If you're a musician, song-writer, or composer, you've probably been faced with the following dilemmas: You have an awesome idea, but you don't have the instruments to put it down in a recording. You can't afford to pay for a professional studio musician, but you really need a drummer. You have a great snippet of a song/piece, but maybe you don't know what to do with it.
In other words, you want to collaborate with someone...but you don't have the right people around you.
In the age of the internet however, this shouldn't be such a problem. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of a forum for this specific niche - you had craigslist to jam with locals, you had music forums to discuss technical/equipment related things, and you had sample library websites where the focus is a little different. The closest thing were electronic music forums, but there wasn't much out there for composers and other musicians. What musicians wanted was a forum where they could post snippets, ideas, or even entire songs - and have other musicians and composers add things to it.
Well, we seem to have finally arrived at such a forum. The Musical Collective is brand spanking new website that is aiming to become the hubris for musical collaboration. It's still in it's infant stages, but I am hoping that it takes off - as the founder, Brad Westness says:
I wanted to make a place where people could collaborate on music, kind of like the famous stories of "The Postal Service" completing their album by mailing tapes back and forth. I thought this would be a little more convenient than mailing tapes.
I'm quite a bit behind on videos, music, and pieces of news that should be of interest to the readers of this blog... I'll try to get them up as soon as I can.
Here's something was in the news this past July, which you may have missed. A group of scientists at MIT have created a cloth that can "hear" and emit noise. It's a functional fibre that can detect sound and change them into electrical signals on one end - so it acts like a massive, body microphone. On the other end, the fibre can vibrate at specific frequencies if it is connected to a power supply - like a massive speaker.
So your clothes could be your own ghetto blaster - just hook up your ipad to your clothes and you have a massive speaker that surrounds you - literally - in sound. Or it could record your heartbeats, environmental surroundings, and of course your vocals for later use..... imagine the creative possibilities!
Naturally, this seems more useful in medical (keeping track of biological signs on a wearer) or military/surveillance (how easy would it be to record conversations, if all you needed was a piece of cloth?)....but the musical creativity that could emerge from such a product would be so fascinating.
African musical influences - whether it be North, South, East or West African - have shaped the development of reggae, blues, rock, jazz, calipso, tango, mamba, salsa...and many other styles of music. But in all of these cases, the African influence evolved into a brand new genre, effectively becoming it's own style of music. Yet for all it's musical influence, it is rarely used as the primary motif of a piece of music.
"What do you mean?" You say?
This might be explained easier if I compare it to Latin music. When a piece of music has a Latin flair to it, it is usually quite prominent - the rhythm, the scales, the melody, and even sometimes the language - is used in a way that it is front and center of the music. If the basis is rock music - such as Santana's music - you can hear the Latin influence on the melody and rhythm, all the while still being undeniably "rock". Or Indian music and the role it plays in "Norwegian Wood" by the Beatles, or "Beware..." by Jay-Z and Punjabi MC.
African styles of music however, don't often get that kind of creative usage in Western music. And I don't know why.
There are exceptions of course, and I find them very refreshing - such as Shakira's Waka Waka song, Paul Simon's Graceland, or even the Lion King soundtrack. But you probably haven't heard much else that prominently has an African flair to the music.
Given that rarity...would you be curious what Indie Folk with African flair would sound like? Of course you would be!
If you've watched the MLB playoffs this year, you may have noticed a new Blackberry Torch commercial. While the commercial itself isn't incredibly memorable, the music in the background completely floored me - and I found myself hoping that it's an actual artist that plays this type of music, instead of it being a jingle that was written just for the commercial. In fact, it was only the last few seconds that really stood out, because it clearly had a twangy, nasal, multi-voiced rhythmic feel - a prominent African flair.
The song is by tUnE-yArDs, which is the moniker of an Oakland based musician named Merrill Garbus. It's really rough sounding - it's recorded at home, using non-professional equipment - but it makes the sound that much more raw and honest. She has one album out right now, and it's full of little gems that are African influenced, yet unmistakably indie folk. Where does her African flair come from? She spent some time studying and living in Kenya! Very cool.
So without further ado, here is "Fiya" (Fire) by tUnE-yArDs. If at first it seems really straightforward folk, wait until it builds up. The African flair comes in slowly, but completely takes over the melody and feel of the song at around 4:00.
This is an interesting story of creativity coming out of adversity and constraint. Atomic Tom, a band based out of Brooklyn, recently had their instruments stolen. An unfortunately fairly common problem for bands. I can't imagine how bummed out they would have been - but it turns out they are garnering more attention than ever before, thanks to their creativity.
Using nothing but their iphones and a battery powered amp, they decided to make a video of them playing in the New York subway system. That's right - all of their instruments are music apps for the iphone. It's a fun little video, and the song is pretty good too.
Creativity trumps again!
"Take Me Out" by Atomic Tom
*UPDATE OCT 20* -- Turns out they didn't actually have their instruments stolen, they just said that to provide a better effect. I guess that's good news. Also, for those who are curious, we now know what apps they used:
Guitar - iShred
Drums - Drum Meister
Bass Guitar - Pocket Guitar
Piano - Piano Virtuoso
