Last night headed over to the Mezzanine to check out some selecta wizardy. On blasthaus, it was advertised that DJ Krush would be playing with a 6-piece band!

I mean I wasn't envisioning Lawrence Welk or anything, but the prospect of Krush's freer forms and some live [and probably improvisatory] elements was very alluring.

On arrival, the stage looked super teeny, and was mostly taken up by the warm-up DJ's gear. On the upside there was a grand [and probably prepared] piano on stage, but other than some miscellaneous microphones, that was it.

When Krush finally came on, he was accompanied by an older gentleman in traditional Japanese clothing, carrying several Shakuhachis. Krush then laid down a dreamily melancholic, highly textured base upon which the Shakuhachi player built upon melodically. Rhythmically, things felt like they were in a heady type of slow motion. The quasi-droney 1/4 time crunchiness, paired with the breathy pluckiness of the bamboo flute's melismata, made for a strange and mesmerizing experience.

Next, a Japanese piano player came on in the same format as the Shakuhachiste, aka layered over the Krush. He was however, all over the musical map, at times playing little delicate melodies, other times, reaching into the open grand piano to strum the strings, other times, belting out salsa inflected arpeggios. Matching the piano's free form, Krush featured deep drum'n'bass-eque sub-bass rumblings and skippy hi-hats, but no snare, no kick and no MC jammering over it all ... now imagine that with a half processed/half live reedy or piano texture filling it up.

Now my favourite performance of the evening came last, albeit surprisingly, a saxophonist. I suppose I was surprised, after the Shakuhachi, at the sequence of Western instruments that followed. Ultimately, there's nothing particularly Western about a saxophone is hands of a musician that handles it deftly. Take Fela or Manu Dibango's deft weildage that was completely African, now replace that image with a Japanese chap of comparable skills, that's what Krush had organized.

What followed with the saxophone was more or less in the earlier vibe, but crazier. In the opening sequences of one of my favourite flicks, Lost Highway, the protagonist, a saxophonist (hence this story), plays a hot'n'hard, furiously head-jerky, fingers-racing, whole-body-into it, sweaty solo that just uses him up. The sound of this specific solo shot to mind as soon as Krush's accompanist started tearing it up, and he was just getting started. Now what he did about 20 minutes into his accompaniment literally blew my socks off. Imagine this balding 45-ish, marginally portly Japanese chap, just puts down his saxophone on a chair, takes a step to the closest microphone and over the on-going melancholia belts out a rising vocal note, so achingly deep with yearning that you could just burst into tears. His voice, so pregnant with pain and feeling, transcending all linguistic barriers, was unquestioningly the highlight of my night.

Grosso modo, the show was musically tight and engaging. On the downside, having each musician play alone with Krush did feel a bit disjointed and incoherent, but not in a musical way, more in terms of logistics. This seems primarily because the “backstage” was upstairs behind the second bar, and each time one came out or returned to the lair, there was an entourage of helpers, assistants, bodyguards, etc. shuffling them along. I mean the Shakuhachiste was a bit elderly and frail, but that seemed a bit much. Nevertheless, I think things might have been all that more interesting if all these wizards were on stage together, jamming out ensemble!

posted a handful of coolpix I took last friday night at the debut of the fresh-arse weekly that NoAgreement is putting on @ Elixir, in the Mission.

as we all know home taping totally killed the music

now (image taken from woebot.com) filesharing is doing the same!!

wanna kill some music, well it all starts with a little education.

A fascinating article ( genre: how-come-I-did-not-know-this ?) appeared recently in Science magazine, detailing the development of the Nicaraguan Sign Language or ISN (Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua).

The ISN is a signing language developed independently from other sign languages in the late seventies when the Sandinista government set up the first schools for deaf children in the capital city of Managua.

check the official story from wordiq:

ISN is particularly interesting to linguists because it has apparently grown from a pidgin to a full-fledged creole in a few decades, due to the repeated influx of new child learners who have adopted ISN as their first language.

The Sandinista officials asked for help from outside scholars. After the linguists finally decoded the children's creation, Nicaraguan Sign Language became a classical case of modern linguistics. Some linguists see what happened in Managua as proof that language acquisition is hard-wired inside the human brain. “The Nicaraguan case is absolutely unique in history”, Steven Pinker, author of The Language Instinct, maintains. “We've been able to see how it is that children not adults generate language, and we have been able to record it happening in great scientific detail. And it's the first and only time that we've actually seen a language being created out of thin air.”

What I find intriguing here is the fact that version of the language used by the first generation children, now in their 30s, is much cruder and much more gestural (kinda like what a hearing adult would do if she tried to sign), while the versions spoken by subsequent generations exhibit myriad linguistic building blocks that are a lot less gestural and can be combined in numerous ways to form a variety of meanings and nuance.

Now these developments over such a short period and the fact that the language these kids spoke finally was much more complex than what they were exposed to initially, makes a good case for the creative contribution of these children.

The necessity to reach out and touch in the most basic way, in spite of an otherwise crippling disability seems to have been the mother of this kind of [hardwired] linguistic inventiveness.

My boys from beatinfractions, following up a tight performance at Nyks during the Festival de Jazz will be back in action live Au Quai des Brumes next tuesday and Au Cheval Blanc next wednesday. too bad I get to miss that .... (damn you nomadic lifestyle!!! hehe)

Barely a week freshly off the proverbial boat in a vibing and musical city and already I've learned about a handful new genres I never knew existed. Take for example, leaving the King Britt show at Mighty the other night, a flyer-distributor-dude hands me a stack of flyers 'cos apparently my cool is cool enough for his party. Since I'm still navigating the labyrinthine word-soup of venues, parties, DJs, weeklies, etc, I figger this is a good way to orient myself.

Now flipping through the flyers, I happen upon one that is just plainly flagrant in its invention of meaningless genre names. This flyer features such musica as: Future Samba, Fonk Arabic, Ragga dis'n'dat and Digital Zulu!! huh? What the hell is Digital Zulu ?!?!

Before we tackle this intriguing question, what is regular Zulu music? Well it is music of the Zulu ethnic group (duh!) of the KwaZulu-Natal Province in eastern South Africa. Most people in this ClearChannel controlled country haven't heard many traditional African musics, let alone Zulu. Probably the main Zulu group singing in isiZulu with any international exposure (thanks mostly to Paul Simon) is Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

... there are two distinct [Zulu music] styles: the township-rooted Mbaqanga, which is characterised by strong rhythms, vocal harmonies and deep lead groaning male vocals, and Mbube or Iscathamiya, an acapella form originating in the 1920s out of the vocal competitions held by migrant labourers who had left their families behind to work in factories or the mines, living in all-male hostels. Mahlatini typifies the Mbaqanga style, while Ladysmith Black Mambazo are typical Iscathamiya performers.

There so now you know what Zulu music is, the question still begs, What is Digital Zulu? Ladysmith Black Mambazo on a Nord Lead or MPC 2000? or maybe DJ Shaka tearing it up on his pair of Technics SL-1210s.

Whatever the literal meaning of Digital Zulu, the impression I got from this flyer was that Digital Zulu is a disposable name, easily replaced with names such as Digital Mandingo or Digital Swahili or Digital whatever-seems-distinctly-African. These genre names are fundamentally disingenuous and do a great disservice to the layman out there duped into thinking such genres actually exist.

On the other hand, the promoters responsible for this night might be trying to futilely carve out a niche for themselves, like “The Bay Area's hottest Digital Zulu Night, every Wednesday at ...”.

So aside from that, I've also noticed a general wanton disregard for actual specifics (e.g. Alt Country) and a strong proclivity to lump stuff, even singletons, into these broadly ambiguous categories (e.g. Austrian trip-hop) Maybe I'm being too demanding but seriously what's going on people ...? Having a hard time describing the music thoroughly yet succinctly without reverting to played out cliched descriptors like “Future”, “Alternative” or “Digital” ?

Admittedly talking about music is tough, and has been likened to dancing about architecture, but I wouldn't have beef if I detected more substance, less posing and riding on other's laurels.

This summer has been a bit hectic and my posts have been watered down content-wise and undoubtedly less juicy malheuresement. *ahem*. Well, now I'm on the West Coast for a bit, have recently organized a new U.S. based home for de'f child productions, check the updated contact details.

Actually being a resident of somewhere (damn you vagrants!), has sped up the business end of things. At the moment I'm putting together the articles of incorporation for the recording/publishing wing of de'f child, applying for a ISRC registrant code and trying to become a BMI publisher ...

yes, busy busy busy!