Friday, September 23, 2011
Anna and I caught one of the best performances we’ve seen in years the other night by Tune-Yards. My friend Andrew, who was at the show, said this afterwards: “I can’t decide whether hearing the president say ‘This is not class warfare, it’s math’ or the fact that this band could become popular makes me [...]
Filed in Hardware, Music, Race and Identity, Sampling
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Also tagged africa, audience participation, drumming, hipsters, indie, looping, merrill garbus, tune-yards, ukelele
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Tuesday, February 1, 2011
A little while back I went to a screening and discussion at NYU of Blacking Up: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity, a documentary about the wigger phenomenon by Robert Clift. I’m a very white person who has been heavily involved with “black” music over the years, like for example rapping an Ice Cube song [...]
Filed in Autobio, Music, Politics, Race and Identity
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Also tagged al jolson, america, authenticity, elvis presley, eminem, harry allen, hip-hop, hipster, james baldwin, paul mooney, Politics, snl, vanilla ice, wiggers
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Since I’m teaching the twelve-bar blues to some guitar students, I figured I’d put the lessons in the form of a blog post. Blues is a big topic and this isn’t going to be anything like a definitive guide. Think of it more as a tasting menu. Blues is a confusing term. You probably have [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged aretha franklin, batman, blues, chords, country, duke ellington, Emotion, flatt and scruggs, guitar, hank williams, harmonica, herbie hancock, jazz, john coltrane, john lee hooker, louis armstrong, memes, modules, muddy waters, Music Theory, thelonious monk, tritones
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Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Meet the most fascinating and problematic pop star of the moment, Antoine Dodson. If you’re a follower of internet memes, you know the story by now. If not: Antoine, his sister Kelly and her daughter were asleep in their apartment in the Lincoln Park housing project in Huntsville, Alabama. An intruder broke in and sexually [...]
Filed in Emotion, Internet, Music, Politics, Sampling, Social Media
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Also tagged america, antoine dodson, autotune, class, gregory brothers, memes, Politics, pop, remixes, tv, youtube
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I’ve been making sample maps, diagrams showing what songs include samples of what other songs. I’m a big sample geek. I like knowing where my music comes from the same way I like knowing where my food comes from. This map shows many, probably not nearly all, of the songs that sample Michael Jackson’s solo [...]
Filed in Autobio, Copyright and Authorship, Internet, Key Musicians, Music, Race and Identity, Sampling, Social Media
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Also tagged anthro, blogs, copyright, digg, digging the crates, flickr, hip-hop, Internet, jackson 5, memes, michael jackson, Music, Politics, pop, remixes, sample maps, Sampling, Social Media, soul makossa, twitter
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