Please post, as comments, some of the songs mentioned in the readings (especially the Morales), along with your name, the name of the song or songs and the page number. Make sure no one has already posted the same thing before you. Please have the posts done by Monday at noon. I've put an example below.
A link to Wayne Marshall's transcriptions and sound clips: here.
In case you spent 2004 on another planet or in a coma and didn't get a chance to hear it - Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina"
Here are the the musical elements in this song that Marshall talks about as being linked to various other genres:
"Galloping figures" and "half step harmonic motion" suggesting Spanish pasodoble (bullfighting music), like the venerable "España cañí":
Nasal delivery like certain salsa soneros (singers) - here's an example of the great Hector Lavoe singing "Triste y vacía
The Dem Bow rhythm, featuring "3+3+2" (also known as tresillo), here on the original Shabba Ranks tune.
And the also seminal "Bam Bam" riddim:
Some dancehall tunes, also popular in hip hop circles in the US in the early 90s, which ended up being referenced in early reggaetón:
Chaka Demus and Pliers "Murder She Wrote" (1992)
Cutty Ranks "A Who Seh Me Dun" (1993)
Dirtsman "Hot This Year"
PR underground/melaza/dembow/"proto-reggaetón": Playero 38
On reggaetonero, Tego Calderón, even has a reggaetón song, referencing an Afro-Puero Rican town, that samples the traditional Afro-Puerto Rican drum/dance called bomba:
Nuyorican rapper Big Pun's "Dream Shatterer"
Puerto Rican (from the island) rapper Vico C - an oldie but goodie (with a hilariously old school video) - "Tony Presidio"
El General's "Tu Pum Pum"
Little Lenny "Punnany Tegereg"
Bachata-influenced reggaetón - Wissin y Yandel's "Mayor que yo" has tons of bachata guitar
(If you don't remember, bachata guitar sounds like this:
Making the hurban market: NORE & Nina Sky's "Oye mi canto"
Some more modern Panamanian bultrón/plena/reggae(tón) - Kufu Bantón's "Vamos pa' la playa" ("A pasarla bien con los friends"). Notice the use of R. Kelly's "Thoia Thong" track:
Here's the aforementioned "Thoia Thoing"
The roots reggae and dub influence remains strong in Panamanian reggae - for example in El Rookie's "Grand Error" (although Rookie also sings more reggaetón-styled music)
The easily downloadable computer beat-making program Fruity Loops (now "FL studio"):
Reegaetón has sired mutant offspring all through the world. Here's choque/choke/shoke from western Colombia:
Reggae The Wailers play "You Can't Blame the Youth" - Peter Tosh sings, 1973
Rastafarianism Marcus Garvey (above), Ras Tafari Makonnen, Haile Selassie (below)
Rasta Nyabinghi
Nyabinghi in Reggae - The Wailers' Rastaman Chant, 1973
another Bob Marley Nyabinghi Reggae: "Babylon System"
Arsenio Rodríguez Arsenio's "Fuego en el 23" ("Fire on 23rd Street")
Arsenio's "Bruca manigua" ("Maroon Magician of the Forest")
All of this is very different from the elite Afro-Cubanism that was happening at the same time, like that of Bola de Nieve (here, singing "El Manicero," about a black peanut vendor)
Transnationalism and Technology
Black American Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready"
Bob Marley's "One Love" borrows from Mayfield's song
Technology and Afro-Futurism Lee "Scratch" Perry produced "People Funny" - with crying baby
Another wierd Scratch production, "Thanks We Get" (1974) Junior Byles sings
And another, here with the Wailers, "Mr. Brown"
Later dub, here from master experimentalist King Tubby:
The dub aesthetic in reggae. Eek-A-Mouse's 1982 "Noah's Ark" - Dub breakdown around 2:40 The Riddim Method
Dillinger and the Bretford Harmonics' "High Fashion Christmas" (1976) - first appearance of the "Hi-Fashion Riddim"
Freddie Macgregor's "Bobby Babylon" (1979)
Horace Martin's "Tired Body" (late 70s?)
A mix of Hi-Fashion riddim hits from 1980-81: Barrington Levy - Mine Yuh Mouth (1981)/Louie Lepkie - Late Night Movie (1981/Dillinger - Kublicon (1980)/Ranking Joe - Leave Fi Mi Girl Arlene (~1980)
Dub on the Hi-Fashion Riddim: Scientist's "Dub Bible"
U-Roy Toasting
Full digital - from analog to digital, reggae to ragga Wayne Smith's "Under Me Sleng Teng" (1985), the first fully computerized riddim
Traditional Music Jamaican Maroons of Moore Town - the abeng horn at 0:28 or so, "Sankeys" at 1:50 or so, Maroon drummimg at 2:50
Christmas in the Jamaican Maroon town of Accompong
For more on the Maroons there's a mini-documentary on Isaac Bernard, speaker of Eastern Maroon Kromanti language here Jamaican Kumina drums
Kumina Show/Party
Revival Singing in St. Ann's Parish
and here with drums:
Mento Old school Jamaican mento, Theodre Miller on violin
More mento (with the lead harmonica too quiet...) - Pepper Mento Band
The Jolly Boys are part of the recent mento revival
More Jolly Boys, from their recent album of covers
Reggae Precursors US saxophonist Louis Jordan
US singer Fats Domino
Skanking to Byron Lee & The Dragonaires at Club Sombrero in Kingston, Jamaica, 1962
Millie Small's 1964 "My Boy Lollipop" - the first international ska hit
The original "My Boy Lollipop," Barbie Gaye's 1956 version Mento influence in ska: a very young Bob Marley and a pennywhistle in "judge Not" (1962)
And apparently, the mystery singer "Girl Wonder," a female mento singer of the 60s, was in fact the future Rita Marley. Here she is singing "Cutting Wood"
Rocksteady Ska began to slow down and get a more syncopated bass, spawning rocksteady, like in the Clarendonians' "Rude Boy Gone A Jail"
The "one-drop" bass line in rocksteady, from "No Good Rudie" by Justin Hinds & the Dominoes
Rocksteady could have a hard edge, as in "Shanty Town (007)" by Desmond Decker, with lyrics about the rude boys
Rocksteady became the soundtrack for the rude boys, as in the 1972 crime drama "The Harder They Come," with Jimmy Cliff
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Trinidad - Carnival Hot Hot Hot (Arrow) - 1980
Trinidad Carnival 2009
Bacchanal (Destra García)
Carnival Costume Competition
Jamaica - Women Dancehall Queen (1997) - Full Movie
Romantic Call (Patra w/ YoYo) - Randomly featuring Tupac
Man is the Least (Lady Saw)
I've Got Your Man (Lady Saw)
Homophobic Jamaican Dancehall Chi ChiMan (TOK)
Dem Bow (Shabba Ranks)
Wayne Marshall of wayne&wax on the tight pants phenom in Jamaica here
Carnivals Tambu Bamboo - Trinidad
Rara (Haiti)
Carnaval (Rio, Brazil)
Carnaval (Salvador, Brazil - Ilê Ayé group)
Samba-Reggae - O canto da cidade (Daniela Mercury)
Characteristics of samba: multiple drums, tambourine (listen for the jingles) bass drum cavaquinho (stringed instrument) bass drum Incidentally, the song refers to Brazil's current drug wars: "He has coca in the fridge."
The question for your response to the Moore chapter is: "Why did white Cuban intellectuals take up Afro-Cuban music in their search for a Cuban national culture?"
"If, as we have seen, black culture on the Americas depends on both history and the act of remembering or reconstructing that history in the present, how does each (history and remembering/reconstructing that history) figure in the black political movement in Colombia discussed by Julio César Montaño/in the Tumaco festival?"
I've sent the reading and posted it on Blackboard:
Wade, Peter. “Black Music and Cultural Syncretism in Colombia.” Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. Daren J. Davis (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, [1995] 2007), 121-146
•Sublette, Ned. Cuba and Its Music. From the First Drums to the Mambo. (Chicag: Chicago Review Press, 2004), p. 73-83 •Budasz, Rogério. “Black guitar-players and early African-Iberian music in Portugal and Brazil.” Early Music, 35:1 (2007), 3-21
Suggested: •Lewis, Laura A. “Blacks, Black Indians, Afromexicans: The Dynamics of Race, Nation, and Identity in a Mexican ‘moreno’ Community (Guerrero).” American Ethnologist 27:4 (2000), 898-926
Question: "In what ways do these examples show that creolization goes both ways (between Africans and Europeans)?"
Röhrig Assunçao, Matthias. Capoeira: The Historyof anAfro-Brazilian Martial Art. (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 32-66
The entire book is on Blackboard - please just read pp. 32-66 (I saw from your comments that some foyou suffered through my whole chapter instead of reading just the specified pages...)
The question: How does the specific case of the capoeira dance/fight/game/music show the kinds of syncretism between African cultural groups and/or between African descendants and others that we've been talking about in the class? As a bonus question (which you can get to if you have the space in your response), how does capoeira exemplify the kinds of ethics and sociality that we talked about today?
You can see (and hear) that last question all over capoeira, as in the video below, a capoeira game between Mestre Cobra Mansa (without bandanna) and Mestre Jogo de Dentro (bandanna):
Just so you know (and thank your classmate Johnny Bohórquez for reminding me) - there's going to be a gigantic festival of Cuban music this spring in New York. Details here. New York is a little far, but one group I would go down (on foot if necessary) to hear anyhow is the Muñequitos de Matanzas, founded 60 years ago, not in the States since 2002, and hands-down the most famous group playing traditional Afro-Cuban rumba music: guaguancó, yambú and columbia. Luckily, they'll also be in the Boston area March 30 and April 1. I'm going to try and cook up a way to get the class, or at least interested members of it, down there. In the meantime, check out this video from that last tour
The readings for Thursday's class are up on blackboard (link)
The required readings are:
• Dixon Gottschild, Brenda. “Crossroads, Continuities, and Contradictions. The Afro-Euro-Caribbean Triangle.” Caribbean dance from abakuá to zouk : how movement shapes identity, ed., Susanna Sloat (Gainesville Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2002), 3-20 • Birenbaum Quintero, Michael. “The Poetics of Sound in the Black Southern Pacific World.” Rites, Rights and Rhythms: A Genealogy of Musical Meaning in Colombia’s Black Pacific. (Manuscript), 9-24, 32-40
Note that you only need to read pages 9-24 and 32-40 in my piece. Please post as comments your answers to the following question: How do the musical forms described in the Birenbaum Quintero piece exemplify some of the aspects described in the Dixon Gottschild piece? Which ones? How can musical practice in general be understood as inculcating ethical behaviors?
Also, I will be lecturing on music in Colombia, If you have a special interest, you might want to check out the suggested reading, also linked on Blackboard:
Suggested: • Gerard Béhague, et al. "Colombia." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. 8 Feb. 2011 II. 1 The Atlantic Coastal Region II. 2. The Pacific Coastal Region III. Popular Music And, tangentially, II. 3. The Andean region
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Hi all - no reaction paper necessary for the Mama Lola excerpts.
E. Franklin Frazier (1894-1962) Melville Herskovits (1895-1963)
Please read the following: Yelvington, Kevin A. "The Anthropology of Afro-Latin America and the Caribbean:Diasporic Dimensions." Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (2001) pp. 227-260
