Hi. I used to use this blog a lot more than i do now. I don't agree with much of what i've posted here, but such is the nature of time. :) My instagram & facebook are likely to be more up to date.
i kind of can't get enough of juke. i'm playing a lot of other music right now, but what i want to listen to is juke.
i've been mining this stuff for a while and it's amazing... particularly the footworking stuff (the more abstract sub-laden tunes for the dancers more than the run-of-the-mill booty house tunes). it can be abrasive at times, but having seen it go down live i love the energy and i think the style is worth trying to appreciate... it could be compared to bmore club stuff, and has isn't that far off the more hyper dubstep tunes... but it's nearly 20 years old... and has a whole culture of dancing.
o.k. so... some links...
if you know nothing about juke watch this first... this track like many juke tracks features a short vocal sample cut and pasted into a main instrument sound (in this case, bob marley...)
dj rupture wrote a short post on juke, but more importantly upped THIS.
also... i packed up a few mp3s i found... mostly weirder footwork tracks... & not the straight juke stuff. the tunes are:
DJ NATE - "back up kid", "my heart" & "3peat" DJ RASHAD - "teknitian" & "In Da Club Before Eleven O' Clock" DJ ELMOE - "Where yo ghost at, Where yo dead man" & a bonus Kill Frenzy remix that appeared on Kingdom's mix for low end spasm that has some juke vibes to it.
Well... so much dancing & fun... DJ Ripley & DJ/rupture both played my monthly D.J. night (awesome, the both of em...), checked out the Tomb Crew with my favorite local deejays, and i've been going nuts on the resurgence of tribal percussion in dance music... but it was seeing a Chicago juke video that reminded me of my promise to Olivia of Zafira Dance Company to write a post about my the influences on my dancing... While i can't do all of these moves, i can do a lot of em, and i try to combine them into a fusion that reacts to the diversity in a great deejay set. note: the music in these videos is somewhat secondary... i picked 'em for the movement primarily...
first, wicked fast juke dancers to set the mood. pure gold.
so the club is packed, you have to move, but how? here's some kuduro dancers, which interest me because they dance at 140+ b.p.m., a tempo range that's very au courant...
the guy at 1:59 in that kuduro video blows my mind... love that walking in place shit... anyway, speaking of kuduro... get some legwork tips from this one... swing those knees!
there is some arm and hand miming in that one, but really no hand and arm work is complete without peeping the master himself, flattop...
here's another with terrible audio, but a bit longer... he's really the best popper/locker/strober i know of... very flexible, too... does some yoga-like stalls...
that movement is really all about isolation... working different sections of your body without moving the others... something any tribal style bellydancer knows all about... Mel here kind of does what i'm talking about... though a bit more fluid obviously than a pop-locker... i've seen her perform with her partner from Kassar some way slower shit than this, which is my real fave.
here's another... it's again similar to (but not as good as) the utter badass slowness one might have seen from the mid 2000s Zafira girls... I'm sure they still rock that style occasionally, though it's been more raucus and balkan from them lately. Note: if you're looking for great bellydance troupes and links, start nowhere but this collection (right at the top are the women of Zafira, our local tribal style geniuses...)
while it's a bit more ass-centric, the dutty wine is another of these isolation-based dances. based in dancehall culture, it's a farily sexualized dance, that non-the less gets some real props in my book from a skill level. humorously, the wiki cautions that "Some doctors have warned against performing the Dutty Wine, claiming it may cause serious muscle trauma, and ligament damage." this white boy is unafraid.
to me this all starts to get combined in liquid dance, or basic rave dancing... before going too deep into the liquid stuff... let's start with a fairly clubby version of breakdance one finds at the better, more cosmopolitan dancing events. I saw this woman at DEMF 2007, and she's still great on youtube.
but yeah... liquid... often made fun of, but pretty fucking cool anyway... it's an adaptation of tai chi, and is all about continuous, fluid movements, often very arm & hand oriented... he's doing tiny bits of "tutting" here, too...
this guy's a bit stiff and isn't moving the rest of his body much, but this is a great example of the basic hand movements of classic rave dancing. i swear this evolved because of the tightly packed dancefloors that don't allow for wild arm movements...
there are two dancers in this next one, and while they incorporate a ton of pop-locking and other breakdance styles, there is a liquidity here that's great... especially the second dancer. don't be fooled by how much of a dork he seems at first... mad skills!
ok... some details. my dancing also contains some small details i think make a big difference... i take a cue from kathakali dancing in terms of face control...
hands: tiny fluttering movements that complete the tighter areas of the body's natural spiral... the belly dance name for it is "lotus hands" i can't find any better examples of this, but she basically does it. I'd like to think my version of this is cooler... a lot more cascading individual finger movement...
fingers: this guy does some finger tutting, which is really fun... i use tiny bits of these actions...
directions: the dancer has a lot of axes to work with... in this clip from james brown's pilot t.v. episode, future shock, this guy at 3:15 is dealing with time in a mostly 90 degree way, but with a ton of moxie and funk...
feet: while we're with james brown, he does some great sliding footwork in this video early on...
feet: of course, there's always michael's footwork...
someone has adapted the moonwalk to the breakdancing style "gliding"...
i do a think where i glide in a circle with my feet basically never leaving first position, but i can't find anyone else doing that. i realize i'll have to step up at some point and upload a video... it will take goading... anyway, interms of other dancingthen there's the stuff that i don't even pretend to incorporate, but i find terribly inspiring... there's the lindy hop:
and of course really bad ass breakdancers... my buddy jubz had some videos of aerialists that youtube has never bested, but here's an amazing windmill compilation i found:
even further there is the not-exactly dance movement that rocks my world, like capoeria:
sometimes the music makes me move slowly, like in tai chi:
and sometimes it's all about spirit... "duende", as flamenco would call it. maybe it takes just being goofy, just being energetic or whatever, but you have to feel it. here are some Rajasthani dancers (who feel it!) from the spectacular film, Latcho Drom:
P.S. (i'm sure i forgot some AWESOME dancing that I love... and some that isn't even my thing but still rules... so feel free to leave some more tips in the comments... i'll update this post if anything is really crucial!)
a photo of our hero from my archive of early 20th century anarchists...
all you need to know about the upcoming g20 in pittsburgh and the accompanying bullshit, lies and state terrorism can be found in the erudite, funny, subjective, personal and ultimately triumphant column of the pittsburgh grassroots examiner, which is penned by mike boda (formerly the town crier for the yinsurrectionary times)...
"Green Hands" (Iran 2003) length: 15 Min. The multiple award-winning short film Green Hands, a film by the Iranian director Behrooz Gharibpour made in 2003, impressively visualizes M. R. Mortazavis artful play..."
skip ahead a bit... unless you are moving slowly on this day...
"when it's truly alive, memory doesn't contemplate history, it invites us to make it... ...up until a few centuries ago, the spanish word for "remember" also meant "wake up" and it's still used in that sense in some rural parts of latin america. a memory that's awake is contradictory, like us... ...it was born not to be an anchor but a catapult."
i was reminded of eduardo and (one of) his great books recently by the storm over hugo chavez handing barack obama one of his books. i read it during john jota leaños's AMAZING class, "technomythologia" at carnegie mellon university. "upside down" is chock full of facts and stories, blurbs and boxes, pictures and power. it takes on the odd (upside down) relationship between the latino/latina/chicano/chicanas in the south and the gringos of the u.s. it tells tragic tales, but his writing has a humanity and humor and respect it think is crucial to actually make the truth digestable and inspirational.
things could be said to be going a little better in latin america, what with hugo chavez and evo morales and michele bachelet and christina fernández de krichner in power, but there are still sketchy things going on, with help from america. of course there is plan colombia, but did you know about the ILEA(international law enforcement academy)?
"Though lack of transparency makes it impossible to know the content of courses, the conduct of the Salvadoran police—who compose 25 percent of the academy’s graduates—has shown an alarming turn for the worse since the ILEA was inaugurated. In early May 2007, the Archbishop’s Legal Aid and Human Rights Defense Office (Tutela Legal) released a report implicating the Salvadoran National Police (PNC) in eight death squad–style assassinations in 2006 alone. Meanwhile, the Salvadoran Human Rights Defense Office has also published reports connecting the PNC to death squads and repeated cases of corruption and misconduct. While US interest in ILEAs is to ensure an environment that protects free trade and US economic interests, the PNC has played an active role in a crackdown against civil liberties, aimed at curbing both crime and social protest."
in more happy latin american news, i'm spinning SUPER HOT LATIN SHIZNIT at the may day global crunk edition of PANDEMIC... MAY 1st @the brillo box 10pm-2am. expect to hear merengue típico, cumbia crunk, and this completely ill brazilian dubstep track i'm listening to right now... i'm spinning 10:45-11:30, but if you riot on the dancefloor i'll go longer! pete pandemic and juddy will play their typical lovely blend of afro house & coupe decale, balkan brass, ukranian dancehall, badass bhangra & turkish freak out tunes...
editor's note: sorry for the delay getting out this issue. i've been super busy, so blogging has been hard to get to, but admittedly i've also been a little geeked out on using facebook for the first time. finding old friends, writing letters, posting little things for them, becoming a "fan" of hummus, etc... for real though, it has been fascinating watching people from completely different periods of my life talking with each other. not that that doesn't ever happen here, but, well, it's a different audience. i love you both, and that veiled gazelle isn't going anywhere...
i was reminded today of one of the weirdest people on the planet, manwoman. i originally heard of him the research's excellent book "modern primitives". he makes some art, writes poetry, but weirdest of all he is dedicated to saving the "swastika". for those who don't know, the swastika as a symbol goes back to neolithic times, with many beautiful meanings. the nazis really ruined it for everyone... hear's the nutty fellow explaining all the different historical uses for you... the swastika stuff starts about a minute in after his explanation of the third eye...
"The first project is collaboration with the SOTENI Local Management Committee of Kuria (a group of community leaders and elders) to build an orphanage for small children on land given to SOTENI by the Kenyan government. This project will include income-generating agriculture on about 10 of the 33 acres and will help sustain the project in perpetuity. Eventually, our hope is to also build a rescue center for girls fleeing the FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) ceremonies, which happen in Kuria every December. The land is bordered by the River Migori to the north, which makes it ideal for farming a variety of crops (we are talking about watermelon, maize, beans and eucalyptus) and has a great view of Masai Mara, which is an added bonus for our children."
"The second project involves meeting with and vetting orphans to participate in our sponsorship program. I am using the public schools as my starting point and have been asking administrators to prepare lists of the total orphans in their schools along with their performance records. The numbers of orphans in the communities here are staggering. AIDS and other poverty-related deaths have destroyed many, many families and the children are the most vulnerable to suffer. I have been all over Kehancha and surrounding towns (yesterday we were traveling by motorbike taxi because the roads were unfit for cars) meeting with children and their guardians, which are usually relatives or an especially generous teacher."
also, she notes "If you are interested in sponsoring one of SOTENI’s 12 children or another child in Kuria, please let me know!!!"
often i don't see movies or read books that i assume to deliver a message that i already agree with. this was the case with the film "milk"... it tells the tale of the first gay elected official and human rights activist harvey milk... i was already familiar with the story, thanks mostly to a great jello biafra spoken word piece on "i blow minds for a living". i'm a big advocate of gay rights, so i thought... "why bother?" but it was so much more. life. liberty. riots.
so yesterday was martin luther king day... i highly recommend listening to the (hour long) program of martin luther king speeches here. the two speeches are from a year and a day before his assassination.
it's good to remember that he wasn't just a civil rights leader, but a political savant, labor organizer, anti-war activist and mystic. that's my favorite photo of him, shaking his malcom x's hand, despite their many differences.
today was the last day of george w bush's presidency. the end of several errors. you can throw out all those keychains counting down to his last day now...
today was also the first day of barrack hussein obama's presidency. i don't know if he's all that, but i still got chills reading his inagural address. something's happening here...
the history as far as i am aware is that these folks were working shitty jobs for various DARPA funded projects at CMU and decided they could use their badass technological skills to pull off way better shit. that might be a myth, but it's the origin story i know.
the graffiti writer is amazing. it writes dot-matrix graffiti on the ground (click for large size above) at 15 miles per hour. they once wrote "voting is futile" across the u.s. senate steps and even though the police noticed them, they got away with it, because they assumed that because they had a robot, they had permission (!) video of the little guy in action is here in this short video (.mov 28mb)
rich also made a moving video about a crazy (?) guy in pittsburgh called "don't call me crazy on the 4th of july". it's about mind control, true history, crazy people and real whistle-blowers... watch it (a gripping ~30 min.)...
ALEXANDRIA IS OPEN, GREATSITE, MUSIC: there have been a couple of HUGE music archives found recently... pretty much all the trojan reggae box sets are available on this site. props to rupture for locating that. the boxes are great, especially if you need help learning about the various forms of reggae. a ton of (pre-2008) grime hip hop albums can be found here. in thanks for uploading a request of mine on extra music new, i uploaded the entire ernst catalog here. they are some of the first records i bought (1999!) and i love them. a deep minimal tech/house series by thomas brinkmann. you can really hear the evolution of his sound. fun stuff. a couple other music blogs i've been digging recently are disturbed beats, which is full of fidget house and bassy dance stuff (thanks conway!), blog to the old school, which is a spectacular service that uploads vinyl rips of old jungle and hardcore records (run by devnull!) and the elephant's child is loaded with videos of mostly modern african & middle eastern music. in the too much music category... i plan on posting my 7 reggae mixes from 2001 soon... i gave them to my local pizza shop and they bump 'em all day some times.
MOVER, MUSIC: 2008 saw the passing of odetta... brief eulogy and 1963 folk songs album here. also, miriam makeba passed away... brief eulogy and her debut album is here. others (like teo macero) passed, but those two i had just learned about...
MUSIC, MP3: alright, here's some track i've been diggin on. some really different stuff here, this time. some chunky, faltering house, an old illbient track, 1 serious epic pounding dustep tune, more, all .zipped up on mediafire again.
ART: if you are unfamiliar with swoon, (and even if you are) you might want to check out these videos of her work... sort of like a paper-cut-out banksy with a lot less myopic view... these snow sculptures (sort of bas reliefs, really are amazing. i found the image on this guys front page cool, but the rest is fairly boring (and very NSFW). yulia brodskaya's paper work is unique. i like the text ones mostly. demakersvan made an awesome lace fence. make your own fractalized photos with this plugin (windows only, :( ) also, i never saw this olympic water cube... gorgeous (as was the opening ceremony, which i finally saw)...
ECO: only thing that crossed my radar was an improvement in passive;y heated homes that allows the heat to be captured during ventilation so that you can be warm and breathe at the same time (with super low fuel costs). article.
welcome this fine friday! here is a picture of my 17-month old son, river...
MP3, MUSIC: so, in honor of the riaa ending it's policy of lawsuits against music sharing, let's start with some tracks... just some heat i've been scorched by recently all .zip'ped up on mediafire...
note: i've noticed some of my links to mediafire were dead, even if the files are still there, so feel free to hassle me about fixing broken links... it doesn't take long once i know about it. i just fixed the links on "8 songs, 1 spirit" for instance.
NATURE, WEIRD: a lot of attention has been paid to the thailand tiger temple monks, but you should watch out for their dubious conservation claims. if you want heart-warming animal-human friendships stories you should stick with (warning: youtube link with cheesy music)christian the lion. more on christian here.
MOVER: great post on the passing of studs terkel with information on oral histories. alton ellis just died in october. his political reggae like "arise black man"(torrent) was classic, but equally so we're tracks like "dance crasher" and "girl i've got a date" from his lover side... i'm also a little sad it took me this long to learn about superbarrio.
"I simply wish to underline the extremely complex interplay between the local and the foreign in the non-space that is the internet. English-speaking Spanish folks tipped off to the situation in the Western Sahara, adolescent racists with shitty spelling, French and Spanish kids of Arab descent, stereotyping hip-hop fans, a French speaker from Marrakech, all participating in the politics of a music video with a political bent of its own. YouTube as a behavioral economist's nightmare: a true Tower of Babel in which transient avatars are speaking in different languages, exchanging imperfect information with no shortage of subjectively invisible linguistic violence, slicing through a vast majority made up of Arabic-language commenters."
also, getting good press is as easy as paying people, revenge of the nerds filmaker makes something for the homeless, expensive but awesome log bowls and a (useful?) start page.
VIDEO: as wayne (from whose great digest format i based this post) would call it, videyoga (via):
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