Category: ngoma

Best of Kiambogo Tapes

I recently shared this wonderful link to an Instructable hack via Facebook, aptly titled “Cassette Tape Business Card Holder” – which prompted another German-Kenyan friend of mine to share her beloved Kamaru (.KE), Florence Wangari (.KE) and Amity Meria (.BF) tapes with me – so that I would turn them into cool business card holders.

Prior to the introduction of mp3 in the early 1990s, I considered my tape/cassette collection large. But most of these were just copies and/or recordings from the radio (that’s what we did back in the days). So I lacked cool covers. Lea, the friend with the cool tapes, obviously doesn’t like Florence Wangari’s Gospel and knew she’d be in for a cool mod:

“Start with a cool tape, like these.  And no, don’t be horrified that this “museum piece” Apple data tape is being destroyed–no one ever saw it when it sat in a drawer!”

..writes the creator of this instructable. And there’s one more thing I’d like to add: the best covers for this mod are those made out of softer plastic. I am not really sure about the materials used on these cassettes, but I guess it’s PE for the softer and PP for the (cheaper) transparent ones. Anyways, if you’re planing to do this, try what works best for you. And make sure your business card will fit! My current one is from Moo.com and doesn’t fit as good as the white one of my Indian flat mate:

The tapes are well preserved, btw! @Lea: you’ll find them included in the envelope :-)

Just where would I be without my Leatherman?

N.B.: the ruler on the backside = reason why I love moo.com. You won’t keep the business card of some regular dude in your pocket. But when it comes with a cm/in ruler, a simple piece of paper may have some added value.

“Kikuyu Folks Songs” – how epic is that?

Adults only!

Bhoom Bhoom Africa

Long time readers of this blog may know that I have always been wondering why we’ve seen bands like “Matata” (with the then awesome Steele Beauttah) coming to success in East Africa during the 1970s – closely followed by a vacuum in the 1980s and early 90s that was only dominated by a) Congolese Soukous (Franco & Co), b) local Gospel, c) local tribal music and d) international Pop music (Michael Jackson & Co.).

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? ;-)

Six years and still no Top10 list


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:

[edit: content removed]

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.

We’ll need a universal service to sync all our metadata

I’ve only recently joined Spotify (via a Dutch proxy server) – the in-the-cloud music service that has almost all tracks. I like Spotify – a lot – and wouldn’t want to stop using it, even though it isn’t that easy to register an account with them from Germany or even pay for an unlimited or premium Spotify access.

opened guitar amp

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.

spotify

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)

 

St.Louis Spéciale

“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]

Manheru Changamire

Music is my life, even though I dislike live concerts for various reasons (~ too many ppl, music out of tune, etc.).  Just a few years ago, I converted my entire collection of audio CDs into mp3 and kept them on an external hard disk – but about 2 years ago, I stopped downloading (legal) music because I figured that if I already *own* them, I’d also need to listen to them.  This is also why I’ve switched to online compilations / remixes. As a music lover, the rule of thumb shd  be: 1 album / month. Otherwise it’s too much information. Similar to eating too many sweets.

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.