African Music Reissues 2002-2012

T

Trillhouse

Well-known member
Honest Jon's are pretty good on this stuff if you're feeling disconected. The Hailu Mergia And The Walias Lp that just been reissued is a beautiful record.
 
Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
zhao said:
yes this conversation is somewhat old hat in the "global music" scenes but as eye-rolling as it is to some, in many ways it is for sure good to continue (not necessarily suggesting here)

2032082507.jpg
Click to expand...

thanks leo - that's completely hilarious.

reading that article. i think it's quite a well-balanced critique. echoes quite a few of my remarks up-thread. a bit too centred on "funky dancefloor beats" etc. ultimately though what these reissue men is doing is pretty harmless isn't it? i mean to compare it colonialism is, c'mon lets face it, entirely over-the-top. if funny in a knee-jerk kind of way.

i think it bothers me more how cool these people think they are. i mean - they think they're so cool don't they? idiots. but even that's reasonably harmless if, i guess, irritating.
 
Last edited:
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
Woebot said:
a bit too centred on "funky dancefloor beats" etc.
Click to expand...

can hardly fault them for trying to keep afloat by catering to the demands of the Western markets though?

Woebot said:
i mean to compare it colonialism is, c'mon lets face it, entirely over-the-top. if funny in a knee-jerk kind of way.
Click to expand...

and it would be one thing if any of these guys made any actual money with the thousands of hours of digging, organizing, mastering and licensing, etc., that they put in to bring this stuff out -- but the reality is that without exception, nearly anyone who works with African music in the West have given up much more financially lucrative ways of spending their time to do this work which often have few rewards. i should know lol.

Woebot said:
i think it bothers me more how cool these people think they are. i mean - they think they're so cool don't they? idiots. but even that's reasonably harmless if, i guess, irritating.
Click to expand...

Well they are indeed a lot cooler than people who are not hip to these sounds, which is most. In fact, the concept of "cool" itself precisely come from middle class whites mimicking the speech patterns, gestures, fashion, cultures and music of the black underclasses in North America, no?

Ronald Perry writes that many words and expressions have passed from African-American Vernacular English into Standard English slang including the contemporary meaning of the word "cool."[18] The definition, as something fashionable, is said to have been popularized in jazz circles by tenor saxophonist Lester Young.[19] This predominantly black jazz scene in the U.S. and among expatriate musicians in Paris helped popularize notions of cool in the U.S. in the 1940s, giving birth to "Bohemian", or beatnik, culture.
Click to expand...
 
T

Trillhouse

Well-known member
I think some people are making alright money off of reissues, dj gigs and shipping vinyl out of the continent to sell on ebay and in boutique record shops. Not to mention building up their personal collections which will be worth a small fortune to those they're buying from. Maybe nobody's getting rich off it but then who is in the music business these days? Some of the bootleggers must come out of it pretty well because they get to keep all the profit.

I think the issue of foreigners taking cultural capital out of a country and profiting off it is always going to a sore point for some, made more complicated because of history.
 
T

Trillhouse

Well-known member
zhao said:
In fact, the concept of "cool" itself precisely come from middle class whites mimicking the speech patterns, gestures, fashion, cultures and music of the black underclasses in North America, no?
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure 'coolness' in some form has been around as long a culture and fashion. see sprezzatura from the page you linked.

The actual word 'cool', thanks to cheapening effect of overuse, has lost so much of it's original connotation to pretty much rendered it's origin meaningless. When children the world over are being sold the same 'cool' new action figure, they're not being sold it's "gentleness of character" or "ability to be mentally calm or detached".
 
P

PiLhead

Well-known member
Woebot said:
when i visited senegal and gambia in 1993 i found some vinyl then. the point about records in those days was that the shops were basically tape stores. they would make money by selling recordings of the vinyl. therefore if you bought a record off them then it meant that you were permanently removing a recording from local circulation. i remember one etoile de dakar LP that i settled for a cassette copy of because to take the LP seemed off.
.
Click to expand...

Had the same experience when I went to Little Haiti in Miami in 1998. There was what I thought was a record store with some cool stuff but when I tried to buy a record the shop owner looked perplexed, as if that was a crazy request. Realised after a bit that punters came in and he would tape records of their choice onto a C90 for them to play in their trucks or boom boxes - nobody in that neighbourhood would be owning a turntable or even a music center / hi-fi cabinet. it was a bit like that Malcolm McLaren circa Bow Wow Wow fantasy of cassette music being this semi-disposable, utilitarian thing for mobile people, you'd buy a cassette at your local newsagent or grocers. Except even more disposable than he imagined cos it wasn't even a case of buying a prerecorded cassette like BWW's Your Cassette Pet, the punters were purchasing dubbed C90s with no artwork or tracklist. Almost like hiring music rather than owning it. Zero fetish for packaging or the record as an object.

The dude let me buy a prerecorded cassette of voodoo music in the end.

So that would be the norm then, in Africa? Elsewhere?
 
Last edited:
sus

sus

Moderator
catalog said:
Beiser did a new thread somewhere but I told him we weren't interested and then he left anyway
Click to expand...
Yes you were terrible to Beiser just terrible I hold you partially responsible along with Version for his departure and I'll never forgive either of you
 
C

catalog

Well-known member
Dear Beiser,

Sorry we don't appreciate you, we are all proper cunts as they say in England.

Version and I particularly have a tendency to get over excited with the insults and 'play hard' ethos. This is because we are from the North and don't like the 'Southern softy'element of the forum as exemplified by luke.

Please come back with your African music recommendations. I actually really do like African music. I think they've got the best melodies.

Yours sincerely,

Catalog
 
C

catalog

Well-known member
Is that OK, can you send it to him? It's from the bottom of my heart. And the laughter from version is to be interpreted as a co-sign
 
version

version

Well-known member
catalog said:
Version and I particularly have a tendency to get over excited with the insults and 'play hard' ethos. This is because we are from the North and don't like the 'Southern softy'element of the forum as exemplified by luke.
Click to expand...
I didn't insult him. He insulted me! I said I didn't like the idea of big business and it inevitably leads to corruption and he said it was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard and accused me of being a middle-aged raver with a rotten brain then left.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top