The Embassy is the name of my weekly WFMU radio show. We broadcast at 91.1 FM in New York and 90.1 in the Hudson Valley, and of course we on the internets. You can stream last night’s show and check here for the playlist.
I get a lot of emails – “what does the Dutty Artz headquarters look like?” “What type of furniture and seating arrangement do y’all use?” “Are the walls plaster, wood paneling, some sort of tiling, or Italian wallpaper?” “It is true that your in-house legal counsel is an 83-year old Moroccan man, suspicious and animated, who owns no cellphone?”
Needless to say I don’t have time to respond to these emails, but my friend Simone just faxed me this JPG of a photograph which may help answer some of your questions. As always, we here at Dutty Artz Limited Liability Corporation (Dutty Artz L.L.C., est. 2007/8) thank you for your patronage.
Bee and I drive for hours from Jeppestown looking for Nozinja’s house on the edge of Soweto. I’m using the GPS on her Blackberry- but keep fucking up and suddenly we’ve left the city behind and are driving for 20 minutes out into the countryside where sprawling townships blend in from afar with the yellow umber tall grass. The drive was supposed to take 45 minutes- but we arrive at dusk to his spot next to the rail tracks in a clean cut row of brick single story houses. A gleaming Benz sits in the dirt driveway and Nozinja, creator of the Shangaan Electro sound, is inside waiting for a BBC interviewer to call back. I apologize for being hours late- but he says it’s fine and just makes fun of Bee for not knowing her way around Soweto. Shangaan Electro is the new marketing title for the wildly inventive update on Shangaani music that Nozinja has been making and selling throughout S. Africa for years.
Rich from the Tshetsha Boys in one of his masks - Nozinja plans the costumes and a seamstress makes them
DIY Kitchen Distro At Nozinja's House
This is a classic untouched genre discovery story – weird computer music, hyperspeed dancing, clown costumes, youtube, serendipitous ringtones, cancelled return trips home from South Africa- but the music is mindblowing- and more so for all seemingly coming from the mind of one man. Nozinja gives me one of the his early releases from Tiyiselani Vomaseve- a group produced by Nozinja consisting of five women who dance and one who sings. The CD is hand screen-printed and comes off a spindle from his distribution/storage cupboards in the kitchen- it is hard to get all the way through, the midi music is relentless and exhausting for the uninitiated- but the rest of the Shangaani music that has been coming out via Honest Jon’s has been addictively listenable. After killer coverage of those releases, including a massive summer tour, Nozinja is set to start releasing his own music digitally to the world via his eponymous label. The first two releases are availble now from Tiyiselani Vomaseve (itunes) and the Tshetsha Boys, whose album is straight forwardly titled “YouTube Top Hits” (itunes).
Stream a couple cuts from the Tiyiselani album below.
Tiyiselani Vomaseve – Bombani
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Tiyiselani Vomaseve – Voseveni
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If you want to keep up on Nozinja and his label- you can follow them on Facebook until their website gets finished.
Big up to all the folks who came out to support Dutty Artz and the release of my new album. If you haven’t checked out Dutty’s new line of fly merchandise, be sure to check it. For now, here are some photos from the event. Click here for more photos. And some music to listen to while browsing.
I flew from Rio to Kingston on Friday. Round four. Buenos Aires, Rio, São Paulo, now Kingston. A year of bass music, soundsystems, studios, ’nuff sessions and building the DA family. I’m researching what techniques enable artists, managers, promoters, pirates, and labels to eat off music – usually with dramatically less resources/infrastructure than there is in NYC. Mostly I’ve been bouncing around cities and their public transport systems to one-off meetings and parties. I’m trying something different in Jamaica and settling in to start work with Sharon Burke and her empire, Solid Agency. If you’ve done dance hall business, you know Sharon. But if you’re just a fan you might never of heard of the hardest working woman in Jamaica. She gets to the office first, spends all day working a grip of Black Berrys, leaves last, and even on the way home last night with her feet up, she was sealing deals for big shows while Ice, one of her drivers, swerved through Kingston traffic. Leftside’s impersonation is spot on.
Solid handles artist management and booking, as well as being involved in events and just about every other facet of the industry. Kevin ‘Payday’ Green’s Alliance aligned studio is in the back- and even though it’s a humble affair, it’s nothing for Bounty Killer, Elephant Man, or Mavado to roll through in a day, along with ’nuff artists waiting their chance to run up the ranks. When no one’s voicing, the studio door opens and the near-fields get turned up to 11, pumping the latest tunes and unreleased riddims into the yard.
Early at the Payday Yard
I’m hoping my updates can be more regular now that I’m down here. First order of business is to start making some radio rips. You know when you’re driving through BK, or picking up Boston’s Hot 97 and you don’t want to finish you trip for fear of losing the pirate signal? It’s like that all the time, every day down here. Except you never drop the signal – of course Daggering and Gun Man lyrics are all officially banned- you have to get to a session for that- but it’s still fresh to death.
And don’t sleep on Natalie Storm’s new mix. She said she made it after a rough break up and a period of abstinence and it’s dripping with sex. Between her calculated dive into house, electro and dancehall, and Dylan Powe’s burner Wiley voiced Showa Eski Riddim. Good things soon come for Prodigal and Federation.
If you have people down here, or spots you love, and want to get in touch. I’m always down to build. TallyBower AT GGGGmmmmmAALLLE. Already looking forward to Dre Skull, DJ Ripley, The Mad Decent Boyz, Toddla T and a few others being around. I’ll be here until March. Respect to Erin Hansen and Erin MacLeod for getting me sorted so far.
Here are some photos from Tormenta Tropical at SXSW. I don’t have time to write a long post but suffice to say I was honored to play with all these great people and have such a great party. You are all legendary and I love you. Photos by El Subcomandante Quito, full album here.
ORION REPPING, JONES SMILING
MALUCA AND HER COOKIES GOING IN
POSE
OK WE’RE MOVING
MS MALU MCING WITH ME
NGUZUNGUZU INCITE MAD SKANKING
RAVERS
ME MAKING A MAD FACE TO NGUZUNGUZU, JUBILEE STANDING BY
No kidding! Thanks to all who came out to New York Tropical 5 to see Uproot Andy, Geko, me and Maluca. It was a lot of fun. Maluca killed it, super energy and the people loved it. Here are some pics from the night. This month we’ll be back at Glasslands on Friday May 29th doin’ it again, flier and info very soon.
Thanks to everyone who came out on Friday to NY Tropical 4, it was CRAZYYYYYYYYY. I’m so happy that we were able to bring together everyone on that bill, Geko, Andy, Kingdom, Esau, Mariana all KILLED IT. It was one of the best parties I’ve played at or been at in a long time. Here’s a selection of pics from the night, thanks Lamin, Jean and Andy for taking these.
Those of you who read these pages no that I am not a fan of Justice’s cock rock techno. This article accompanied by photo evidence (above) catching Justice playing “live” with an un-plugged MIDI controller is just too funny to pass up. As someone who has done real live electronic music back in my Team Shadetek days I know how difficult this is to do and do well, so on one level I’m sympathetic, on the other level, you shouldn’t lie to your fans guys. I stopped doing live electronics when my music took a turn towards hiphop, dancehall and grime and I didn’t think that any of the live improvisation I would do would improve the music. Since then my show has been me DJing tracks from a laptop, sometimes with effects. I play lots of un-released new dubs of mine that no one else has and make up my set list as I go along. I figure that’s worth the price of admission. You get to hear my music, mixed and selected by me and get a peek into my present sound, IE the future since it always takes so long to get records or CDs out. I have a new project (more on that soon) that might be appropriate to a live format and so am I actually considering going into loop djing mode (breaking down the tracks into parts and re-constructing live) for that, probably using ableton live, but we’ll see. However, you will NEVER see me on stage with an un-plugged MIDI controller making faces and pretending to do things that I’m not. Thanks to Dan @ Dubspot for the link.
The first sub-Saharan African country to get independence in the 1950s head to the polls today to vote for a new president and parliament. Well, if you’re sick of the Obama-Memorabilia overkill, readjust your binoculars and take a look at this; Two young men with bodies painted in striking campaigning colors were spotted in the streets of Accra entertaining commuters and raising personal funds. Pictures of men with their bodies painted with party colors, it seems, is a top visual choice for many internet news sites.
First, here’s an all Steve Gurley mix I’ve been listening to quite a lot lately. I am flagrantly ripping this from the dubstepforum, where it was ripped from Uptown Music Forum, where it was posted about a year ago. The mix was done by someone named AverageJoe, an ordinary DJ with a funny Homer Simpson gif as his MySpace default.
The first is of Mr Eliel Lucero skankin’ (to some really good Roots music Matt was playing earlier in the night) in his brand new Dutty Artz tee! Get yours!
And here I am, standing around (yeah, i’m mad bcuz i’m only) in my plain old regular tee— waiting for that lite tropical pink.
And here’s Yellowman, AKA Geko Jones. This man spins and dances behind the decks like a mutha, (but then again, he falls into a state of deep concentration at times.) I’m not sure who’s the better dancer behind the decks, Matt or Gex? I don’t think Rupture dances behind his decks. Maga Bo doesn’t either. Well, I’ve never seen them dance behind their turntables anyway. Have you? If you have, I need photo-or videographic evidence of these two men getting down.
Rupture put up his verdict and covered a lot of ground, so I’ll just say a big THANKS to everyone who came out. I loved the party, I haven’t had that much fun on decks in a while. We had a great time and if the heaving dancefloor was any indication I hope you all did as well.
Here’s a few pics from the night, more soon(ish) (Thanks Karla!).
MARIANA FROM ARGENTINA PERFORMING:
GEKO JONES ON DECK:
MATT SHADETEK (ME) ON DECK:
DJ /RUPTURE IN DEEP CONCENTRATION:
RAVERS:
MORE PHOTOS, THANKS TOM:
NO WAIT!!! LISTEN TO MY HARMONICA!!!!!!! I AM NOT JUST SOME RANDOM HARMONICA GUY! GIVE ME A MIC! PLUG IN TEH HEADPHONES! SERIOUSLY!
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