As the blogosphere becomes an increasingly pervasive element of the collective consciousness, there remains the great fear that many will be left out – behind the times and out of style. In other words, for those who have yet to accept the deterministic march of blogdom, it is, to be frank, now or never. Like too many baby-boomers, our generation is also faced with technological hurdles that we must either overcome now, or later we’ll watch in shame as our four-year-old children run circles around us in dinner table conversations, talking of such esoteric blog knowledge as Indonesian jazz music and Moroccan politics.
And why not? Newspapers are too conventional and their “news” too self-consciously “objective.” Magazines are too slow, expensive and predictable. Radio and television, meanwhile, are much too populist: everyone watches CBS and listens to NPR, but only few know about that obscure and revolutionary blog written by a Kurdistani civil servant.
When it comes to music, a topic particularly well suited for snobbery, blogs prove themselves to be especially useful. With the advent of iTunes and music sharing, what once was for the few has now become fully democratized. As a recent editorial in these pages noted, the very same music that was once relegated to the collections of record-store clerks and antisocial nerds can now be heard on NBC sitcoms and on your middle school sibling’s playlist.
With this revolt of the masses now inevitable, the only response for music lovers must be to dive deeper into the pool of obscurity. Rather than wallow in the embarrassment of getting most of their music from television soundtracks, responsible music listeners must take back their dignity. They must regain their sense of self-worth by finding music on their own – or, rather, from mp3 blogs, whose creators make certain songs available for download.
Rather than merely list the now-popular North American music blogs, already well known amongst the hordes, Cadenza offers to do one better. In line with our international music series, the following is a guide to foreign music blogs that will put the naturally endowed music snob elite into their proper social position above the iTunes masses.
Less of a blog than a Web site, Yu-Mex specializes in the much-neglected Mexican-inspired music of 1950s Yugloslavia. When Tito’s Yugoslavian regime broke with the Stalinist Soviet Union in the late 1940s, Yugoslavian officials looked to sources outside of Moscow for cultural stimulation. They turned to Mexico, where the government posed no foreign policy threat and the films spoke of abstract revolution. Before long, many renowned Slavic artists such as Razvod Braka and Slavko Perovi were donning sombreros and writing classic fusion tunes such as “Asa gokih suza.”
Cadenza’s Take: Good luck seeing these kinds of songs on your neighbor’s iPod!
When a movie industry produces over 800 films a year, it requires a good deal of musical accompaniment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, with the films themselves often of a mass-produced quality, the music is what stands out. While most of the songs are of a traditional Indian nature, the blog also features scores reminiscent of blacksploitation music (think “Shaft”) as well as surf rock.
Cadenza’s Take: A subcontinental hipster paradise, without a doubt.
On this blog, we learn that the country that produced ABBA, Ace of Base and The Cardigans has yet to stop flooding the pop music market. A closer look, however, reveals that things in Sweden might not be too sunny after all. One of the more prominent Swedish exports of the year that is featured on the blog, the group The Knife, is an electronica band whose music is characterized by creepy synthesizers on top of unsettling harmonies (with what sounds like an 11-year-old girl) rather than by power pop keyboards. The band’s name, of course, does not exactly remind one of of “catchy” music – at least not to our innocent American sensibilities.
Cadenza’s Take: Insulted sensibilities are a necessary price to pay in the pursuit of obscure knowledge.
Featuring chiefly West African music – the site’s name means “one hand can’t clap” in Wolof, a West African language – the blog is run by Matt Yanchyshyn, who seems to know his fair share about African music. His selections of mp3s are not too bad, either. From the soft sounds of the Angolan guitarist Waldemar Bastos to the Amutabi Nzenze’s 1960s Kenyan twist, the blog provides an excellent introduction to modern West African music.
Cadenza’s Take: For the true snob, it will suffice as a continental survey.
Tired of talking about provocative Danish cartoons? This blog will quickly give you the tools necessary to change the subject from Scandinavian freedom of speech to Scandinavian rock music. The question remains: does its music and political attitude interact? When one of the blog’s featured pop bands, The Alpine, sings a song whose chorus begins, “I’m sick and tired of always being sick and tired,” one can only hope they are referring to teenage angst and not Islamophobia.
Cadenza’s Take: Music snobs should stay away from politics (and therefore this site) whenever possible.
Offering more reviews and commentary than mp3s, this blog (written in English) nonetheless provides some of the easiest access to contemporary Chinese pop music. It also gives readers an excellent verbal arsenal for directing conversation about China away from the Yuan, Google or its booming economy and onto more pressing matters, such as Taiwan’s indie rock band Hai’er (what this would be doing on a Chinese music blog is uncertain) and Nicholas Tse’s new Mandarin album, which the bloggers admit is rather awkwardly delivered Mandarin.
Cadenza’s Take: As the percentage of our federal debt becomes increasingly owned by the Chinese, so will your street cred increasingly grow with knowledge of Chinese pop music.