Daft Punk

zhao

there are no accidents
OK fair enough I thought that the first 15 mins or so i listened to of your mix sounded far too western and not really anything special. we are clearly just on a different page here.

wait whaaaaaaaaa?? in this mix is only pure soukous style finger picking on them guitars! not a single standard funk riff in sight!! or even in immediate vicinity! All vocals purely in regional styles only! with zero imitation of James Brown or Sade! Nearly all the Beats are polyrhythmic, with plenty of Congas and Bongos! Almost ZERO snares square on the 2!!!

as for you condemning the whole of western music as rhythmically backwards - i dont really see how that squares away with the dozens of mixes you've recorded splicing together music that is by its very definition western to the core with music from Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa etc ('the real deal' according to you).

E.G. http://ngomasound.com/2011/08/04/fusion-1/

Music from Danny Weed, Benga, Kode 9, Pinch, Hijak, hatcha, d1, l wiz, cyrus. i could go on.

i dont see why in this thread you see the need to set out these two worlds as mutually exclusive when the whole point of those mixes seems to be underlining that they can and do work together when you throw together excellent music from both worlds?

Surely the answer is that just as with any genre/culture, there is just as much rhythmically excellent music from the west and rhythmically retarded music from Africa/Asia/the East.

of course of course of course. no cultures can be seen as sealed and pure entities, and all are products of cross polination, hybridity, etc. etc. etc.

but in a smaller scale and specific context, dance music which is popular in the northern hemispheres are typified by the snare on the 2, which is a lot less rhythmically developed compared to Cuban, Indonesian, or of course African dance music.

but of course simplicity has its advantages as well, as i have said in the past. And there is place for a dumb brutal beat.

the point of the Fusion mixes is for sure to show connectivity: that the simplified and reduced rhythms in the North CAME FROM, and are only modern industrial PERMUTATIONS of much older bodies of rhythmic knowledge, and as such, intrinsically related to its ancestors. --- THIS is the specific relationship between these different strands of the same heritage, and THIS is the specific method with which they connect. do you get me?

but in terms of Dance Music as a whole, i'm afraid Africans do it much, much better. and this Daft Punk song is WACK :p
 

zhao

there are no accidents

it has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with culture.

i'm sorry that your Euro-centric ego is so bruised by me claiming the obvious fact that African rhythm for dancing is more developed, that you feel the need to absurdly accuse me of racism.

if i buy a watch i might prefer a Swiss designed one, is that racism too you disingenuous clown?
 
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benw

Well-known member
wait whaaaaaaaaa?? in this mix is only pure soukous style finger picking on them guitars! not a single standard funk riff in sight!! or even in immediate vicinity! All vocals purely in regional styles only! with zero imitation of James Brown or Sade! Nearly all the Beats are polyrhythmic, with plenty of Congas and Bongos! Almost ZERO snares square on the 2!!!



of course of course of course. no cultures can be seen as sealed and pure entities, and all are products of cross polination, hybridity, etc. etc. etc.

but in a smaller scale and specific context, dance music which is popular in the northern hemispheres are typified by the snare on the 2, which is a lot less rhythmically developed compared to Cuban, Indonesian, or of course African dance music.

but of course simplicity has its advantages as well, as i have said in the past. And there is place for a dumb brutal beat.

the point of the Fusion mixes is for sure to show connectivity: that the simplified and reduced rhythms in the North CAME FROM, and are only modern industrial PERMUTATIONS of much older bodies of rhythmic knowledge, and as such, intrinsically related to its ancestors. --- THIS is the specific relationship between these different strands of the same heritage, and THIS is the specific method with which they connect. do you get me?

but in terms of Dance Music as a whole, i'm afraid Africans do it much, much better. and this Daft Punk song is WACK :p

im about as musically talented / technically aware as a warthog mate so im afraid anything to do with "Nearly all the Beats are polyrhythmic, with plenty of Congas and Bongos! Almost ZERO snares square on the 2...dance music which is popular in the northern hemispheres are typified by the snare on the 2" isn't really going to register. I just do not hear music in this way.

To my ears, the other stuff i posted earlier is more interesting. As ive stated, that's my opinion. fine that you don't agree. And i respect the amount of time / effort you've clearly put into spreading music that otherwise wouldn't be heard. but that doesn't make your opinion right and mine wrong.

Also i dont really mind where the rhythms in the North 'came from'. Are they or are they not, rhythmically lacking? Coz either they all are or they all aren't, and you don't seem 100% on that one. think slothrop might have something there...

Either way just my 2 cents.

Edit: also apologies for taking a topic about daft punk about as offtopic as it could go. as you were.
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
Also i dont really mind where the rhythms in the North 'came from'. Are they or are they not, rhythmically lacking? Coz either they all are or they all aren't, and you don't seem 100% on that one.

popular/dance music in the north developed in such a way, as a result of many historical factors, such as North American slave owners banning the drums, African tradition meeting European, industrialization, etc, etc, etc., that popular dance music is typified by simplistic, reduced rhythms -- the BOOM - BAP, ONE - TWO, beat.

just think of the difference between a typical house beat and a classic UK-Funky beat -- the former from North America, and the later being much closer to African and Afro-Caribbean beat patterns.

and i'm talking about spefically rhythm in relation to dance music for dancing. in other ways Europeans have their strengths: for instance the Finish noise artists Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen are the best at what they do with no equals anywhere.
 
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benw

Well-known member
popular/dance music in the north developed in such a way, as a result of many historical factors, such as North American slave owners banning the drums, African tradition meeting European, industrialization, etc, etc, etc., that popular dance music is typified by simplistic, reduced rhythms -- the BOOM - BAP, ONE - TWO, beat.

just think of the difference between a typical house beat and a classic UK-Funky beat -- the former from North America, and the later being much closer to African and Afro-Caribbean beat patterns.

Really trying not to get drawn in again. But the UK funky beat is western music mate. and this is where it drew it's influences from. It was a western genre and while the beat patterns might be clsoer to african / afro caribbean beat patterns than your average 4x4 euro house beat the inspiration for these beat patterns came largely from producers who are about as near to being part of the 'typical house scene' as you can get: we're talking Dennis Ferrer, Karizma, Defected Records!



The fact that Western producers took inspiration from other Western producers to come up with a genre that is rhythmically exciting seems to totally run against your 'version' of why all western dance music is crap. You can't rewrite history zhao. That first wave of funky producers (Apple, Sami Sanchez, Crazy Cousinz etc) couldn't give a shit about 'Afro-Caribbean beat patterns' - they wanted to make their own UK version of the US house scene.

OK, what they made fits into your narrow definition of western music 'that is OK by me because it sounds like they might have been listening to digital gamelan or whatever african diaspora genre i am pushing today' - but that doesn't mean it bears any relation to WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. These guys maybe listened to the odd soca record and that is about as far as it went.

You didn't get Uptown putting out bootleg "UK FUNKY MUST HAVE" 12's of Patrice Roberts / Shurwayne Winchester / Machel Montano. You got them putting out bootleg 12s of Jan driver, aaron carl, kenny dope, dennis ferrer, bass jackers.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
short sighted and myopic my brother.

the biggest or only reason the UK is Europe's leading underground dance music producing nation,

is because of the large influx of immigrants from Afro-Caribbeans (and Asia).

why you think funky, dubstep, jungle, it all started in UK and not in Germany?? cuz there has been like 5 Jamaicans over here historically that's why. LOL
 
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CrowleyHead

Well-known member
and i think your fondness for this Chic comes only from familiarity, due to arbitrarily having grown up with it in a rhythmically impoverished, musically under-developed, above equator location; and because you were under exposed to the VASTLY superior, in every way, universe of classic pop and dance music from down south.

I'm not sure how this works, but I think you're claiming that all the best rhythms are from africa, and I was somehow underexposed, yet, you don't know the musical background I've been raised on, NOR do you really know my reasoning for listening to something like Chic. Yes, they're a childhood staple of 'classic hits' radio in America like say, Rod Stewart, The Eagles or Michael Jackson so obviously I have some familiarity/affinity to them as being part of the minor pantheon of a tapestry of... Dance Music, Pop Music, African-American Music, however you want to place them. Doesn't guarantee them a place of respect for me, you know?

Also, jazz was bred in America, and while you can argue all the rhythms are nothing more than developed African rhythms, I would argue that the contribution to music was at least 'noteworthy' enough to validate my western barbaric existence.
 

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
Aaaaaafrica, le freak, c'est chic was a popular mishearing of the hit leading to their huge influence in French speaking parts of the continent
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Heaven Is Where:

The French are the chefs
The Italians are the lovers
The British are the police
The Germans are the mechanics
And the Swiss make everything run on time

Hell is Where:

The British are the chefs
The Swiss are the lovers
The French are the mechanics
The Italians make everything run on time
And the Germans are the police

It's funny because it's true!
 

zhao

there are no accidents
In other news, stereotypes are the currency of the idiot.

the brewing of alcohol has been turned into a fine art in Europe, which has traveled far, and daily delights people world wide.

to this day Europeans make substandard porcelain which burn the hand if held with hot tea inside - a problem Chinese culture solved thousands of years ago.

due to geo-political-economic and structural causes, the vast oceanic wealth of African culture is still largely unappreciated and unrecognized by the outside world -- cultures which are in many ways more advanced, and would enrich the lives of millions.

please tell me if these observations belong in the category of "idiotic stereotyping".
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
i kinda get where youre coming from. i used to feel a similar way about james brown and fela - that fela was a 100 times better than JB, he was less restrained, less polished, and just had more going on rhythmically, it was more complex. but yeah, african american music is very much still american - if youre trying to escape american cultural imperialism and hate those very american qualities of polish, showbiz, entertainment, etc, chic will prob never appeal.

their ballads are underrated though - i recently heard this in a film about romance across the berlin wall in the early 80s, barbara (not the first place i expected to hear it).

 
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