a sublime frequencies call out: how often do you listen to radio palestine, i remember syria, bush taxi mali, etc.

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(or rather the first link)

Ben Boyerrr, Sunday, 15 April 2007 19:09 (seventeen years ago) link

why is the fact that they're hits a problem?? that's what i LIKE about these cds!!

s1ocki, Sunday, 15 April 2007 19:44 (seventeen years ago) link

They don't give credits to the artists or pay royalties.

curmudgeon, Sunday, 15 April 2007 19:51 (seventeen years ago) link

x-post: It's not that they're hits, it's that they're consistently presented as this 'unknown' material. I've complained about this on other SF threads as well -- much as I like the music that's been presented here, the fact remains that track identification and the like has never been consistently done, and both pieces linked undercut the various claims in SF's defense I've read/heard that such identification could never be done. Sounds like it rather easily can, in many if not necessarily in all instances.

Ned Raggett, Sunday, 15 April 2007 19:52 (seventeen years ago) link

here's the thing though (in my opinion)... Would you rather that they just keep these treasures for themselves and not release them?

I think that the SF releases are a mix of nearly untraceable "field recordings" and easily traceable "hits" but I think it's kind of unfair to call them out because "they don't pay royalties". There are a lot of American labels that everyone seems to think are really cool but THEY don't pay royalties either. That never seems to come up here. And they wouldn't have to do ANY detective work to do it.

I mean are we only now just coming to grips with the fact that the Sun City Girls people are a bunch of quirky weirdos who just do whatever the fuck they want?

my iPod is (sic) now has a desperate global fuckedness about tit.

OTM, except for the confusing tit part...

Saxby D. Elder, Sunday, 15 April 2007 22:20 (seventeen years ago) link

Where is the thread where we were just discussing this?!?!

Alex in SF, Sunday, 15 April 2007 22:24 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh wait here it is:

http://ilx.wh3rd.net/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=37935

Alex in SF, Sunday, 15 April 2007 22:25 (seventeen years ago) link

steets of lhassa is DA HOTTNESSS

chaki, Sunday, 15 April 2007 22:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Just to note, the Group Doueh compilation LP is properly credited and was created with the full knowledge of the group, who actually gave SF the recordings. It's fantastic, by the way.

QuantumNoise, Monday, 16 April 2007 01:00 (seventeen years ago) link

i should first say that i'm biased 'cause i'm friends with alan and hisham. and i really respect mark and the other people who've worked on the and with the label.

from what i've seen, all of the critiques of the label on ethical grounds do not seem very cogent or to have the facts straight -- any of which could easily be cleared up by contacting alan or hisham via the s.f. site -- they're eminently reachable.

as to critiques of the music itself, some of the sublime freq. releases that are collage-y are not my favorite. but they've yet to release anything that's not at least good, in my opinion.

the dvds have all been stellar, especially those shot by hisham.

hisham interview from blastitude here: http://www.blastitude.com/19/MAYET.htm

Mike McGooney-gal, Monday, 16 April 2007 02:45 (seventeen years ago) link

What do you not find cogent, and what facts do you not think the critics have straight?

curmudgeon, Monday, 16 April 2007 03:46 (seventeen years ago) link

while i entirely understand the sort other ethical coundrums "field recordings create", i have always understood the SF releases to be very little about ethnography or the sort of "rough guide"/"explorer series" nonsense that purports that fastidious documentation and payment really makes up for the "sideshow" mentality that drives most collections of music not from one of our cultural centeres in the west.

as far as ive ever understood, SF recordings have been about experience or a total immersion in a different listening experience. To that end showing all the chords with linernotes and credits and extensisve information would undermine the project. I'll admit there is some trouble in this thinking, given subtitles like the pop-folk sounds of..., but I dont think the label is trying to do a "world music" or field recording sort of thing at all. these records always seemed like "and heres a nuther bit of mind fuckery for ya kids" stabs at having fun and questioning consumption patterns.

this perspective doesn't make the problems some of the critics cite go away, but it may agrue that it shouldnt really matter.

bb, Monday, 16 April 2007 18:39 (seventeen years ago) link

no one is asking for the chords and extensive linar notes, dicknose! it just would be nice if they credited the artists with the music these dudes probably worked hard on and put their heart into! how would that undermine anything!??! if someone in nigera put one of my songs on "the sounds of the 818" cd without any credit id be pissed!

chaki, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 07:42 (seventeen years ago) link

And, as was stated above (but not cited, as it was in the other thread), Bishop doesn't exactly endear himself to the curious.

Listeners may find it difficult to be angry with SF; for musicians, it's not such a stretch. Jayce Clayton, a writer and DJ who has worked extensively with Moroccan musicians, was shocked to find well-known songs by well-known bands presented as mysterious tokens of Arab genius on Radio Morocco. (One person's sublimity is another person's livelihood.) One of those bands, Nass El Ghiwane, was a pioneering, genre-bending, psychedelic jam-rock band (not unlike the Sun City Girls them-selves). There is a sense in which Nass El Ghi-wane seem like secret sharers in the whole SF enterprise: in Hisham Mayet's forthcoming film, Trans-Saharan Musical Brotherhoods, one of the most mind-blowing performances features the audience singing, dancing, and swaying along as a cover band pounds its way through an old Nass El Ghiwane song. Viewers of the film, however, or at least of the cut I saw, learn nothing about the song, its performers, or its authors (save for the not unimportant fact that they are fucking awesome).

Critics of the SF modus operandi have a way of getting under Bishop's skin. Complain about a lack of context or compensation, and he'll attempt to smother you with a surrealistic pillow, denouncing "hipster progressives... squirming on the rump of an epileptic unicorn, attempting to decipher which buttons to push to claim their fifteen minutes of fame."

Ben Boyerrr, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 10:17 (seventeen years ago) link

Dunno about Sumatra, but Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Khaled both released some great albums in the first half of the 90s.

Geir Hongro, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 10:19 (seventeen years ago) link

chaki, exactly. but of course, in this context, the property of some enigmatic third-world Other doesn't count as true property, deserving of Western intellectual property rights. This is an utter extension of Western imperialism. In other words, this is racist.

modestmickey, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 10:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Bishop comes off as a smug hipster something or other. (Who does he think his audience is if not hipster progressives?)

As long as your familiarity and knowledge grows, that original experience of naive disorientation in the face of a new music is going to eventually disappear. I have mixed feeling about their attempt to preserve and maintain it, though it's interesting.

Rockist Scientist, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 11:24 (seventeen years ago) link

three months pass...

But this North Korean one is pretty great on first listen.

Some of this reminds me of the kitschiest Arabic pop things I've heard. It's like the same weird type of synthesizer sounds and other similarities too.

Also, at the moment I'm feeling more sympathetic to the whole idea of trying to maintain that sense of disorientation as a listener. It can't really be that impossible, can it? If one wanted to.

Rockist Scientist, Friday, 20 July 2007 23:54 (sixteen years ago) link

five years pass...

diving back into the catalog after a few years away, particularly princess nicotine. i don't regret stanning over these for one damn second.

sriracha bishop (get bent), Thursday, 20 September 2012 00:23 (eleven years ago) link

Singapore A-Go-Go is one of the best albums for a groovy house party ever

Elvis Telecom, Thursday, 20 September 2012 00:42 (eleven years ago) link

one year passes...

i don't know where to put this, brings to mind the Guitars of the Golden Triangle release from a cpl years back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYGl-l0Toig
cross-post with psych/drone/freak thread really. don't know if this has had much play around here, but goodness it smokes

kyenkyen, Tuesday, 12 November 2013 20:38 (ten years ago) link

wow... pretty cosmic jams.

Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Wednesday, 13 November 2013 02:04 (ten years ago) link

four years pass...

Wow. This entire George Wassouf concert in Lebanon in 1992:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P49-4O9lu0

Have posted and re-posted parts of it. It is admittedly raw and ridiculous in various ways, but I still love the bulk of it. He and his band are on fire throughout.

(Actually I think the guy in the red shirt who introduces him did a human beat-box routine at the intro. but that appears to have been cut. Not joking.)

_Rudipherous_, Friday, 9 February 2018 00:08 (six years ago) link

2018 is the 25th anniversary of my passionate attachment to Arab music, and George Wassouf was possibly the first Arab singer I really cared about, even if his flaws and limitations have become glaringly obvious over time. So there is an excuse for my half-assed threads and thread revivals on related interest.

_Rudipherous_, Friday, 9 February 2018 00:11 (six years ago) link

Oh and good audio quality for a change, which might have something to do with this having been posted by someone whose last name happen to be Wassouf.

Does that two-man chorus ever crack a smile?

_Rudipherous_, Friday, 9 February 2018 00:12 (six years ago) link

I understand you liking his singing, despite your reference to his flaws and limitations. Just read about him still supporting Assad in Syria, which is unfortunate.

curmudgeon, Friday, 9 February 2018 16:31 (six years ago) link

Assad has the support of the majority of Syrians. I think external attempts at regime change, largely driven by Jews who want to see Syria balkanized is unfortunate.

_Rudipherous_, Friday, 9 February 2018 16:53 (six years ago) link

I think it's unfortunate that Jews have such a disproportionate influence on US foreign policy.

_Rudipherous_, Friday, 9 February 2018 16:54 (six years ago) link

The (Zionist dominated) US and its friends have been using terrorist proxy forces for the last several years to try to destroy Syria and you are whining about Assad. Thank god Russia was there to step in, even if for its own self-interested reasons.

_Rudipherous_, Friday, 9 February 2018 16:59 (six years ago) link

Of course, the anti-Russian propaganda built up shortly after Russia's intervention. And the Jewish dominated western media fell into place, didn't it? Not Jewish dominated? Not Jewish pundits everywhere you look in the media when these issues are discussed?

_Rudipherous_, Friday, 9 February 2018 17:00 (six years ago) link

:-/

the late great, Friday, 9 February 2018 17:49 (six years ago) link

maybe I've not paid close enough attention but I'm surprised (and obv disappointed) to see you come out with this antisemitic rubbish rudi

ogmor, Friday, 9 February 2018 17:59 (six years ago) link

Your anti-Semitism is disgusting, plus you don't have the facts right on Syria and who supports Assad and who doesn't

curmudgeon, Friday, 9 February 2018 18:05 (six years ago) link

well that certainly took a turn

mh, Friday, 9 February 2018 18:58 (six years ago) link

agree w/ curmudgeon

the late great, Friday, 9 February 2018 19:00 (six years ago) link

it's gross

the late great, Friday, 9 February 2018 19:01 (six years ago) link

Banned.

mod, Friday, 9 February 2018 19:11 (six years ago) link

good

the late great, Friday, 9 February 2018 19:12 (six years ago) link

thanks mods

sleeve, Friday, 9 February 2018 19:16 (six years ago) link

sadly, the takeaway will likely be "it's unfortunate that Jews have such a disproportionate influence on ILX moderation."

the late great, Friday, 9 February 2018 19:17 (six years ago) link

we were founded as a group of snake handlers, and we'll die as a group of snake handlers

mh, Friday, 9 February 2018 19:22 (six years ago) link

Correct call by mods, although he was one of the only folks here into salsa and bomba & other Afro-Latino genres, plus middle-eastern vocalists

curmudgeon, Friday, 9 February 2018 21:47 (six years ago) link

was rudipherous the same poster as rockist scientist?

if so i'll be really disappointed because i liked that guy

the late great, Friday, 9 February 2018 21:52 (six years ago) link

I believe so :(

sleeve, Friday, 9 February 2018 21:56 (six years ago) link

This definitely isn't a first offence. I can remember some milder but still FP-worthy antisemitic nonsense from the same poster before. But that shit belongs in The Daily Mail comments section.

calzino, Friday, 9 February 2018 22:07 (six years ago) link

he's a homophobe too fwiw

brimstead, Friday, 9 February 2018 22:13 (six years ago) link

aye, that's him. I've seen him say stuff before on ilx but maybe not quite as explicit as this

Algerian Goalkeeper (Odysseus), Friday, 9 February 2018 22:15 (six years ago) link

ugh

the late great, Friday, 9 February 2018 22:26 (six years ago) link

Some years back he once nicely sent me a salsa mixtape, but sometime later, out of the blue, emailed to me a 9/11 conspiracy theory. Responded back that I wasn't interested and never heard from him direct again.

He was "Rockist Scientist" before. The Ulm Kulthum thread and a couple other threads largely feature posts from music he was listening to. Posted a fair amount on the most recent ILX top albums or tracks thread (and seemed to keep his focus there on the music ).

curmudgeon, Friday, 9 February 2018 22:27 (six years ago) link


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