aka: we do not consent to being a single being!
*note, this is not the only band, let alone only artful practice, to do any of the things described below. This it's just my favorite band doing these things - and an answer to 'what's a contemporary example', posed in class today : }
This band is everything LIVE. the difficulty in sharing what they do in videos is that ssoooo much of the camera angles and editing is crafted around selecting out a single being, the 'lead singer' or ''that moment the bassist has a solo', 'when the drummer goes off (on his own)' etc etc. And beyond that, the camera person seem to be continually trying to find hierarchical method for where to look, where the importance is - that the person singing is more important then the other dancing to their side or behind.... that somehow that isn't and equal contributor to the ensemble's performance. or if this person is singing, even when all three are continually entwined in their movements, they keep cutting so it's just this one, then this one. maybe with the poor idea that they are bringing you closer to seeing something but cutting out the rest, when really they are cutting off a limb from a movement-becoming-body. Arg. So i search and search for videos that will allow the camera to keep a shot where all three can be present for more then a few moments.. so that others might understand what i mean about how they move and weave together -- always in the interstices of each other's movements and singing -not just alternating their roles or parts. But the camera keeps disguising this. Their immense beauty and force as a true ensemble is not simply a group of players moving together --- it's their movements make a body(ing) that is more-than human, from their emergent collectivity. this is more then vibbing, this is vibbing o u t ---- and these annoying videographers aren't filming with, they're filming at.
anyways. these videos were the closest i could find -- but they still keep cutting away when they are dancing behind and between. and they aren't NEARLY as wild as when i've seen them (3 times in the past 4 years).
Graham Hastings, Alloysious Massaquoi, and Kayus Bankole have been making music together since they met when they were 14.
But ok. rewind. apologies for this totally biased and unweighted commentary. But the reason i'm hyping them so much isn't just 'stage performance' - but because they create BELIEF in the world (for me, or my favorite world of music) in how they have mediated their own image, and negotiated all those attempts to make them one or the other. always always they are many forms of both/and.
Critics looking for an origin point in the polyphony of their sounds/rhythms like to trot out 'where they're from', even though they all grew up together in Scotland. Graham ‘G’ Hastings, from Drylaw, Edinburgh, Alloysious Massaquoi, originally from Liberia via Ghana, and Kayus Bankole, born in Edinburgh to Nigerian parents, but partially raised in Maryland in the USA. But that biography still doesn't give an account for an origin of sound and culture that fits into the genres music critics like. It's their job to give the readers 'a context' from which to know them, without actually listening to them. or they are like this, but better. And because Kayus, G, and Alloysious create and produce the music togehter, (some) writers struggle to assign what role each of the 3 men have. They name themselves a Pop band, despite 'critics' attempting to label or categorize them -- as a blend of scottish-hiphop/punk/grime doesn't stick - and when (in the days before their Mercury prize) writers try to label them with some kind of hyphenation of hiphop, the smashing of words betrayed really quickly that those categories were being assigned more around race, rather then from the traditions in the sound. and so they resisted, again and again, naming themselve PoP.
They have stylings from a l l o v e r the p l a ce, in their production and lyrics, but movements and rhythms and gospel-gone-grime weavings. And they don't play into being a-political or definitively 'Political' (alone) in their lyrics. both/and both and. practices in the everyday -- queering lines and queering neurotypical captures. everything is everything.
too many things and nobody else will care but better interviews and insights are found elsewhere.
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/03/young-fathers-interview-pop-needs-represent-culture-it-really
http://www.nme.com/features/young-fathers-interview-the-mercury-prize-winners-on-islamophobia-pushing-perceptions-and-their-ince-756609
http://www.dummymag.com/features/young-fathers-dead-interview-a-moan-and-a-cry-can-say-a-thousand-words
Oh, Bonus material :
on the superimposition of masculinity on young boys/men (fyi, Glasgow aint not joke. this isn't your Queen's side Edinburgh):
Oh. and they had a collab with Massive Attack, 2 years back ,that was amazing. Oh. and they are about to release a new album. i'm not excited at all.
*note, this is not the only band, let alone only artful practice, to do any of the things described below. This it's just my favorite band doing these things - and an answer to 'what's a contemporary example', posed in class today : }
This band is everything LIVE. the difficulty in sharing what they do in videos is that ssoooo much of the camera angles and editing is crafted around selecting out a single being, the 'lead singer' or ''that moment the bassist has a solo', 'when the drummer goes off (on his own)' etc etc. And beyond that, the camera person seem to be continually trying to find hierarchical method for where to look, where the importance is - that the person singing is more important then the other dancing to their side or behind.... that somehow that isn't and equal contributor to the ensemble's performance. or if this person is singing, even when all three are continually entwined in their movements, they keep cutting so it's just this one, then this one. maybe with the poor idea that they are bringing you closer to seeing something but cutting out the rest, when really they are cutting off a limb from a movement-becoming-body. Arg. So i search and search for videos that will allow the camera to keep a shot where all three can be present for more then a few moments.. so that others might understand what i mean about how they move and weave together -- always in the interstices of each other's movements and singing -not just alternating their roles or parts. But the camera keeps disguising this. Their immense beauty and force as a true ensemble is not simply a group of players moving together --- it's their movements make a body(ing) that is more-than human, from their emergent collectivity. this is more then vibbing, this is vibbing o u t ---- and these annoying videographers aren't filming with, they're filming at.
anyways. these videos were the closest i could find -- but they still keep cutting away when they are dancing behind and between. and they aren't NEARLY as wild as when i've seen them (3 times in the past 4 years).
Graham Hastings, Alloysious Massaquoi, and Kayus Bankole have been making music together since they met when they were 14.
But ok. rewind. apologies for this totally biased and unweighted commentary. But the reason i'm hyping them so much isn't just 'stage performance' - but because they create BELIEF in the world (for me, or my favorite world of music) in how they have mediated their own image, and negotiated all those attempts to make them one or the other. always always they are many forms of both/and.
Critics looking for an origin point in the polyphony of their sounds/rhythms like to trot out 'where they're from', even though they all grew up together in Scotland. Graham ‘G’ Hastings, from Drylaw, Edinburgh, Alloysious Massaquoi, originally from Liberia via Ghana, and Kayus Bankole, born in Edinburgh to Nigerian parents, but partially raised in Maryland in the USA. But that biography still doesn't give an account for an origin of sound and culture that fits into the genres music critics like. It's their job to give the readers 'a context' from which to know them, without actually listening to them. or they are like this, but better. And because Kayus, G, and Alloysious create and produce the music togehter, (some) writers struggle to assign what role each of the 3 men have. They name themselves a Pop band, despite 'critics' attempting to label or categorize them -- as a blend of scottish-hiphop/punk/grime doesn't stick - and when (in the days before their Mercury prize) writers try to label them with some kind of hyphenation of hiphop, the smashing of words betrayed really quickly that those categories were being assigned more around race, rather then from the traditions in the sound. and so they resisted, again and again, naming themselve PoP.
They have stylings from a l l o v e r the p l a ce, in their production and lyrics, but movements and rhythms and gospel-gone-grime weavings. And they don't play into being a-political or definitively 'Political' (alone) in their lyrics. both/and both and. practices in the everyday -- queering lines and queering neurotypical captures. everything is everything.
too many things and nobody else will care but better interviews and insights are found elsewhere.
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/03/young-fathers-interview-pop-needs-represent-culture-it-really
http://www.nme.com/features/young-fathers-interview-the-mercury-prize-winners-on-islamophobia-pushing-perceptions-and-their-ince-756609
http://www.dummymag.com/features/young-fathers-dead-interview-a-moan-and-a-cry-can-say-a-thousand-words
Oh, Bonus material :
on the superimposition of masculinity on young boys/men (fyi, Glasgow aint not joke. this isn't your Queen's side Edinburgh):
Oh. and they had a collab with Massive Attack, 2 years back ,that was amazing. Oh. and they are about to release a new album. i'm not excited at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN0IlHz6aIU
ReplyDeleteThe only way to calm down the sound that is happening within me is to have a greater conversion to listen to, not of words much more.
I know I might not talk at all in class, I will allow/feel the shifting that ‘s happening during the listening/discourse process.