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<div>Hey people - it's a pleasure to see some of the threads on the
list.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The main issue is:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>1) You have to think about different kinds of literacy. I think
Lev Manovich would be totally illiterate of youth culture's global
fascination with hybridity and convergent media - I'm saying that as a
friend. I did music for his "Soft Cinema" project, and we've
had discussions about this. Alot of the digital theory scene simply
cannot process divergent forms of sound art, and digital media. They
can deal with Japan, China, and India, but Jamaica, Africa and, ahem,
African-Americans, are a no-go zone for theories of digital media and
sound art. I've never been quite sure why that is, but, yeah, it's
there.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The curators in the artworld have no idea about how to deal with
this, and the digital media scene in terms of the real practice of
multi-culturalism, needs some serious work as well.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>In Eduardo's piece, for example, starts with RZA, but doesn't
engage the real practical relationships of the Caribbean (especially
producers in Jamaica) whose practice of "versioning"
directly anticipates hip-hop, or for that matter the idea of call and
response blues from the turn of the last century. There are so many
other places to start - Bollywood's ability to absorb the complex
vocabulary of Hollywood film, Egyptian cinema, West African film
makers like Sembene Ousmane... It's all about collage based
composition. I'd say Brian Eno and David Byrne's "My Life in The
Bush of ghosts" is probably alot more creative than alot of the
hip-hop you hear today, and in fact, it's been sampled alot, but then
again, so has Fela. RZA took that kind of hybridity, and made a brand
out of it... But then again, so did King Tubby.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Anyway:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>If you are open, there's plenty of interesting material out
there.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>A very very very brief primer for those interested in
"remix" culture:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Valentine de St. Point "Manifesto of Lust" - 1915</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Luigi Russolo - The Art of Noise - 1915</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Theodore Adorno - The form of the Phonograph</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Norman Mailer's "The White Negro" - 1957</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Amiri Baraka - Blues People: Negro Music in White America,
1963</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Alfred Appel - Jazz Modernism - 2003</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Eduoard Glissant - Poetics of Relation, 1997</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop, 2005</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>and of course, my book "Rhythm Science" that came out
on MIT Press a little while ago.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>www.rhythmscience.com</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Stevem Shaviro has an excellent on-line teaching resource about
sampling as well:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" size="+2"
color="#000000">http://www.dhalgren.com/Classes/Sound.html</font></div
>
<div><br></div>
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></span>============</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>These are the liner notes to a Box Set CD I've done with Trojan
Records.<br>
<br>
Trojan Records is a legendary record label started by Arthur
"Duke" Reid in Kingston, Jamaica in the late 1960's. It's
archive encompasses some of the most renowned Jamaican artists in
history, and the box set I've compiled for Trojan Records is a slice
of material from their catalog. It's a double CD with outtakes and
extremely rare versions of Jamaican material from the last 40
years.<br>
<br>
Paul aka Dj Spooky<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Heel up, Wheel up, come back, rewind: Trojan Records<br>
by Paul D. Miller<br>
<br>
When Trojan Records asked me to do a "selections" from their
archive, one of the first things that went through my mind was how do
you mix music that changed the world? It's been about fifty years
since Jamaica has become an independent country, and it seems like the
music that comes from this tiny island in the Caribbean is having more
of an impact than ever.</div>
<div><br>
Trojan Records' founder, Arthur "Duke" Reid, used to drive
the Trojan brand of trucks around Kingston with huge speakers blasting
his innovative collection of Jamaican music, leading to the urban
legend of how the name of the soundsystem cum record label developed.
"Duke" was a former policeman, and it comes as no surprise
that the "ruff and rude" sounds of the Kingston underground
were the staple of his sound.<br>
<br>
The metaphor of the Trojan truck, mapped onto the Greek legend of the
Trojan house, is as fitting as any fiction. Trojan Ltd. was a car
company that made sturdy trucks that were to become the staple of the
colonial market export of cars. The people of Troy, a great city in
ancient Greece, were a royal line founded by Zeus and Electra, and if
the myths of the past are to be kept in mind when we think of Jamaica,
you can see the update: Like the Trojan horse, these stealth units,
soundsystems, were able to be in plain sight while changing the
cultural operating system of the entire world. Soundsystems were
portable discos, mobile platforms for different styles. They were the
preferred method of spreading a style because they were nomadic in a
way that the monumental clubs of the U.S. and U.K. couldn't dream of.
From the vantage point of the 21st century, they can only be viewed as
the predecessor of the iPod.<br>
<br>
Portability, quickness, stealth copies of hit songs,
"versions"Š All of this leads us to the idea of remix
culture and "mash-ups" that are the digital world's
inheritance from the analog media of the soundsystem. With the
material that I selected for this compilation, I wanted to avoid the
obvious songs of Jamaican history, and focus on the more esoteric
materials that collectors and producers could relate to. For example,
when the Prodigy sampled Max Romeo and The Upsetters' 1976 "I
Chase The Devil (Lucifer)," I thought it would be a good start to
think about how the same sample popped up on Kayne West's production
of Jay Z's hit "Lucifer." I think you'll relate to the
out-take version I included in the compilation of Lee "Scratch"
Perry's version, "Disco Devil." Sounds like piracy? Well can
you imagine the world without Bob Marley? He used to screen records as
a clerk for the Coxsone soundsystem. He'd literally sift through the
sounds of the current day to tell Coxsone which records to copy! This
was invaluable for his development as a recording artist and
performer.<br>
<br>
The "re-mix" was happening in Jamaica to keep the best songs fresh
with the newest sounds for decades before the idea hit the U.S. With
Perry and his staple of singers like Susan Cadogan (a former
librarian!), you can hear the heat of a Kingston night in songs like
her hit, "Fever," and her 1974 smash single "Hurt So
Good," a cover version of Millie Jackson's song by the same name.
Since copyright law in Jamaica was never tight everything was a copy
of something else. You can think of the whole culture as a shareware
update, a software source for the rest of the world to upload. And if
you stretch your ears, you can see the future of digital music in the
drum machine riddim of "Sleng Teng" - a rhythm made at King
Jammy's on a Casio MT-40 home keyboard.</div>
<div><br>
Jamaica created its own economy in sound with the relentless bass
pressure of an island where music, and access to the right styles and
sounds could make or break your career. The pressure to find the right
rhythms created a hothouse of innovation. Just think: reggae is the
expression of a nation under immense pressure - from IMF loans, from
colonialism's aftereffects, the falling price of bauxite and its
relationship to a Third World economy based solely on natural products
like sugar cane and bananas.<br>
<br>
Before hip-hop was global, the Jamaican scene had somehow, on the
down-low, followed the idea of diaspora. Today with artists like
Matisyahu in Brooklyn doing Hasidic Jewish versions of reggae, to
stuff like Japan's "Ranking Taxi" to the myriad sounds
coming out of Brazil, India, Tunisia, Germany and France, the
tradition of pastiche and bricolage continues. You get the idea. The
logic of diaspora - of taking music from a region and spreading it
across the world - is reggae's core essence, and when I put this mix
together, I wanted to go from my downtown NYC to London and Kingston,
to parts of the world I'd forgotten and the most distant places of my
record collection.</div>
<div><br>
I used to go to Jamaica every summer when I was a kid, and some of my
earliest memories - visiting relatives and friends, cousins and uncles
and aunts - was of my mother and sister reminding me of the links
between the island and America. My Mom used to even used to write for
Jamaica's equivalent of the New York Times, Kingston's "Daily
Gleaner!" I want you to feel history when you listen to this mix and
think about how sampling, making new music from old, came from the
idea of versioning. Think about the soundsystem battles of Duke Reid,
Sir Coxsone and Prince Buster as a forerunner to MC and DJ battles in
hip-hop. Tthink about Kool Herc's soundsystem as a stepping stone for
"Planet Rock." Just think about how strange the world would
be if we didn't have this music of the islands. It just makes you
remember that this whole planet is just an island too.<br>
<br>
This mix is a combination of the old, the new, and the in between.
That's kind of the point: DJ culture in the 21st century is as much
about the soundsystem as the playlist. The iPod revolution has brought
us back to the era of the "single" in the form of a downloadable
media file. It's a return to the era when we were kids in the
ancient late 1980's, when vinyl still ruled the dancehalls, and the
soundsystems of NYC, Kingston, and London were all about underground
flava. At a certain point in time, and at a certain place - a phrase:
architecture is nothing but frozen music. What happens when we reverse
engineer the process? Form becomes flux, solids melt into ideas,
concepts, blueprints, codes and contexts. I wanted to make a mix that
reflected that: old and new. If there's one thing that reggae has told
us, it's all about that pressure drop!<br>
<br>
Enjoy!!!<br>
</div>
<div>Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid NYC 2006<br>
</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>CD 1<br>
1. Disco Devil by Lee "Scratch" Perry<br>
2. Lama Lava by Augustus Pablo<br>
3. 007 Shanty Town by Desmond Dekker<br>
4. Funky, Funky Reggae by Dave & Ansel Collins<br>
5. Shades Of Hudson by Dennis Alcapone & Kieth Hudson<br>
6. Come Together by The Israelites<br>
7. Old Fashion Way by Ken Booth and Kieth Hudson<br>
8. Rain by Bruce Ruffin<br>
9. Your Ace From Outer Space by U-Roy<br>
10. Sweet Like Candy by Winston Williams<br>
11. The Rooster by Tommy McCook & His Band<br>
12. The Trial Of Pama Dice by Lloyd/Dice/Mum</div>
<div>13. Fever<x-tab> </x-tab>by
Susan Cadogan<br>
14. Skinhead Moonstomp by Symarip<br>
15. Morning Sun by Al Barry & The Cimarons<br>
16. Save Me by Bob Andy & Marcia Griffiths<br>
17. Rudy A Message To You by Dandy Livingstone</div>
<div>18. James Bond by The Selecter<br>
19. Rough Rider (Live) by The Special Beat<br>
20. Ghost Town (Live) by The Specials<br>
21. Mirror In The Bathroom (Live) by The Special Beat<br>
22. The Russians Are Coming (Take Five) by Val Bennett<br>
<br>
CD 2:</div>
<div>1. Entertainer by Charlie Chaplin taken from Dancehall
Explosion-20 Killa D</div>
<div>2.The Great Musical Battle by Derrick Morgan</div>
<div>3. Reform Institute by Gregory Isaac's All Stars</div>
<div>4. Popcorn by The Upsetters</div>
<div>5. Brother Noah by The Shadows</div>
<div>6. King Tubby's Explosion Dub by King Tubby</div>
<div>7. Dynamic Fashion Way by U-Roy</div>
<div>8. A Yah We Deh by Barrington Levy</div>
<div>9. Peter Tosh "Here Comes the Judge" - taken from
"Trojan Legend Box Set"</div>
<div>10. Dave Barker "Lock Jaw"</div>
<div>11. Dillinger - "Flat Foot Hustling" - taken from
"Trojan Legend Box Set</div>
<div>12. Lee "Scratch" Perry - the Upsetters -
"Chapter 2: French Connection"</div>
<div>13. Hot Sauce (Aka The Agro Man Is Back) by Dave & Ansel
Collins</div>
<div> 14. A Version I can Feel With Love by Tommy McCook</div>
<div>15. Brain Mark by Jackie Mitoo</div>
<div>16. Pop A Version by Dennis Alcapone</div>
<div>17. Ethiopian Kingdom by Prince Rowland Downer and Count Ossie
Band</div>
<div><br>
</div>
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