one of the things that didn't seem to get picked up on w/all the 80s revivalism was the infatuation with african music

indestructible beat of soweto is crewsh.

You forgot about the entire World Music thing of the late decade.

And I think that is partly the answer: Those works have been lumped in with Sting and Bono as overtly "politically conscious", which was very much a 80s thing, while in the light of the dance/rave wave and disco-revival of the 90s, political concsiousness in music (particularly when the political conscious act earns a lot of $$$$$$ from his music) seems a bit more corny these days.

but indestructible beat is just straight african music. i'm talkin' western acts copping style or whatnot

oh, also Lizzy Mercier Descloux = <3

A lot of the most popular Western music of today has an indirect influence from African music, only it has been brought through African Americans rather than directly from Africa itself.

Quoth J Strummer: "3rd world rhythms are much cheaper to buy than 1st world rhythms."

i just realized this thread is the exact opposite of another thread i started
s/d: Afro-Electric music

Anyway, the African influenced "white" music of the early 80s was a lot more of a true melting pot than the hip-hop/R&B of today.

Culture Club used a lot of interesting African (and even more Latin) beats, but they combined them with great tunes - combining "white" and "black" music culture in a great way. Not to mention Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.

"A lot of the most popular Western music of today has an indirect influence from African music, only it has been brought through African Americans rather than directly from Africa itself."

Woo hoo way to miss the point of the whole thread!

Without trying to overstate this on a broad sense, my impression as a Top 40 loving teen for most of the decade was that nearly all of this seemed to be all very 'adult' and serious and/or embraced by adult/serious bands. And I think that was ultimately a bit deadening, not helped by a PBS/NPR-fed air of "Well, while you're listening to all that pop trash we're listening to *real* music, etc." A stereotype but one fed by both sides in equal amounts of resentment for the other.

Without trying to overstate this on a broad sense, my impression as a Top 40 loving teen for most of the decade was that nearly all of this seemed to be all very 'adult' and serious and/or embraced by adult/serious bands.

In the case of the late decade World Music craze, yes (even though "Yeke Yeke" appealed to a lot of kids too)

But I would hardly describe Adam Ant, Bow Wow Wow, Culture Club or Haircut 100 as particularly "adult oriented".

I share Ned's impressions - the integration of African/Caribbean music always seemed almost entirely politically motivated...? Like it was something musicians felt obligated to integrate into their music to show that they were forward-thinking and had their fingers on the pulse of this new "global" music market, something the West didn't even really seem to consider pre-Bob Marley.

Interesting question and I don't have much to offer in the way of an answer - just like to add Johnny Marr to your list of musos who definitely listened to highlife

Like it was something musicians felt obligated to integrate into their music to show that they were forward-thinking and had their fingers on the pulse of this new "global" music market, something the West didn't even really seem to consider pre-Bob Marley.

Paul Simon did this already in the early 70s: The panflutes on "El Condor Pasa" and the reggae beat on "Mother And Child Reunion"

But I would hardly describe Adam Ant, Bow Wow Wow, Culture Club or Haircut 100 as particularly "adult oriented".

I think a lot of it may be down to the difference of how they might have been marketed/sold to different audiences, though. (Certainly I don't remember it in the case of Culture Club when it came to the DJs at my local station in upstate New York, for example.)

http://awesometapesfromafrica.blogspot.com

are you talking about 20something indie rockers who can barely play their instruments. those kinds of 80's revivalists? maybe give them a decade. or not. haven't they all gone away by now anyway? do we really want them to get funky? ever see that don letts punk movie where some punk band is attempting a reggae song? hahahahaha, it's priceless.

check his "blogroll"

Seems to me that - laughable as many punk rock attempt at reggae were, it inaugurated at least a decade of receptiveness to black music - reggae, early hip-hop, as well as african - that's all but gone now; seems like the shutter came down with 'Grunge' and britpop - rock began to exclusively feed off itself from then on, with the predictable ever decreasing circle effect (see seven ages of rock thread)

I think part of the reason is that recent African music tends to be a lot more interested/invested in American/Jamaican music then it was in the 80s so it tends to be slightly more familiar and less exotic. I think it's true that musicians have tended looked more to Northern Africa and the Middle East for inspiration, consequently.

Seems to me that - laughable as many punk rock attempt at reggae were, it inaugurated at least a decade of receptiveness to black music - reggae, early hip-hop, as well as african - that's all but gone now; seems like the shutter came down with 'Grunge' and britpop - rock began to exclusively feed off itself from then on, with the predictable ever decreasing circle effect (see seven ages of rock thread)

This kind of music has always been sort of in opposition to whatever was in the mainstream.

So what was the mainstream of the late 70s? Mainly AOR. Surely there was some disco too, but by 1978-79 AOR was more evident, really. Which made it natural for the punkers and indie rockers to add some African beats.

Fast forward to the 90s and you find hip-hop and dance music dominating the mainstream. Both very much influenced by African beats (although vulgarized, commercialized and simplified by corporate America). No wonder indie rockers seemed less keen to incorporate that.

Geir please go away.

I was just listening to that first bit on "Fear of Music" yesterday thinking how odd it was that the various Talking Heads ripoff bands hadn't appropriated their shambling worldbeat thing.

some of the "hip" music you hear around NYC these days has some pretty good juju influence. so, it's out there I think, but maybe isn't terribly prevalent, and maybe not exactly as it was in the 80s.

I don't think that revivalist artists/bands have gotten to this sound yet - the closest maybe is some parts of the beardo disco/disco edits scene (although maybe i'm just saying that because the Tangoterje edit of "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" is perhaps my favourite thing this year) or groups like Studio, but in its curatorial/marginal nature that "scene" is like the equivalent of neo-electro in the late 90s (relative to the subsequent electroclash/general 80s revivalism of the early 00s).

Also Ned's right - the groups that did incorporate African elements for the most part played older than the groups that incorporated brash electronic sounds, so it's not surprising that the children of the 80s have resurrected the latter rather than the former.

yeah a top ten fake african pop of the 80s would be good.

Isn't it pretty typical of (most) revivalists to not dig deep enough into the influences of the stuff they're reviving?

only in the sense that maybe it's typical for there to be a lack of depth in the majority of art created under any auspices. should revivalists be singled out for that more than others?

It's interesting to me to see someone like Damon Albarn turn into a Paul Simon/Peter Gabriel-like figure in this way while trying hard *not* to commit their 'mistakes' -- so he hides a bit behind the Honest Jon's labelowner role, acts as a Brian Jones figure 'introducing' African bands to a wider audience, etc. but he's not gone full out with a big splashy 'I'm mature, me' pop album as such with that. Gorillaz allows him to have his cake and eat it too vis-a-vis hip-hop and other things in a different but parallel fashion (and since the last record went multiplatinum or whatever, it's not like he should be written off, no matter how much you want to say it was all Dangermouse, if you do want to say that).

i thought the blur dude did make a world muzik album. didn't he? not a gorillaz thing.

this one:

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s51936.jpg

It's no Graceland.

that album cover is truly bizarre

what album is that?

new bands could try to top the masters, but they would be fools to try:

http://jackwolak.com/12/133.jpg

What about bands like !!! ? They have a sound akin to something like PigBag a lot of the time with tribal drums and whatnot. Bit of a stretch maybe?

Putumayo's approach has also scared people away. Just saying "world Music" scares people away. It's hard to even get people to post here on a "whirled music thread"

Another whirled, another whirled, another whirled world music thread 2007

one of the things that didn't seem to get picked up on w/all the 80s revivalism was a shred of anything resembling '80s music

the faint sounded like 80's music.

i agree that it is because nobody can play their instruments properly anymore

Why does 80s people not want to rock

even the talking heads and eno waited till they kinda knew what they were doing before getting all funky. or at least rich enough to hire funky people. didn't stop the slits though.

or the clash.

first satisfact album (THE UNWANTED SOUNDS OF SATISFACT) is still the ultimate document of the phenomenon. those kids nailed it right out of the box (1996).

x-posts to curtis

maybe people now are just too afraid of looking foolish. the slits weren't afraid of anything.

best 80's revival album i own is dmx crew album.

do you really think people now are more afraid of looking foolish or are you just speculatin'?

dude return of giant slits xpost

this one:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00001SIAZ.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

i am speculating, but i hear more timidity in general in music these days.

you might be right

i mistook dmx krew for giorgio moroder once! embarassing

people are generally more reverent and respectful of third world sounds than they used to be. i eat cannibals indeed!

ed dmx is the real deal

you don't get that kind of wholesale theft anymore. i mean the burundi beat is the coolest fucking thing on earth! okay, you do get it a little in rap with different beats and stuff, but not rock anymore really. or pop.

robert palmer in 1981:

"The appropriation of the so-called ''Burundi beat'' by Bow Wow Wow, Adam and the Ants, and several other British bands poses yet another moral conundrum. The original source of this ''tribal'' rhythm is a recording of 25 drummers, made in a village in the east African nation of Burundi by a team of French anthropologists. The recording was included in an album, ''Musique du Burundi,'' issued by the French Ocora label in 1968. It is impressively kinetic, but the rhythm patterns are not as complex as most African drumming; they are a relatively easy mark for pop pirates in search of plunder. During the early 70's, a British pop musician named Mike Steiphenson grafted an arrangement for guitars and keyboards onto the original recording from Burundi, and the result was ''Burundi Black,'' an album that sold more than 125,000 copies and made the British best-seller charts."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503E0D91638F936A15752C1A967948260&sec=&pagewanted=print

It's really depressing when a band that revives a certain style only lists its own direct stylistic predecessors as influences.

(to sort of elaborate on what I said upthread)

years ago, people would have just ripped off those konono no.1/congotronics people and made singles or entire warpainted bands out of their sound. now they get them over here to tour and write nice things about them. i guess it's progress. it must be, right? it's nicer. but the bastard rip-off shit can often have more immediacy and energy that all the well-meaning collaborations/worldbeat remixes/etc can never have. but people, hopefully, get paid more now for their sounds. and that's the nice part.

A lot of the glomming on to African sounds in the '80s had to do with showing how anti-apartheid you were, which was of a piece with being anti-Reagan and anti-Thatcher. It was a cut-and-dried righteous cause, and there were some righteous sounds attached to it. And so you had Graceland, Johnny Clegg and Savuka, The Indesctructible Sounds of Soweto, "Free Nelson Mandela," "I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City," and so on. Even 3rd Bass gave PW Botha the gas face.

Now there's no rebellion in attaching yourself to African music. You're not really sticking it to the man by bringing in Kenge Kenge or Kekele to back you on a few tracks, you just look like a pompous Starbucks cosmopolitan.

All of that said, it's looking like Ethiopia will be this year's hip musicial crush country, for what that's worth in these days of diminished expectations and splintered audiences.

from the palmer thing again:

"Pop music grows by borrowing, and it is often difficult to make a clear-cut distinction between creative borrowing and outright theft. When Brian Eno and the Talking Heads' David Byrne used snippets of ethnic recordings on their album ''My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,'' they used them to enhance mood and atmosphere, not as the rhythmic foundations for their compositions. They identified the sources of their borrowings, too, but some critics accused them of cultural imperialism anyway. The case of the ''Burundi beat'' is much more straightforward. It's the driving force and most distinctive ingredient in much of Adam Ant's music and has been equally valuable to other British rockers. The fact that Adam and the Ants have used it to power fatuous celebrations of tribalism makes their borrowing even more distasteful. Pirates indeed.

Again, Bow Wow Wow is another matter. The group's rhythms are still influenced by the Burundian recording, but they are varied and flexible rather than slavishly imitative. And the Bow Wows have absorbed other rhythmic usages, including West African high life, Brazilian pop and conventional rock and roll. They seem to be able to synthesize their influences into appealing trash-pop as easily as they subvert Malcolm McLaren's image manipulation. Adam and the Ants have diversified somewhat on their new album, but the new ideas and effects sound slapdash, thrown together. They may be attempting a genuine synthesis, but all they succeed in doing is transmuting worthy sources into objectionable trash."

Back to that pop trash again!

All of that said, it's looking like Ethiopia will be this year's hip musicial crush country

can you talk about why you think this?

Budos Band is talking up the Ethiopiques series.

that african tapes blog is pretty cool.

can someone please revive this?
http://www.maidenmania.com/images/toto_africa_picturedisc.jpg

It already has been gershy, there's a big remix doing the rounds at the moment, with the chorus hook sung by a vocoder.

ysi?

first link on this page http://americanathlete.blogspot.com/search?q=afrika

thanks!

have we moved on to the new "foreign" by using middle eastern samples w/timbaland and stuff?

there's always a "new foreign," isn't there? and no less now than in the '80s. same as it ever was, as mr. byrne said. there was brazil/bossa nova, for example, in the '60s. africa (and more; salsa anyone?) in the '80s. india, middle east, north africa and latin america in various combinations at various times since. americans and brits are always looking somewhere for an exotic spark, discovering it, absorbing it, and moving on to the next thrill. i don't at all buy that musicians are less timid in this sense, or any other sense, these days.

one of the things that didn't seem to get picked up on w/all the 80s revivalism was a shred of anything resembling '80s music

I mostly agree. But Bell Hollow!

i'm assuming the ROBERT PALMER in the story scott's posting is different than the singer? because there's a song he did called "Parade of the Obliterators" that kinda sounds like it's using the Burundi Beat

Yeah, different guy, though the Times' Palmer was also a musician -- a member of the Insect Trust, among other things. Pretty freewheeling guy, it seems, so it's kinda funny to see him fulminating against "objectionable trash."

Though maybe he wrote "bullshit" and the copy desk "fixed" it.

A lot of the glomming on to African sounds in the '80s had to do with showing how anti-apartheid you were, which was of a piece with being anti-Reagan and anti-Thatcher. It was a cut-and-dried righteous cause, and there were some righteous sounds attached to it. And so you had Graceland, Johnny Clegg and Savuka, The Indesctructible Sounds of Soweto, "Free Nelson Mandela," "I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City," and so on. Even 3rd Bass gave PW Botha the gas face.

This may kind of explain how Arab music has kind of taken the same place today. "Everyone" is against Apartheid today, but people like George W. Bush have a very aggresive tone towards Islam.

I was terrified the other day when, just for a moment, I heard some bhangra-club stuff blaring out of my local hookah bar and I thought "sounds like Timbaland." wtf, me.

best 80's revival album i own is dmx crew album.

-- scott seward

OTFM

Street Boys!