beat research: the francophone connection

french electro, banlieue hip-hop, parisian disco, maghrebi raï, african rap, antillean jazz, and found sounds from anywhere else the French military surrendered.

Beat Research @ The Enormous Room
Monday, February 26
9 pm - 1 am

feliz carnaval

The festivities are over, but the Carioca Funk Clube podcast rings in with the good word -- and sound -- from Sany DJ mixing a little axé into the funk up in Salvador, Bahia, with Fat Boy Slim on the bill, no less.

Looks like somebody's camera was busy from the grandstands of the sambódromo.


There's always next year, he says, as the mercury plummets.

Tanzania stand up

Bostonians, take heed:

Dar es Salaam is just under 8,000 miles from the South Bronx, birthplace of hip-hop, but don't tell that to Tanzania's burgeoning rap scene.

On Thursday, February 15 at 6 pm, the Harvard Film Archive will screen Hali Halisi (Swahili for "the real situation"), a documentary on Tanzanian hip-hop, emblematic of hip-hop's growth in Africa -- and indeed the world -- as a medium for social change. HIV/AIDS, unemployment, corruption, and democracy are some of the themes cropping up in hip-hop's new global vanguard.

At the screening, meet one of the film's subjects, MC Gsan from acclaimed group X Plastaz, alongside Raja Mohamed Yunus of the Aang Serican Peace Village.

If you can't make the screening -- or even if you can -- come by the following day, Friday, February 15, as the two will host a workshop on how Tanzanian youth are addressing pressing social issues via hip-hop.

Hali Halisi Workshop
at The Harvard Advocate
21 South St.
Cambridge, MA

Friday, February 16
12 Noon - 1 PM

Presented by the African Hip-Hop Research Project at Cultural Agents, in collaboration with the Committee on African Studies.

Workshop co-sponsored by The Harvard Advocate and The Darker Side (WHRB)

Questions? Contact Lidet Tilahun (tilahun@fas.harvard.edu).



X-Plastaz - Msimu kwa msimu

almost too ridiculous to note

The Hub nearly explodes (or more accurately doesn't) over cartoons, costing half a million dollars.

And in Paris, it's street art and a metropolitan sensation. The biggest controversy is when some opportunistic DJ co-opts the idea as a personal ad campaign.

Forget the University of Chicago, how about the post-9/11 security state: where fun goes to die.