At first, I tried to explain this seemingly sudden disappearance with the political situation(s) back then, but I guess it’s just an international thing as the music also changed in many other parts of the world.

Anyhow, it is against this background that I am always filled with great joy when I stumble upon really cool modern music videos (yes, videos – the visual age of YouTube, our beloved pop archive) – created in Africa, showing the world that Nairobi, Lagos or Luanda aren’t that much different from the rest of the world.

Heavy Metal band Ree-burth from Soweto South Africa

(see also this post on vice.com)

FALASTE O QUE
shot in the area of Sambizanga in Luanda, Angola with MC Sacerdote and his artist crew

Breakdance Project Uganda
(too tight!)

Anto & Paragasha – QWERTY LOVE (filmed in Nbo)

The Very Best – Yoshua Alikuti (also filmed in Nbo)

(which is a play on the clip for Lil Wayne’s “A Milli”)

Ma Bhoom Bhoom Bhoom
One of those vids from the BLNRB project

Liz Ogumbo “Maro pa more”
(filmed in Olepolos / Corner Baridi and in Nbo)

Muthoni “Mikono Kwenye Hewa”
(yup, a bit older, but reposted here because when her album went live on Bandcamp.com many month ago, I instantly bought it.)

…and then there’s (still) this:

Matasia Star “Life History”
(Ndombolo cruelty mix for those who still live in the 1990s)

(ati, the producer is some guy from Ujerumani? ;-)

Customer: Do you have Soul?
Rob: That all depends.

This private blog is online since six years now and during this time I have covered a lot of topics that touched me one way or the other. Love, music, politics, environment, computer….yes, I even wrote about cars the other day.

And yet there’s still one blog post that’s been idling in my drafts folder since early March 2008 and will probably never be published unless I just start writing about it:

My Top 10 list of music videos

I’ve never published it for various reasons. One certainly being that such a list will have to change over time, so to define such a list for good is almost impossible. It’s not like the above mentioned list of Top 10 cars which only includes classics. No, a list of most-loved music videos is a temporary love affair that becomes diluted by the constant penetration with new music videos.

I tried this the other day with a list of Top 10 favorite songs. I went through my music library, copied all relevant mp3 files in an empty folder, uploaded them, listened to my selection and realized I got it all wrong:

TOP10 lists suck. Why? Because in the end you’ll realize that a selection almost isn’t possible and that if anything at all, it will just define the moment or a certain period.

It’s not the list that matters, but the selection process while searching and deciding which songs are eligible for such a list. And in the end you’ll just compile it for your own satisfaction and desire to have a Top10 list somewhere out there – on the internet or burned to a CD in your shelf.

a somehow unrelated photo I’ve posted here to focus your attention on the text. (yes, I’ve recently repaired this Marshall guitar amp for a friend of mine)

There are alternatives to Spotify, alternatives that are accessible from Germany, namely Grooveshark and Simfy. Grooveshark is somehow questionable because – as far as I know – they do not have agreements with record labels or the German Society for Musical Performing and Mechanical Reproduction Rights (GEMA) which has for long been an obstacle for internet surfers in Germany to access music videos from a German IP. But nevertheless, from a user perspective – and that’s all that matters right now – it doesn’t really matter which service you are using as long as your stuff is available*. What’s your stuff, you ask? Your metadata.

I am using the term “metadata” to describe all the soft and invisible stuff that provides the extra, the bonus data that brings the icing on the cake. With music services, it clearly is playlists. Your own and those of other users you’ve subscribed to.

Playlists

Now, with all these different music services, music in form of downloadable mp3s and streaming audio to your desktop computer or even mobile phone, it seems to be obvious that the availability of multimedia files as such isn’t the latest fashion, but instead your private or shared playlists. Playlists, I think, are the same reason why I prefer carefully written music blogs to mass music blogs that keep on publishing music-related posts just because it’s their business. No, playlists are the modern mixtape, the human selection that you can share with others. To me, these are very valuable.

When I switched from Spotify to Grooveshark the other day, I was wondering about my playlists and starred tracks on Spotify and how to get them onto Grooveshark. There’s a service that does exactly that: Groovylists.com – which will help you importing up to 200 tracks in one go.

In-Sync

However, I found myself preferring Spotify to Grooveshark for different reasons (there’s Fadhili Williams on Spotify!) so I went back to using Spotify and have been wondering how to keep these lists in sync. Would I want to manually keep all these services in sync? Will this question be solved one day with the introduction of Apples’s music cloud service and the standards (if any) it will set for their competitors? Mimi, me I don’t know. But what I do know is that we’ll urgently need a service that syncs all our metadata to the cloud and makes it available via a secured API to all these fancy new Web 2.0 sites. Just like the already existing password, bookmark and setting synchronisation via Firefox, Chrome, Xmarks and LastPass. Or that I can already backup all the apps from my Android phone to my Dropbox folder via Titanium Backup in one go.

What we’ll need is ONE service that does just that. Something that we can trust and that syncs all the selected metadata, be it private or openly shared, from all devices and all services to all devices and services. I’d even pay for (the privacy of) it.

Does something like that already exist?

(* = “your music”, as in “your mp3 won’t be uploaded to our music service because it already exists on our Amazon-S3-based service where we’re paying for the Gigabyte”, or in other words: it’s not the music files that matter, but the associated data, hence the metadata)

AOB, but also somehow related:

Probably the best reason to spend 8 minutes of your lifetime on my blog.

“Documentary about Orchestra Baobab that was made for their comeback album, 2002′s “Specialist in all styles”. It documents Baobab’s story, music and band members.”

L’Orchestre Baobab may not be my favourite band, but these documentaries are just fine. Abdoulaye, Mischel – Nan nga def?

[via]

Found by chance via this wonderful (& new) music blog.

“When I see I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I see I am everything, that is love. My life is a movement between these two.”
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Exactly.

Mr. Leaves bei der Hochzeit von Cedric und Anni.

Musik, so schön wie die ganze Hochzeit. Schön wars nämlich, sehr schön!

Unless of course we are talking about music from the continent, which is always welcome. I rejoice when I see the number of (really good) music blogs focussing on this very subject, and there’s nothing much I can add other than consuming various unearthed tracks with a huge appetite – and occasionally falling in love with a track. Like this one:

“Manheru Chagamire” by (the) Hallelujah Chicken Run Band.

Chicken Run Band! Hallelujah!!  !!1!11!

To my ears, this track and it’s flow is pure gold. Am waiting for the creative moment when someone turns this into a remix that emphasises the beat and singing by Thomas Mapfumo.

For the moment, however, I’ll just post this lovely tune, name the sources (1 & 2) and also remind you of Kongotronic Vol.1, which I had blogged here almost 4 (!) years ago.

Baloji. Good artist, good music. New album out on January 27th 2010.

CARAVAN RECORDS presents – Mzungu Kichaa ft Professor Jay and Mwasiti

[via]

(Le compositeur DIANGIENDA WABASOLELE Armand) “DWA, en autodidacte, étudie le solfège jusqu’? maîtriser la composition en musique classique. Il a hissé l’Orchestre au niveau d’une grande formation dont la renommée dépasse largement les frontières d’Afrique. De plus en plus il établit les ponts entre son orchestre et d’autres orchestres du genre ? l’étranger.” (source)

Pretty amazing!

Or as one member of the orchestra says in this short clip: “When I am sick and I listen to the music, it gives me strength.”

[via]