Four Things #9
Four things #9..
A short trip to London, some rest days and some productive days, and all of a sudden it's been two weeks since the last "Four Things". Instead of desperately looking for Twitter linkage to share, I reckon the better way to approach this irregular newsletter for me is to let it sit until there are things actually worth sharing. I tried to do that with this one, so I hope you will enjoy it. I have gotten some really useful feedback recently which is lovely and I'm very appreciative of it, as well as some love on the "newsletter scene" (lol) so a warm welcome to those new subscribers that have joined from other writer's recommendations! One more small thing, I wrote about Beatport and algorithms a couple weeks ago, I have since been in touch with someone at Beatport as well as at Spotify so I'm going to dig a little deeper and report back soon! Feel free to pass on the subscription link and check out the archive here https://tinyletter.com/Martyn-Deykers.
Martyn,
Nov 27, 2019
FIRST THING: UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE
Not a day goes by or someone mentions the city of Detroit as the mythological birthplace of Techno. The city where soul music and European electronics converged in the late 80s and early 90s is often used as a sort of benchmark, the term "Detroit" has become a gatekeeping reference for "realness" and "non-commerciality" rather than a reference to an actual living and breathing music scene. A few weeks ago I spent a day record shopping in Detroit with Waajeed and we visited Submerge / Underground Resistance. First of all, Submerge is an amazing place. It has a small Techno museum and a great shop filled to the brim with almost strictly Detroit-produced vinyl. But by far the greatest thing about the visit was Mad Mike showing us his current project in the basement of the building, where him and three others were replacing a boiler from the 1950s for a newer unit. Waajeed also showed me other properties the crew were working on, such as Moodymann's across the street, building studio spaces and other facilities for the next generation of Detroit musicians. Techno is music but much more importantly it's community and love, and I felt it. I felt it more in that "boiler room" moment than at some random artist dinner or a fleeting chat with some jetsetting DJ at an airport somewhere in the world. This doesn't mean I think everyone needs to be exactly like UR, but it's important to remember they are out there, giving back, not just taking. Here's a nice doc about them from a few years back.
SECOND THING: INDONESIA
The current discussions in The Netherlands surrounding the issue of "Zwarte Piet" (Black Pete), blackface and the undercurrent of casual racism made me think about Indonesia and my country's colonial endeavors there. Growing up in The Netherlands, I was taught very, very little about this specific chapter in Dutch history. In fact, apart from the successes of the VOC, the world's first multinational trade company, I knew almost nothing about what the Dutch did in Indonesia (it wasn't good). Frankly, I think most adolescents were more interested in race politics/segregation in the United States (mostly through lyrics by hiphop acts like Public Enemy) than by Holland's own troubled relationship with those issues. Only when I moved to the US, I came across the work of the Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer and specifically his Buru Quartet of books about life on the Dutch controlled islands of Java. After I had read them in English it proved very difficult to even find a Dutch translation of it. Even more so than in the US or England, the Dutch colonial past is a giant blind spot, which in part explains the Dutch obliviousness when it comes to adequately responding to a current issue such as Black Pete. Here's a good recent piece I googled from the Jakarta Post.
THIRD THING: WINTER IN AMERICA
The last two weeks I posted ten albums on my Instagram that impacted me at certain points of my life. One of these records was Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson's "Winter in America", released in 1974 on the New York jazz label Strata East. Besides it being released in my year of birth, and recorded around the corner from here in Silver Spring, Maryland (just outside Washington DC, where Gil lived at the time), this album has a lot of personal significance, and I keep discovering new layers in it. In an interview from 2003 Gil was asked how he came up with the title, and he answered that the death of John F. Kennedy in 1963, and the subsequent deaths of MLK and Malcolm X had initiated a dark time in the history of the US, culminating in the Watergate affair that played out during the recording of this album. The political scandal is in fact directly referenced on Winter in America in the classic song "H2O Gate Blues". Perhaps this album remains so relevant today as it was 40 years ago because of all the generational parallels. Perhaps our "Winter" started on 9/11 2001, and look at the Super Deformed meta version of Watergate that's holding our world hostage today. Anyway, a good time to revisit this beautiful record and/or read this great background piece on Pitchfork by Michael A. Gonzales who happens to be a v. good writer. There's also this interview with Brian Jackson on Kodjo from last September that's worth listening to.
FOURTH THING: ANUNAKU
Done a lot of writing today so I will leave you with a link of one of the better twelves to come out in recent months, here's the Tuscany born but London based Anunaku (also known as TSVI) on Whities.. Check it out and see you next time!