Ceza | Rapstar

Download entire CD in a single zip file here.

I'm going to Japan tomorrow for a two and a half week vacation. Meanwhile, I wanted to leave you with something especially fabulous, thus Ceza's Rapstar.

Don't just listen to the samples. Be brave; download the damned CD. It's freaking amazing.

Ceza, which means "punishment" in Turkish, is the most famous hip-hop star in Turkey. He's also one of the fastest rappers I've ever heard.

Found at Uludag Video on Avenue W in Brooklyn, before they stopped importing CDs.

It's great, right? Whatever. If it's Fri May 21 or later, I'm in Japan. Maybe I'll post photos or somethin' here or Elsewhere.

Rayess Bek | Am Bihkeh Bil Sokout

Al Qanoune al Qanine"

Download entire CD in a single zip file here.

Found this totally kick-ass rap/hip-hop CD at the mighty Rashid Music on Court Street in Brooklyn, what I believe is the only surviving Arabic music store in Brooklyn. (There used to be at least half a dozen in Bay Ridge and Carroll Gardens I used to frequent.)

According to this article, Rayess Bek was one of the first artists to rap in Arabic, ca. 1997. According to his Web site, he just completed a doctorate in France and is working through the U.N. on an anti-war campaign with Frank Fitzpatrick.

Thai Reggae | Half Bob Marley, Half Original

Four songs from the CD above.

Download the entire CD in a single zip file here.

I don't take the current situation in Thailand lightly. I had long ago planned to upload this CD, which I found in the previously mentioned Thai store in Manhattan's Chinatown--on Mulberry? Elizabeth? Below Canal, at any rate.

It is, to me, one of the oddest CDs I've ever picked up. Half of the songs--every odd numbered song, beginning with #1--is a Bob Marley cover, but sung in Thai. Every other song--the even numbered songs--are what I believe are original songs, also in Thai.

Surprisingly--or perhaps not so surprisingly--it's actually exceptionally well done. Having spent my formative years in the 80s in San Francisco and Berkeley, I was pretty sure that I never, ever, ever, ever wanted to hear Bob Marley again. That was admittedly before I knew there was a band in Thailand covering his songs.

It would feel crassly hand-wringingly holier-than-thou to dedicate this upload to the Thai protesters, so I won't.

But, still.

GayBird | Legendary Queen + PRETTYHAPPY&GAY

Three mind-blowing pop songs from GayBird

Download the entire CD + a track from PRETTYHAPPY&GAY in a single zip file here.

Found in the video/CD store on Chrystie Street in Manhattan's Chinatown pictured in the header of this blog. Leung Kei Cheuk, aka GayBird, is an avant-garde composer and pop producer.

Hoàng Oanh | Gold

"Ngay sua se ra sao" and "Kiep ngheo"

Download the entire CD in a single zip file here.

In September 2008, I went to Minneapolis to do a reading with a couple of others in the Flarflist Collective at the Walker. The day after the reading, we wound up on a street that housed nothing but Vietnamese restaurants and video/CD stores.

After a great lunch, I popped into the video place next to the restaurant and combed the stacks as quickly as I could, finding, among other things, this fabulous collection of songs Hoàng Oanh recorded from 1960-1975. Of the 20-30 Vietnamese CDs I have, this is one of my all-time favorites, largely owing to Hoàng Oanh's voice, which never fails to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. She's amazing. I think, although I'm not certain of this, that she's still alive and living in southern California.

When Linh Dinh stayed with me last year during a neo-benshi festival that Brandon Downing curated, I pulled out my stash of Vietnamese CDs, begging him to please please please contextualize some of it for me. Which, graciously, he did.

Apparently, Hoàng Oanh was extremely popular in Vietnam, but largely outside of Saigon, where she was considered a bit unsophisticated or "country." I was very surprised by this, but assume it's true and that sophistication, like humor, doesn't always travel well from culture to culture.

Asala Yousef | 2008 CD

Two killer tracks from this CD

Download the kit & kaboodle in a single zip file here.

On July 4 of last year, soon-to-be ex-wife and I spent the day wandering around Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush in Brooklyn, a tad southish of downtown, an area we almost never get to in the normal course of our daily lives.

At one point, we stopped in at an Arabic-run phone card and doo-dad store on Court Street, a couple of doors down from Rashid Music, which is perhaps the oldest, and certainly one of the greatest Arabic music stores in the country. I'm pretty sure that this especially unflattering photograph of me:



was taken in this very phone card and doo-dad shop. Note the hookahs to my right. But, far more importantly, note all of the CDs in glass cases and cassettes against the wall. You're seeing less than 1/3rd of the bounty this place held. Rashid may have the reputation--and the staying power--but the doo-dad place sure did have an impressive heap o' steamin' mess o' music on your choice of polyester film with magnetic coating or polycarbonate plastic.

As I've claimed a number of times on this blog, there are really two kinds of store keeps: (a) those who are puzzled but absolutely thrilled to see people beyond their usual customers interested in "their" music; and (b) those who view such intruders as though they were Vikings, there to do what Vikings are generally known, and not terribly much adored, for doing.

The woman in the back of the phone card and doo-dad place was, happily, one of the friendliest shop keeps I've ever met. She wanted to know what we were doing for Independence Day--not, mind you, July 4, but the next day, July 5, Algerian Independence Day. She, as an Algerian immigrant, had a number of ideas of how we might want to spend AI Day in America, all of them involving cutting out coupons for discounted "whole lamb" from the Arabic newspaper she brought forth and proceeded to spread out on the glass casing housing the CDs. She thought it was nothing short of crucial for us to buy a lamb--"they are so cheap for you if you buy the whole thing at one time"--and invite all of our friends out to whatever park we, as White People, clearly lived within walking distance of. (Prospect Park, duh.) Where, presumably, we'd find a grill big enough to accommodate a whole, dead, skinned lamb.

Our conversation, like a fat summer fly, hovered around lambs and elaborate Independence Day picnics for a solid fifteen minutes, and then I started getting--I'll just fess up to it--a bit impatient, frankly. I mean, we were lying, Nada and I; we were not actually going to celebrate Algerian Independence Day, just as we had not actually celebrated U.S. Independence Day. And, even if we were, it was pretty to super doubtful that we would do so in a way that might involve the purchase of a whole, mid-sized mammal--however cheap.

I tried to steer the conversation over into the realm of music. We had just seen a film starring Abdel Halim Hafez, and one scene in particular, with Hafez in a boat on the Nile with some friends, singing to the object of Hafez's romantic obsession, had been much on our mind. The song was terrific and haunting. We could almost hum it for her. Did she know this movie or song and whether or not the song might be on CD somewhere in the shop?

No, she was Algerian, she reminded us, BUT she had a friend who was Egyptian who knew everything about the movies. Everything! She called her. Within 6 minutes she had our film and song titles (both of which I've since forgotten) and, after flipping through a series of CDs, determined they didn't have the song anywhere in the store.

Did we want the coupon for the lamb?

I asked her to recommend a more-or-less recent CD that she really, really, really loved. She stared at me blankly for a few moments, then suddenly smiled. "Aha!" she said, disappearing beneath the horizon line of the CD case for a bit, then reappearing with the CD you see above.

"Have you heard Asala Yousef?" she asked. I flitted through my memory banks. Asalah Nasri, yes. Yousef? No. "Who is she?" I asked.

And here, things get a bit hazy. I'm almost positive that she said that Asala Yousef was from her home country, Algeria. Like, 89% so. But I'm probably totally wrong about that, as I've found nothing online to suggest this is the case.

There's almost nothing about Asala Yousef online--just links to MP3s and YouTube videos. In one list of famous Druze singers, she's included as a Syrian. In the comments of several YouTube videos, people are claiming she's either Palestinian or Israeli--mostly Israeli. There is at least one YouTube video of her where the person who uploaded it is writing in Hebrew as opposed to Arabic. And, really, that's extremely rare. So it's possible she is Israeli--though she's obviously singing in Arabic. Which is less rare, but still not super common.


Asala Yousef vid, uploaded by Hebrew speaker


Asala Yousef vid, uploaded by Arabic speaker

So, I'm at a loss. Who is Asala Yousef and where does she come from? The music sounds Lebanese to me. Anyone out there know? [Update: Someone out there did know and left the answer in the comments.]

Meanwhile, she's got an incredibly powerful voice and you really should be downloading this shit, since it's free & all and double-since the phone card and doo-dad place where I bought this?

Not there anymore.

Crazy Whack Sublime Vietnamese Rap & Hip-Hop Sampler

Download a longer sampler of 10 Vietnamese rap & hip-hop songs in a single zip file here.

I compiled the track list above from 3 CDs found in the same Vietnamese Video/CD store on Chicago's Argyle Street where I discovered this previously posted gem.

In the middle of a pleasant if innocuous conversation with the woman behind the counter, I suddenly remembered to ask, "Oh, um, do you have any Vietnamese rap music?"

Her brow furrowed. "Have you heard any Vietnamese rap music?" she asked. I couldn't quite get the hidden meaning here, which I assumed was either: (a) because it doesn't exist, you poor delusionally optimistic white liberal type person; or (b) because I think it's going to induce projectile vomiting in you.

It turned out she meant (b) and just assumed that I would hate what the Vietnamese--mostly Vietnamese-Americans--are doing with the genre.

Wrong.