40 feminist tracks

The reason this is my first blog post in nearly a month is that I'm busy campaigning and running for office (I'm #6 on both the Stockholm city council and Stockholm regional council lists) for the Feminist Initiative here in Sweden.

Well, to get all my Swedish readers out voting (come on, vote!) this Sunday, and to keep the steam up ahead of the election campaign, here's 40 well known and less well known tracks I like that have the spirit of feminism in them. Strong, self-confident women all the way, no meek hetero love, no diss tracks towards other females. Order: completely random.

Fun With Youtube URL Hacking

I used to regularly find new music through YouTube's video browser. A couple of months ago, though, they removed all the music genres, and there was just a generalised "music" category to search in - which sucks if you're looking for, say, hip-hop.

Well, guess what? All the old categories are still there, as hidden legacy features in the system. I followed an old link I'd set up and there was, still, the most viewed new videos in Hip-hop/Rap!

http://www.youtube.com/browse?c=10&b=4&s=mp&t=w

So just as a reminder of the kind of stuff you can get hold of through this feature, here's a brand new Polish, female take on the whisper snap phenomenon from a few years ago, as interspersed with weird minimal electronica elements:

Mona - EKSPERYMENT


I'm telling you Poland has Europe's best hip-hop scene.

Good lord, I found it again

I had a major scare the other day. Let it be a lesson to you.

I'm going to be writing my master's thesis in musicology on Asian influences on Romanian manele. One vital piece of the puzzle is a Youtube video I found a couple of years ago and commented on on wayneandwax. It's so far the only tangible evidence I have of a South East Asian influence on manele.

Well, I've just got a supervisor for the essay and I was going to send him the link. Only to find that it was dead. At which point I panicked, wrote a fruitless message on the Youtube community help forums, and spent hours searching through every manele video I could find in order to find it again. I despaired completely. Well, here it is, finally found today through searching for the video code number rather than the whole URL:

Florin Peste & Play Aj - Cheama Ospatarul


Kids, back your important web videos the fuck up.

Esoteric Research Methods #4: Youtube most viewed

You guys know I'm not overly fond of Youtube and its astoundingly annoying policy of blocking videos by country, but it is by far the biggest video site out there and a brilliant source for all sorts of video material. I think I've discovered more new stuff via the "what's related" link list on YouTube than any other method in the past year, and the site just keeps growing with new material.

Another interesting way to spot new YouTube videos (and consequently new music) is by looking at the various lists of most viewed videos available on the site. Obvious and not esoteric, you might say, but it's surprising how often you can come across music you've never heard before, seemingly randomly ascending to the heights of the day list or week list, pushed by a crowd you bear no regular relation to.


Here's just a few of the videos I've come across today (as a random sampling moment) from the recesses of the Rap & Hip Hop - Most Viewed list. The focus is definitely on stuff I would not usually access through other channels, ie. nothing American generally.

German hip-hop always features heavily on the list and I'm not overly fond of it - there's something a bit dour and formulaic about the beats and too strong a boom-bap emphasis to appeal to me immediately. One track that stood out a little bit though was Ghettobass by Azad (page 1, this month), which at least has some interesting drum machine programming now and then. French hip-hop is usually a bit more fresh and indeed something like Suis-Je Le Guardien De Mon Frere by Sefyu (page 3, this month) is considerably more exciting to me with a very engaging bass riff and atmospheric synth line.

And while we're eating off Europe's biggest countries, how about Spain? Emsis by Tr3s Monos (page 5, this month) is sample-based (which usually a no-no for me) but I like the way it's built up and the floating synth line. Italy is plenty represented on the list too, with 'U Tagghiamu 'Stu Palluni...?! by Combomastas (page 2, this week) a clear highlight - how much more gangsta does it get than Sicilian rap, especially stuff that feels this Sicilian?

The best of the big European countries is totally Poland though. With its minimalist synth-oriented sound something like W Aucie by Sokol feat. Pono & Franek Kimono (page 1, today) totally rocks my world. Sokols record company, Prosto, is well-represented on Youtube and practically all the material is killer, with a recognisable signature sound that's one of the most unique and interesting on the continent. Polish hip-hop outside this one company is not as strong but Warto Rozmawiac by CeHa (page 1, today) is also a pretty good track, I like the pitch-bent keyboard.

Of course, there are limitations to this sort of approach. All the countries I've picked out are European with a population of 40 million or more, and that's hardly a coincidence - there's bare representation on the lists somewhere from Libya, Hungary, Brazil, Holland, Denmark and Australia, but all with considerably weaker material. The genre limit means it's almost entirely straight hip-hop and that other genres don't get a look in. But even so, in just a few minutes I've picked out a whole set of songs that by all accounts are interesting and lead on to other equally fascinating threads of research. Tell me what other random sampling approach could possibly accomplish that?

Paul Newman Goes Technopop

The thing I still like more than almost anything about Youtube is the users. The people who spend their life putting up video after video of unusual material that is watched by handfuls, yet provides a treasure trove if you happen to come across it. Today's favourite is, totally, mycub, whose entire channel is devoted to Japanese car ads from the eighties and nineties. Over five hundred of them.

Besides the staggering monomania this feat represents (worthy of priase in itself) they're almost compulsive watching - once you pop you can't stop. They're just thirty seconds long, immensely varied, fast paced, and to a non-japanese speaker mesmerisingly nonsensical. And they're almost all musical in some way - cars are represented by businesscore, folk rock, swing jazz, contemporary rock, classical music etc. etc., often specially written. I spent ages looking for one in a proper japanese technopop style and finally came across this one featuring Paul Newman:



Brilliant track (though not really techno kayokyoku), I've been trying to track it down for days with no success.

Kim Jong-Il, The Spring Light of Love

Sometimes you come across these wonderful YouTube users and you wonder where they get all their brilliant stuff from. One current favourite, totally, is troublemaker1973, who specialises in the pop music of obscure communist dictatorships like Albania and especially North Korea.

I'm fascinated by the official state-sanctioned "pop" music of these places because its uniformly awful in such interesting ways (à la Tolstoy). Doesn't prevent it from throwing up occasional gems, though, like this weirdly haunting thereminbox-driven number by Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble that troublemaker1973 assures us is "about Kim Jong Il":



Marvellous. I've yet to understand completely whether he's posting these videos seriously or ironically, but it's damned interesting either way.