Blakk Cosmos I think (but he's jus too mysterious), Boy Wonder is, Nii-O is, Afrikan mos def is and so is T.A.Anderson. This was not done on purpose but jus happened.

I am now more drawn to garage sonically as its kitchen sink approach is interesting but I feel it is missing that African element - being mostly all pan africanists (except for V.I.C) we now are making attempts to translate that sound and approach, mainly our shared Ghana sound, into our music as we know how important that is to have the roots there and with interesting results - some Nii-O (he's the doing the most right now) beats are on the soundclick page and he is determined to fuse elements from bands like Mogwai with Obisi (or as the west calls it highlife) in garage and stuff like that. In fact the diaspora is a big influence on all of us but it has to have THAT feeling which a lot of UK stuff is missing. I dont know how to describe it but the Alias (garage Alias on d n b one) stuff is the stuff we definately aint tryna do.

Thats my two cents.

 

[Woebot]

Dizzee was advertised as collaborating with the Nigerian-born afro-beat drummer Tony Allen. Thought might prove interesting what with Dizzee's Nigerian roots, and similar off kilter beats. But transpired Dizzee and Tony Allen were performing separately. So maybe any connections are more imposed by the well-meaning bloggerati (and south bank festival organizers). A lot of youth next to me left during Tony Allen to reappear later for Dizzee, and hard to equate Allen's languid and organic Afro-funk/jazz/rock with Dizzee's rapid-fire delivery and synthetic beats.
Dizzee's mum apparently was in the royal box though.

A friend of mine put that together. I have to confess I hated the idea the moment I heard about it. So they ended up performing separately? That was a bit of a con though must have been something of a blessing.

Did you see that Africa:Remix show at the Hayward. It started out quite well, brilliantly even but lost some focus and energy towards the end. I liked the binliners taped together and the oildrum voodoo totems the most.

 

[sean downes]

what about how african accents and speech patterns effect the way mcs spit? like, the way down south us rappers speak strongly influences the way they rap, with slow drawls that are often conversational and ______. i definitely think with someone like dizzee for instance, the nigerian accent & speech pattern informs his flow; very pointed and brash, precise pronunciation of syllables and enunciation of ideas. the other obvious one is shifty ridoz, who sounds so completely different to any other mc in garage, you can sometimes hear the faint remnants of a french accent in his voice.

 

[Logan Sama]

SKU or "Skuffa" who used to roll with SLK still MC's in a strong african accent. He's the only MC I've heard do it. It sounds big.

 

[luka]

yeah good point sean, i'll add that to the theory next time someone asks me about it and take the credit for it!

 

[worrior]

A friend of mine put that together. I have to confess I hated the idea the moment I heard about it. So they ended up performing separately? That was a bit of a con though must have been something of a blessing.

Didn't realise there was such close connection between this thread and that event!

Did you see that Africa:Remix show at the Hayward. It started out quite well, brilliantly even but lost some focus and energy towards the end. I liked the binliners taped together and the oildrum voodoo totems the most.

Went on Friday, enjoyed it, particularly the utopian city made of rubbish and the belly-dancer trying to gyrate to the French national anthem, and staying on topic, discovered that Kano is a city-state in Nigeria.

Most of the dissensus crowd will have seen this but does clearly show how complex ethnicitiy is in London today
http://www.guardian.co.uk/graphic/0,5812,1395103,00.html

 

[zhao]

I don't think you could find any explicitly African influence on Grime at all. Obv Afro-American.

but when you listen to a Ghanian HipLife tune like this... is it me or does it sound a bit grimy?

 

[slackk]

zhao, can i get any instrumental versions of that sort of stuff? the vocals kill it for me, i've never liked that african singing style.

 

[zhao]

zhao, can i get any instrumental versions of that sort of stuff? the vocals kill it for me, i've never liked that african singing style.

really? i love love love hiplife vocal styles. this might not be a top tune far as that's concerned but when they do that part reggae, part arabic, and part who knows what else thing... it just doesn't get better than that. i'll see about posting a couple more showcasing not rhythm pattern but voice...

no one out there think this sounds at least a BIT grimy? have yet to try it but i am almost certain this would work in a grime/niche set.

instrumentals, i think i have a few... at the moment my access to hiplife is limited to what i find on the nets. but i just met some dudes from Ghana, who are crazy music heads... and i will try to swindle some dope from them

 

[slackk]

i think it sounds a little like the grimier end of funky that i've been hearing a bit amid the stuff that sounds about 8 years old and shit. i can see where you're coming from, like.

really? i love love love hiplife vocal styles. this might not be a top tune far as that's concerned but when they do that part reggae, part arabic, and part who knows what else thing... it just doesn't get better than that. i'll see about posting a couple more showcasing not rhythm pattern but voice...

Just grates for the most part. My old neighbours used to play this shit non-stop and it drove me mad. They may have been into the worst end of the scene but it was painful.

 

[Mr. Tea]

zhao, can i get any instrumental versions of that sort of stuff? the vocals kill it for me, i've never liked that african singing style.

That's weird (to me) - I don't know the first thing about grime or bassline or any of that stuff and just occasionally glance at these threads from time to time to see if any MP3s have been put up that I might heducate myself with...I really like the singing on this song but the music sounds like something put together on a Casio keyboard in about five minutes, and not in a good way...just one of those things I guess.

 

[Sick Boy]

no one out there think this sounds at least a BIT grimy? have yet to try it but i am almost certain this would work in a grime/niche set.

Yeah, I can see what you're getting at. It's all about those two snares on the two and three. Sounds a bit like Apocalypto riddim. I'm pretty sure this shit would be a buzzkill in a grime/niche set though, as much as I don't oppose it

 

[zhao]

nah all 3 of you are wrong the vocals sound fucking great, the beats sound at least as good as the vocals, and hiplife like this and the coupé-décalé i've been getting into will work like an irresistable booty charm in my set alongside grime (but prolly before niche). you'll see

 

[Pestario]

I can see the grime connection - needs more brappage tho

 

[gumdrops]

not grime but ty (on big dada) always sounds to me like his flow has some nigerian cadences to it.

 

[zhao]

needs more brappage tho

as does most everything under the sun

 

[luka]

ty is nigerian as far as i know. and black twang. and about a hundred other english hip-hop acts.