Celebration

I am done with my first year of graduate school and am in a celebration mood. This led my housemate and I to have several dance parties in our kitchen.

Here are some of my dancing inspirations and my current spotify dance mix (if you don’t have spotify, you just need to get it, sorry). I hope these will encourage all of you to start moving your feet.

I just discovered Here We Go Magic on the Secretly Canadian blog. I don’t know much about them, but this video makes me feel free.

This song is not about celebration–it is actually about death–but Catherine Ringer from les rita mitsouko manages to be both sexy and extremely weird, my favorite kind of dancing.

This of course leads us to the queen of interpretative dancing: Kate Bush

Changing styles, Rye Rye‘s dancing in her amateur music video exudes youth and energy. Also, this song makes a great work out.

And the cherry on the top, another home made video by this guy dancing on Mates of State. Priceless.

Celebrate good times, come on!

Homesick

I get homesick (home being France) a couple times a year. It usually happens at the end of the winter or early spring, when I don’t know exactly when I’ll get to see everyone and when I am getting tired of having to communicate properly with Americans (it is hard work sometimes). I then start listening to music from my childhood, here is a sample.

I would argue that Louise Attaque is one of the few truly original french bands from the past twenty years (most contemporary french music is a pale imitation of what is going on in the anglo-saxon world). I first heard of hem in sixth grade and though my ears were not ready for it at the time, I grew to love them. Their use of violin is particularly noteworthy.

Noir Désir‘s main band member, Bertrand Cantat, was arrested and imprisoned back in 2004 for beating his girlfriend while drunk (which eventually led to her death). I am strongly opposed to conjugal violence; however, this song is still beautiful.

Manu Chao is now famous around the world but few know that he grew up in France and was part of a band called Mano Negra. I started to listen to Manu Chao in middle school and his warm music has followed me ever since.

Mano Negra: Pas assez de toi

Francis Cabrel was my favorite artist growing up (my parents had a tape of his and we would listen to it in the car) . Because I was born that month, I considered the song “Octobre” my birthday song and only later realized that the song does not praise the glory of October but rather expresses the sadness of the end of summer. I now listen to it and think of the end of my french (and Belgian) childhood.

Miss Electronica

Even though I grew up in Europe, electronic music is not my thing; I was always in the rock’n roll camp. However, I am a dancer and always appreciate a good electronic beat, especially if the DJ is a lady. I do love Yelle and even tried to learn how to dance tecktonik.

Thankfully, I am not the only one who tries branch out: npr’s all songs considered show does it on a regular basis and helps me discover new sounds like Grimes and Maya Jane Coles.

Keep the beats coming girls!

music and TV

Yesterday, for the first time, I actually youtubed the intro of a TV show and watched it on repeat. This was after I watched my third episode of Mad Men. The opening conveys the emptiness and despair felt by the main protagonists, and the strings of the song dramatize the visuals. The sequence does such a good job that you could follow it with an awesome party at the beach and everyone would only notice how trivial life is. The song is an edit of “A beautiful mind” by RJD2.

I have also enjoyed the opening for The Wire and often force my boyfriend to sit through it. The song is “Way Down in the Hole” from Tom Waits. In each season, they have a different artist singing –the Waits version is actually used for season 2–but I will always prefer the first version by the Blind Boys of Alabama. Other seasons’ opening song  feature: The Neville Brothers, DoMaJe (a group made of Baltimore teenagers) and Steve Earle. This system matches how the wire has a very different focus each season (drugs, unions, housing, education, media).

Weeds’ opening sequence is perfect for a sociology discussion on post-WWII suburbanization. They also have used different artists throughout the show.

And just for fun, the one intro song I know by heart: Searching my soul by Vonda Sheppard for Ally McBeal.

2011: The Rise of Indie American Girls

This past year, I have been impressed by the rise of strong women artists in the US (and I am not the only one who thinks so). Here is a little sample of women who marked the past year and that I perticularly appreciated.

First of course, the new rock’n roll woman: St Vincent. I heard her in this “concert à emporter” with Andrew Bird and I instantly fell in love with her and her work. Here is the accoustic version of my favorite song out of her latest album. The electronic version is also great.

 

We cannot talk about the year 2011 without mentioning tUne-yArDs. I saw her live twice: once at Pitchfork in Chicago and once in Bloomington. The crowd was better at Pitchfork but in Bloomington I could actually see her, and that is definitely important as her singing-drumming-uke playing is very unique.

Less famous, Thao and Mirah collaborated last year on an album. I knew Thao from her work  with The Get Down Stay Down. Thao and Mirah played at a Chicago neighborhood festival last summer and I really appreciated how they combine their two different styles. The all girl band power vibe is also very fun. Interesting fact, tUnE-yArDs actually co-produced their album and features on one of the songs, not this one though. (If you don’t want to listen to Thao’s cute little story, skip to minute 00:52)

 

This year I also discovered two women artists I had never heard of before: Zola Jesus (her parents are russian but she was born and raised in Wisconsin, so it still counts) and My Brightest Diamond. The first’s art is dreamy and dark while the second’s is poppy and uplifting.  These two music videos are pretty representative.

 

Other than that,  Lana Del Rey is the new indie phenomenon and Alela Diane came out with a third album and did a wonderful tour with her family (literaly, both her dad and husband played with her).

Suburb generation

This overdue post comes after two months filled with finals, friends and family; it was inspired by my thanksgiving trip to my cousins’ house in Carmel, IN. The first time I went there, I thought american suburbs were like heaven: everything  so clean and everyone so nice. But I eventually saw the monotony, boredom, and history of segregation behind the white fences and smiles. This universe inspired many artists who tried to escape the place they grew up in.

Ben Folds summarizes well this phenomenon in his 2001 single “Rockin’ the Suburbs” where he parodies 90s rock bands who sing from and about the suburbs (my favorite, his imitation of  Rage Against the Machine imitation minute 2:56). Weird Al Yankovic directed the video which is filled with funny references.

Without any irony, Soundgarden’s music video for Black Hole Sun shows an apocalyptic suburban neighborhood. I never listened to Soundgarden growing up in the 90s and even missed their show a couple years ago at Lollapalooza. I discovered this song last year in Chicago and would blast it in my headphones on my way to work.

The suburbs still inspire many artists today.  Indeed, in their 2010 album, Arcade Fire sing this ode to a time and place lost. Everyone eventually grows out of the suburbs.

Don’t mess with me

NPR’s All Songs Considered put out podcasts about which songs make you cry or make you feel good. However, they forgot to add an important genre: songs that make you mad.

Like most people, I get angry sometimes; by listening to these songs, I feel like someone understands me.

I was obsessed with this song when I found out my first boyfriend had a new girl. I was devastated and mad at him at the same time. I still listen to it every time I have boy drama.

Continuing with the boy drama theme, this song is a 90s classic that will get a lot of women angry.

If I were to pick which artist to be, I would choose Kate Bush. She manages to use her excentric and amazing personality to make great songs and videos.

Here is a South African rap group that became huge recently representing the “zef” culture. I especially resonate with the nutella scene. (this video is pretty crazy and the language is bad, be ware)

How to mix music and studying

Even though it might distract me, I like to listen to music while reading. The advantages are great: it cuts off all the other disturbing noises, it keeps me awake, and it adds a positive background to a sometimes dreadful task.

Here are some criteria I use for selecting my study music:

- a constant and fast beat. I don’t want anything that puts me too sleep; however, it should not be something too fun either. Otherwise, I will start dancing in the library.

- a focus on the general sound and not on the lyrics. The voice should not be the main actor but instead part of a whole musical atmosphere. The lyrics should be uninteresting or hard to understand (because of an extensive use of effects on the voice). Of course, as english is not my first language, I might be able to tune out the lyrics easier than others.

- a neutral emotional effect on the listener. If a song makes you cry, laugh, or pensive–if it reminds you of a particular life event–then it will not be good for studying. If I were to listen to David Bazan while studying, I would spent most of my productive time being depressed.

Here are some examples of good study songs. Of course, it is better to listen to a whole album from the same artist so as not to be distracted from the change of style.

let’s get dramatic

I should be reading scholarly work on Sociology, but instead I decided to finally add a new post. I mean, it’s been a while!

To make this short: some songs reach something deep inside of me and elevate my soul, and sometimes the music video makes that feeling even stronger; most of the time, dreamy women voices are involved.

I made the mistake of not going to Warpaint’s show last year in Chicago. However, the story and imagery in this music video make up for it.

I just discoverd Cults on Pitchfork best new album, and this song is currently on repeat on my grooveshark.

I first saw a video of Little Scream on La Blogotheque and was amazing by the joy she had in the parks of Toronto. I was even more happy to find out she is with the label Secretly Canadian, my homies!

Saga Africa

World music can be tricky as we usually enjoy what we believe is the “sound “of foreign countries which can be very far from the actual music enjoyed there. In fact, during the past 20 years, the whole world was influenced by American and British pop culture and most countries’ music scene is now a symbiosis between their musical heritage and western sounds. Here is a group of artist, between Europe, Africa and North America who follow this trend.

Blitz the ambassador is starting to get a bigger name here in the US. Originally from Ghana, he came to the US for College and now resides in New-York city. Blitz considers his music as directly influenced by old school American hip-hop while his lyrics discuss his African identity. On this track, he worked with Corneille, a Rwandan-German-Canadian singer who is a one-hit wonder in France. Be ware, this music video made me cry.

I am sure that by now you have heard of K’naan thanks to the South Africa soccer World Cup (and I also already wrote a post about him). K’naan is actually from Somalia and emigrated to Canada when he was 13. His music is a mix of hip-hop, reggae and Somalian music.

Because of a larger African immigrant population, African artists have been more present in the mainstream media. Both Ayo (German and Nigerian) and Tete (French and Senegalese) are popular folk singers on the other side of the Atlantic. These are also good examples on how hip-hop is not the only style used by African singers.