Afro-Belgian musical group Zap Mama has effused pan-African rhythm and flow for the last 20 years, badooing and doowapping on politics and partying in English, French, and Bantu. Started by the striking Congolese-born, Belgian-bred Marie Daulne, and using their voices as musical instruments, the all-lady ensemble carries you from London to Lyon to Lagos with a mix of traditional West African rhythms and their diasporic progeny: soul, reggae, funk, jazz, salsa, and house. I've recently rediscovered them on my iPod, so I thought I'd share.
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Night Flight 695 - The Trance-Atlantic Journey with Fly Brother on an ethereal, all-music flight from Little Havana to the Latin Quarter - Miami to Paris - featuring recent and classic house, downtempo, acid jazz, soul, and electro-samba. Whether its to work out, chill out, or make out, this compilation will transport you each time you listen. Download and get lifted.
Playlist: "Vazilando (Rasmus Faber Mix)" - La Oreja de Van Gogh "Cerca de Mí" - Louie Vega f. Raúl Midón "The Way That I Feel" - Vikter Duplaix "Casa Batillo" - Brazzaville "Late Night Swing" - David Borsu f. Damia da Costa "La Femme d'Argent" - Air "A Day in December" - Manoo and Francois A. "Girls & Boys" - Prince & The Revolution "Leaving Monte Carlo" - Physics "La Rhythme et Le Cadence" - Dimitri from Paris
In this episode of the Fly Brother Podcast: Night Flight 121 - The City to Sampa
Journey with Fly Brother on an ethereal, all-music flight from "The City" to Sampa—New York to São Paulo—featuring recent and classic house, downtempo, acid jazz, and electro-samba. Whether its to work out, chill out, or make out, this compilation will transport you each time you listen. Download and get lifted.
Playlist: "Saturday Night Experience" - Jody Watley "Voodoo Bliss (Aaron Bingle's Azure Mix)" - Janice hosted by BSG "Bedtime Story" - Madonna "Down" - Herbert "Night Over Manaus" - Boozoo Bajou "Amazodiac" - Audio Lotion "Waltz for Koop" - Koop "My Endless Journey" - Imada "Samba do Gringo Paulista (Bigga Bush Reconstruction)" - Suba and Bigga Bush "Playground do Brasil" - Imada "Love and Happiness (São Benitez Sunset Mix)" - River Ocean f. La India
Living outside of New York, it's easy to miss entertaining, insightful, and even inspirational stage plays. Thanks to Spike Lee, the entertaining, insightful, and inspirational Passing Strange was filmed on its very last Broadway performance in 2008, capturing an amazing theatrical experience in an appropriate medium for temporal and spacial export beyond the Great White Way. The semi-autobiographical, gospel/pop/rock-infused story of a black, middle-class, angst-ridden teenager who jets off to Europe in search of "The (ever elusive) Real" in the early 80s was brought to my attention by a college buddy of mine, himself casting off the binds of a nine-to-five to pursue artistic endeavors; he said he immediately thought of me and suggested I order the DVD. He explained his understanding of the show in a series of text messages:
[Passing Strange encompasses]...searching for the real more as a metaphor rather...ur purpose...the reason y u live and breathe...and the reason y ure here. Yes...this can apply to racial identity and culture but i thought it as something deeper than that. Defining your soul...devoid of culture or race. Him trveling and visiting different cultures trying to find where he fits is on the surface...but underneath it all laid something universal...regardless of upbringing...background...or race...the search for truth and the journey for inner peace. This can be applied to anyone...the person hopping from job to job trying to figure out what he or she needs to do in life to be happy...the person hopping from religion to religion to find the truth...or the truth that satisfies him or gives him peace...the chick hopping from man to man trying to fill the void that'll finally make her feel complete...etc.
To me the play hit on so many levels...so many artistic levels and the struggle that artists grapple with on a daily basis...established artists and up and comers trying to find their spot...their niche. Brilliant.
Need I say more? Watch this clip from The View, in which the supporting cast welcomes the protagonist to Amsterdam and "The Real," then order the DVD and fly.
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Today, I head up to the Frozen North: ten days in New York City (any lurkers in the area, get at me). In honor of the occasion, I'm going to share with you a song that I think speaks more to The City I usually encounter than does Jay-Z and Alicia's new cut, Madonna's homage, or even Old Blue Eyes' standard paean (though I think "Sidewalks of New York" might come close :-) Anybody know this one?
On a related note, I read recently that one should to verbalize one's dreams as a part of manifesting them into reality. That being said, I shall verbalize that, within five years, I plan to be living seven-to-eight months of each year in São Paulo and three-to-four months of each year in New York (the summer months, of course; what could be better?), with each transition bookended by a few weeks of travel. The question isn't "why?" (I mean...why not?). The question is "how?"
On an unrelated note, I came across this song in my iPod recently. If electronic music is supposed to be danceable and joy-inducing, then why does this one make me so sad? :-(
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Before moving to a new place, you have to establish your priorities; what exactly do you want from the city you'll be calling home? Beyond the adrenaline rush of changing trains at peak hour or grabbing a cab with friends from the club to the after-hours, you've got to factor in cost-of-living, employment possibilities and earning potential, cultural offerings and entertainment, and transportation costs to other places. Unexpectedly, Fraulein Berlin plead her case for becoming my next home base while I visited last weekend.
For a few years now, I've been dedicated to marrying São Paulo, that raucous, gaudy Brazilian gal who pussy-whipped me good-fashioned when we first met back in '05. I've been there four times already, the longest for two months. I've made friends, researched the job and housing markets, and have a pretty good notion of how much it would cost to see my Fly Mother at Christmas. In the face of Berlin's possibilities, however, Sampa's starting to seem slightly like an overpriced, if exciting, fling.
First, there's employment and cost-of living. In São Paulo, a full-time English teaching position (40 hours a week with very little time for writing) at a language institute would pay about $1000 a month. Rent in a large studio or small one-bedroom apartment in a centrally-located, working class neighborhood would run minimum $400 and easily $500 a month. Working part-time at a language institute in Berlin can net about 1000 to 1500 Euro a month (that's part-time, I said), with studio apartments near subway stations clocking in at 350-400 Euro. Teaching Spanish would earn me even more in both places, but $10 per hour versus 25 Euro for classes...you figure it out.
Secondly, and very important for a Fly Brother like myself, is ease of travel. São Paulo has the busiest airport in Latin America, but it's a three hour, typically $200 flight away from the next largest cultural capital, Buenos Aires, and often domestic flights to places like Salvador da Bahia can run into the $300 range (on the plus side, hops to Rio are usually quick and easy, either by air or land). A round-trip ticket to Miami for mid-October: $718. Sampa-Tokyo: $1700.
Berlin, capital of smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-Europe Germany, is a little over an hour by air to London, two to Istanbul. Lufthansa's offering flights to Orlando for 499 Euro, Cairo for 279, Joburg for 589, São Paulo for 669, and Tokyo for 649 (I'd be getting paid in Euro, remember). Travel within Europe and even out of Europe—unparallelled. And if I need to pop up to Stockholm to film a toothpaste ad, down to Lisbon for a conference on Portuguese-English literary translation, or over to Londinium for a weekend of debauchery at one of these off-the-hook places my Londophile ("Anglophile" seemed a bit off-kilter and wrong) readers keep trying to sell me on, I can do it for stupid cheap.
Lastly, there's the feeling of Europe giving me a much larger platform from which to launch a sustainable career as a writer, photographer, bon vivant, or whatever the hell else I choose than South America. While SP has an established and burgeoning artistic milieu, the exposure is much more limited and the pay for creative jobs is atrocious.
I'm still going to Sampa for a few months after my trip to complete the first draft of a novel set there, and maybe the opportunities that present themselves during those months will trump Berlin's argument. I'm very sure that the exhiliration of my social life there will make it exceedingly hard to pull away. And I hate cold weather, so even sometimes-chilly SP has that going for it. In the end, though, I'm thinking a move to Europe would be sacrificing one great thing for many good things that could potentially become great. As they say in Spanish: unos por otros; not quite literally, one thing for another.
But then, I may decide to move to Hong Kong after a week there in October.
Who would expect hundreds of yellow-haired Vikings to be bouncing energetically to "Bonita Applebum" and not missing a word of Aretha's "Think" on a random late-summer's eve? Sure as hell wasn't me; seeing a rack of blonde "single ladies" bouncing their Nordic booties on-beat (y'all read right) left me verklempt. I have to give it up to the Swedes: they are no joke on the dance floor!
Like in most of the world nowadays, hip-hop is the general soundtrack for Swedish teen love and loss and twenty-something success and angst. Still, unlike in most of the world, that soundtrack seems to have been playing in Stockholm for the last twenty years. With The Voice of Hip-Hop and R&B being the city's most popular radio station, young folk are indoctrinated in the soul and bounce of “black music” from an early age, both by hip parents and by the prevalence of the music in almost every shop or restaurant staffed by people under 35. And also unlike in other places, because they learn English from a very young age, Swedes actually understand most of what they're listening to.
I remember first visiting the country as a foreign exchange student at age 16, waaaaaaaaay up north in the tiny Arctic town of Råneå (pronounced RO-neo) and being surprised that one of my friends there knew most of the lyrics to Toni Braxton's “Another Sad Love Song.” True, her version was “Another Shade of Soul,” but who could blame her for not getting Toni's husky vocals quite right; the approximation at least made sense. This trip, I scored Scandinavian cool points by arguing that rapper Busta Rhymes is indeed Swedish, since one of his most famous lines is “Ja ja ja, ja ja!,” which is, of course, Svensk for “Yes yes yes, yes yes!” I got the whole carload crunk with me and five Swedes ja ja ja-ing through Stockholm.
With more than just a passing knowledge of soul, dancehall, mainstream R&B, and hip-hop, I sensed a true cultural appreciation for the artists as well as the music; hell, my CouchSurfing host had a head shot Erykah Badu as his computer desktop wallpaper (“I luff hah!” he said). Then, of course, there are the imitators, like the “modern-day Steve McQueen,” Sven D'Navia, and his dancehall parody “Shejka Bompa.” Keeping in mind that the Swedish “j” has the English “y” sound (ergo, “ja ja ja”), you can figure out for yourself what the title of this song is.
Anyway, here are the photos from my five days in sizzlin' cold Stockholm. She ain't cheap, but she's a definite party girl, ja!
PS - Shouts to Adrianne, Ibrahim, Roland, Nathaniel, and Helena for coming to meet me at our li'l impromptu Afro-Swede Fellowship Gathering at Wayne's Coffee. Why come nobody got a picture of that?!
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When people hear about my round-the-world trip, they immediately envision the project in its enormous scope. They count the cities, the continents. They wonder aloud at the spectrum of cultures to absorb, people to meet, experiences to be had. Their jaws slacken as they conceptualize the voyage and formulate their personal version of "Can I go with you?" They ask if I'm excited.
Up until today, my excitement was (still is, somewhat) tempered by the necessary and very boring, unglamorous, and sometimes-frustrating process of planning and executing a three-month round-the-world trip, followed directly by a trans-equatorial move. Confirming flights, securing lodging, organizing finances, locating addresses, preparing documentation, and packing bags necessarily shift the focus from the grand scheme to logistical minutiae; I don't have time to get very excited about the endeavor as a whole because I have to look at and manage each step as it comes in order to keep from missing a step. And this is indeed the grandest endeavor I've ever undertaken.
The past few months have been marked by a series of miniature milestones that I've anticipated anxiously as they approached: the end of the school year and my move from Colombia, visiting friends in Venezuela and Panama, reconnecting with my family in Florida, soaking up positive energy on the West Coast, retracing my steps in DC, celebrating my impending departure in New York. These events have come and gone, and nothing's left now but the departure itself—a launch from my country, my culture, my friends and family, my familiar into the unknown. No returning to a job in a month. No coming back to my honey or dog or goldfish or plants in a week. No plan other than to collect as many experiences and as many life-long friends around the world as possible over the next three months, then make a go of life in the Big Apple of the Southern Hemisphere. It's deep, y'all. Enough to frighten most people.
In fact, I almost succumbed to the fear, myself. Coming back to the States, I felt bombarded by the propaganda of American capitalism: buy, buy, buy! I started to feel like a loser because my cell phone couldn't take pictures or tell me how to get to the closest Italian restaurant or bake a birthday cake. I felt like I needed to come back, get an MBA, get a "real" job, and start acquiring things. Thank the Cosmos that all my plane tickets are non-refundable. I'm not disparaging folks for having all the latest gadgets and flyest kicks and the new-new whip; but I've learned, mostly because of traveling overseas, that memyselfpersonally, I don't really need those things. Stability, yes. Accoutrements, no.
And right now, on the cusp of the next chapter in my life, I'm suddenly, unexpectedly ready for the unknown.
Unafraid.
And excited.
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I don't know when the hell National Geographic's world music cable channel, Nat Geo Music, started airing, but from the moment I caught a glimpse this weekend, I've been addicted. So long CrackNewsNetwork!
Flyest Lyrics:
Flyest Video:
Flyest Collaboration:
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Beyond the uber-famous, internationally-known Shakira and Juanes, Colombian music is a thick stew of flavors and spices ladled in from the three founding cultures of the country: Euro, indigenous, and, most potently, Afro. And, as in most post-colonial societies, it is the music of Colombian artists that speaks most loudly against injustice and in homage to marginalized groups, all the while urging feet to tap and booties to shake. Check these:
CHOC QUIB TOWN, a powerful triumvirate of lyricists from Quibdó, the impoverished capital of the mostly-black, oft-maligned, and federally-neglected department of Chocó, on the Pacific coast. In what is virtually the Mississippi of Colombia, the scant resources sent to the region are stolen by corrupt officials and starvation, illiteracy, and narco-trafficking are rampant. Out of this struggle, of course, comes amazing creativity, manifested in Colombia's world-class entry into the realm of hip-hop.
Cabas, a son of the Colombian Caribbean, infuses his pop-rock melodies with the syncopated rhythms of his native region. Raised by a musician around musicians, Cabas' youthful voice and style add a playful air to his aural flirtations. The video below caught my eye when it rotated heavily on MTV, but his most recent hit also makes me smile (the refrain is "spend the night with me, gorgeous, and stay all day tomorrow").
Living world music icon, Totó La Momposina (NOT pronounced like Dorothy's dog), represents the epitome of traditional Afro-Colombian and indigenous folk music. Born in Mompox, a colonial river port deep in the swamps of the Caribbean interior, Totó chants and sings over the drumbeats of cumbia and mapalé with the soulful mix of Southern church lady and Yoruba griot.
The "niche" (pronounced NEE-chay) in Grupo Niche refers to a hip, stylish, fly black male—I've been called it a few times by people who thought I was from the Colombian capital of salsa, Cali, where this salacious musical combo is based. In fact, no where else in Colombia is salsa danced or played with as much boompangfwap as in the country's third largest city, very much like Atlanta with its black middle class, its history as the seat of a slave-based agricultural economy, and its present as the seat of a black music movement. Also check out their cousins, Orquesta Guayacán.
Lastly, Bogotá-based La Mojarra Eléctrica mixes traditional Afro-Colombian beats with reggae, funk, jazz, and electronica. The group is named for a traditional and plentiful fish eaten on the Caribbean coast, only electrified like their music. The video below, Calle 19, was filmed on the major commercial strip near my old crib in Downtown Bogotá, so when I watch it, I get a li'l nostalgic for the street vendors, juice bars, cheap lunch counters, car exhaust, noise, and gritty Ande-urban flavor.
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I was in college when I first started traveling frequently by plane, between Florida and the Northeast on Delta or the defunct MetroJet by USAirways. This was the late 90s and my musical horizons, already broad for having grown up with a band directing father and a soprano-singing mother, were being expanded even further beyond R&B and Miami bass by the international students I interacted with on my internship program in DC, and by a good buddy who studied in Boston and put me onto his own discoveries. Now, electronic (particularly drum-and-bass and lounge/chillout) and world music have become the staples of my aural diet.
One of the first groups to catch my ear and have a permanent space on the playlist was Sade's band, Sweetback. Their self-titled first album dropped in 1996, chock full of songs originally written for their Afro-British muse but sung on this CD by neo-soulsters like Maxwell and Amel Larrieux. Two instrumental tracks, however, have a special transportative power and, when listened to on an airplane, seem to progress at the same speed as the plane traveling over the Earth. "Chord" gives you daytime Atlanta-to-DC while "Walk of Ju" takes you over New York and Philly at night. Ignore the videos and just listen.
I haven't posted lately because, on top of a demanding work schedule, I have been and will be traveling in the next few days. Last weekend, I popped out of Barranquilla unexpectedly, finding myself in the tranquil lil burg of Valledupar (va-yay-doo-PAR), about four hours down a winding, rickety road in the north of Colombia. Valledupar is the "World Capital of Vallenato," an ultra-popular brand of Colombian folk music centered around the somewhat shrill accordion. I don't like the music, but I enjoyed my stay in the city. The people I bunked with (a friend's family) showed me the town's beautiful swimming gorge, lorded over by a two-ton bronze mermaid; never once called me "El Gringo," respectfully using my name the entire time; and made sliced cow tongue with coconut rice for lunch on Saturday. Yes, it was good! I should have taken pictures but, alas, I'm dumb.
Friday, I'm off to the 23rd Annual Drum and Cultural Festival at San Basilio de Palenque, near the former slave port of Cartagena (two hours down a slightly better highway). Palenque was established as a runaway slave settlement and has been honored by UNESCO (the United Nations' cultural arm) for being the only such settlement still in existence today (though now its residents are, of course, not runaway slaves), and is one of only a few cultural offerings universally recognized in Colombia as African in origin and not absorbed into the mainstream (yet still Africanized, whether they admit it or not) culture of the Caribbean coast. Despite this honor, Palenque remains a marginalized community mired in poverty and lack of opportunities for young people. In 2006, CNN aired a story on Palenque's history, Creolized Spanish, and "talking drums":
I'm excited!
Saturday night through Monday finds me in Bogotá, the boisterous capital of Colombia and site of much debauchery. No, I won't be taking pictures of that. ;-)
...last summer on the beach in Rio de Janeiro, butchering the beautiful Portuguese lyrics to Tom Jobim's iconic "Samba do Avião" (crudely translated as "Jet Plane Samba"):
Fly Brother tackles international travel in unabridged, unapologetic, full and complete color. It's also the blog name of writer and educator Ernest White II, a tall, ruggedly handsome, erudite, occasionally delusional Black American male living in Brazil's largest city.
Afro-Belgian musical group Zap Mama has effused pan-African rhythm and flow for the last 20 years, badooing and doowapping on politics and partying in English, French, and Bantu. Started by the striking Congolese-born, Belgian-bred Marie Daulne, and using their voices as musical instruments, the all-lady ensemble carries you from London to Lyon to Lagos with a mix of traditional West African rhythms and their diasporic progeny: soul, reggae, funk, jazz, salsa, and house. I've recently rediscovered them on my iPod, so I thought I'd share.
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