The year thus far has been very ripe, pregnant even, with good music and great live shows. Three weeks ago, I saw the Broun Fellinis in a great show at Madrone in which free-jazz met dub turned-over-deftly to hiphop beats. On MLK day, I took a trip down to Central Basin to see Monolake and Deadbeat. Unfortunately the organizers didn't take care with proper licensing and the jam was thus shut down by police before the Robert and Scott could get cooking for the second show that mko and I had shown up for. Very disappointing. Then not a week later, over at the Independent, saw Sidestepper and O-Maya in a brilliant show that really put on display the beauty of musical metissages.

Then if overexposure wasn't such a good thing, last Thursday at Cal, I saw Cuban clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera perform with the Brazilian-born guitarist brothers Sergio and Odair Assad. Paquito is an entertainer of the hightest order, grandfatherly with a keen sense of humour and a general ease in front of people that only comes from being good and having a lot of fun being there.

In between pieces, he would talk to the audience, crack jokes and give little anecdotes about the pieces. For example just before playing a piece by Bola de Nieve (who I didn't know), he described him as the Cuban Louie Armstrong and then sang some playfully exaggerated Louie-style low growly bass notes ... I loved it, the crowd was cracking up and the comfort level was set in eager anticipation of the deftness to ensue. Often in telling a story of a piece he'd refer to the composers as the “famous brazilian composer”, the “renowned Paraguayan artist”, etc. This was great because I didn't know anything he was playing apart from Rodeo by Aaron Copeland and an improvisation on a theme by Dizzy Gillespie, and so I was taking notes!! This is the stuff I need to be listening to to broaden the mind and nuture the soul. This was real school. Muchas gracias Paquito!

On the menu for the next coupla weeks, Blackalicious and Mos Def, needless to stay I'll most definitely be there (haha!). Also on the menu Feburary 3, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Broker/Dealer monthly Feburary 5.

In honour of MLK day today, I found the mountaintop speech, delivered the day before his assassination, an inspiring re-read.

Another good read, if only to feel the empathy and compassion (versus despite) in his Aeschylus reference, is RFK's speech, where he delivers the news of MLK's death to an audience in Indianapolis.

Last week, Greg Tate laments the misguided celebratory noise surrounding hiphop's turning 30.

I find it interesting that people fête these anniversaries so anthropomorphically. I mean does the arrival of a cultural movement “à la trentaine” have the same significance as a person's life reaching 30 to merit it being celebrated as such? Are the two lifecycles even comparable? Aren't there more important markers in hiphop's trajectory that banal numerical ones? How about we celebrate those ... whadya think people??

Maybe it's idiosyncratic of me but I tend to associate birthdays with celebrations of people and their specific progress rather than something as broad and now amorphously dynamic as hiphop, especially in its current state of affairs where the ethos of the founding fathers' untelevised revolution has been reduced to a pedestrian appendage of corporate Pop. Furthermore, I find that the numerical significance is not worthy of attention on those merits alone. That's why this whole affair feels like a forced sales pitch or a vapid publicity stunt.

Tate isn't very concerned about whether or not to celebrate, clearly there is stuff to celebrate. For example hiphop playing its part in “rendering people of African descent visible, unforgettable”, providing “more creative autonomy for Black artists and audiences” than other forms and its ability to “connect so many Black folk worldwide”.

Nevertheless all this faux celebratory noise from the commercial hiphop industry projects a false sense of security and obscures the distance folk have to go to get over real issues like institutionalized poverty, the AIDs and prison crises, not to mention larger global issues surrounding World Bank, IMF and Shell/Mobil/Texaco and their ilk. So while I don't want to hijack a homeslice's right to party, I have to wonder how you tailgate when your vehicle is smoking.

having a nostalgic moment here. photo by mko.