Rough n' Ready in a Digital World

Friday, January 21, 2011 | Categories: Blog |

World Music 2.0 -- it's raw, glitchy and usually doesn't worry too much about copyright rules. This emerging genre of music owes its birth to digital technology and the new tools for musical expression. In fact, it thrives on rough and ready creation and distribution. A new breed of young, underground composers and DJ's are adapting and mixing different types of music from all over the globe. Then they use the web to circulate and share the results. Thanks to today's social networks and digital platforms, they have unprecedented access to audiences.

This weekend on Spark, Wayne Marshall joins Nora to talk about the rapid rise of World Music 2.0. Wayne is an ethnomusicologist at MIT. He's also a rapper, a DJ and a music blogger. We asked Wayne to give us a list of five of his favourite World Music 2.0 tracks. Here's how he responded:

Fly Kidd, "Buckle My Shoe": An example of LA's homegrown, DIY, jerkin hip-hop subculture. Note the conspicuous, recurring audio watermark reminding us that this was produced using demo software.

LR La Ley Del Rap, "Yabadabadu": This is a "jerkbow" production, fusing LA's jerkin style with Dominican dembow (a local offshoot of reggaeton). It's a classic instance of a homemade, grassroots video going "viral" (one can find several other instantiations on YouTube).

Los Rakas ft. Faviola, "Abrazame (Uproot Andy Hold Yuh Remix)": Quintessentially circuitous, here's a Bay Area-based Panamanian rap group performing over a remix of Jamaican singer Gyptian's massive hit "Hold Yuh," as remixed by New York's Uproot Andy (a Canadian by birth).

A.J. Holmes & the Hackney Empire ft. Kastro, "Fraudian Slip (Erick Rincon's Tribal Guarachero RMX)": Another great, twisted example: a Mexican teenager remixing a song made by a multicultural crew from London, released on the digital label of an "open-eared" blog, Ghetto Bassquake. This one has touches of African guitar music (i.e., soukous), tribal guarachero, cumbia, etc.

Munchi, "Pun Ain't Dead": My favorite breakout producer of 2010--a 21-year-old Dominican kid from Rotterdam. Munchi has been working up tracks in the invented genre of "moombahton". Here he mixes reggaeton, Dutch dirty house, a little salsa, and a brash, self-referential sample of hip-hop's Big Pun.