Abou El Leef | Vol. 1

Reupped at a reader's request here.

I have seen the future and it is Abou El Leef. 

I say this not because the poster for his 2012 hit album Super Leefa is plastered in every other shopfront window along Steinway Street from Astoria Boulevard to 30th Ave. Nor because one now hears his music more often than Hakim's scratching its way out of early February frozen halal cart speakers as one makes one's way to his or her meaningless midtown temp assignment.

No.

I say this because Abou El Leef's music sounds like what happens when one's culture's pop music has exhausted every possible trope, has stumbled blindly down every possible dead-end alley, but refuses to give up, refuses to lie down, refuses to become irrelevant, refuses to die. 

I say this because there is not a single music video by Abou El Leef online, anywhere, and yet there is not a single Egyptian who does not have an opinion--positive or negative--about what he does.

I say this because Abou El Leef is, simply, the future.

Mayumi Kojima | Ai No Poltergeist

Reupped at 320kbps here.

I found this fabulous Japanese import at P Tune & Video Co (see the header image of this blog--that's the place) on Chrystie Street in Manhattan's Chinatown in late 2009. I knew nothing about the artist, but soon became obsessed with her, tracking the rest of her complete output -- more than a dozen albums and EPs -- on a trip to Japan in 2010 and then later, through various Japanese-focused blogs from South America to Asia.

This was one of the first albums I posted to the Bodega and for a very long while, it was the most popular in terms of grabs. Reupped in case you missed it the first time around.

Googoosh | Volume 1

After watching Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator last night, I got it in me noggin to reup this supremely classy album in 320 thrill-filled kbps for your listening pleasure.

Grab it here.

On a vaguely related note, back in 2004 or so, I wrote this piece on Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis for NYFA's website. I'd forgotten all about it until just now.

One of the most fascinating living singers on the planet, Googoosh was born in the early 1950s in Tehran where, from an early age, she began performing with her father, doing impersonations of famous singers of the era. She went on to become the country's most famous singer, developing a style that is impossible to locate in terms of its various influences. I remember the first time I heard her sing; poet and critic Ammiel Alcalay was giving a few Brooklynites a ride back home from a reading at the Poetry Project in Manhattan and popped in a cassette.

We all listened in a kind of stunned silence until Ammiel said: "I mean ... what is she doing? Where did she get the idea for this?"

It took me years of bodega diving before I found the CD above. I made the mistake--alas, more than once--of asking shop keeps in places that sold Arabic music if they had anything by Googoosh. I just assumed these places had music from all over the middle east and north Africa. Uh, no. Duh, Gary.

That said, shock of shocks, it was at an Arabic bodega on the Berkeley/Oakland border where I found this. I don't remember my conversation with the shop keep other than expressing surprise at finding Googoosh there and him smiling and telling me how great she was. So there is a god.



With the Islamic revolution in 1979, Googoosh was silenced. She decided to stay in Iran, even though she knew it meant the end of her singing career. In the last decade, she's made something of a comeback, performing occasional concerts, mostly outside of Iran.

During the post-election protests in 2009, she spoke out publicly against the brutal response to the demonstrations:

"I have come here to be the voice for the sad mothers who lost their loved ones in peaceful demonstrations. I have come here to be the just voice of the grass-roots and spontaneous movement among my compatriots and to show my solidarity."

Mina | Brava

Get it here.

This was not something I found in a Bodega or immigrant run media store, although I certainly could have, as Brooklyn has at least one well-stocked place on 18th Ave in Bensonhurst where I've picked up more than one similar treasure from the former Roman Empire. 

This particular CD was a gift, to my now ex-wife and I, from the poet Benjamin Friedlander, whose wife, scholar and translator, Carla Billitteri, is from Sicily, where they've spent most of their summers over the last several years. Ben knew we'd love Mina's hyper-emotionality -- she is, I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark -- Italy's most famous living diva. (Someone once called her the greatest white singer in the world.) I don't remember how many languages Ben said she sings in, but I'm guessing it runs in the double digits.

I've been meaning to post this for some time now, but the European section of my CDs is aaaaaalllll the way at the bottom of my shelf, and I, frankly, hardly ever look there. Shame on me. I think you're going to love this. Here's a live vid of Mina singing the title song on Italian TV, ca. 1968:

Abou el Leef | Super Leefa

Reupped by popular demand here. 

This is, without question, my absolute favorite album of 2012. Yes, you heard me correctly. Super Leefa, the cover of which features what looks like a homeless guy in a tattered superhero costume, is my favorite album of the year.

And yet, owing to (a) my prior ignorance of Abu el Leef's up-to-the-moment sweepingly postmodern Egyptian pop and (b) the aforementioned CD cover, in all its sad, be-bearded homeless-looking-guy glory, I avoided picking up a 
copy for months after first seeing it in the racks and shelves at the Nile Deli and Alfra on Steinway Street. I don't know what I thought it was. A comedy album? Some sort of Weird Al of Arabia? 

No. It's actually a sha'bi record, with Regular Joe Cairo lyrics about how music isn't against Islam, how people like to get all up in your business, and how people living an honest an honorable life are often the first to get stepped on by everyone else. The music, though, is less sha'bi and pure, unadulterated, inventive pop--a range of it, from 70s US funk and disco to 60s popular Egyptian music to contemporary dance and house.

Born Nader Anwar Gaber in Alexandria in 1968, el Leef is a relatively late bloomer, having recorded his first album (which includes the hit single "King Kong") in 2010, when he was 42. His music divides audiences: in Egypt, you apparently love him or hate him.

You know where your bodega proprietor stands on the matter. Where stands you?

POP WHEN THE WORLD FALLS APART

"The point of this sort of criticism isn’t — or shouldn’t necessarily be — to convince us of a single interpretation, but rather to invite us to consider ones we had either never thought about or dismissed long ago. Nearly all the essays [in this book] confront the reader with more questions about pop’s past and present than anyone could seriously engage in a lifetime."

My review of POP WHEN THE WORLD FALLS APART just went live at the LA Review of Books.

In other news, at 6:30 this evening I'll be reading at the New York launch of POSTMODERN AMERICAN POETRY: A NORTON ANTHOLOGY, details below:


The New School
Wollman Hall
65 West 11th Street (between 5 + 6 Aves
212-229-2436
Subway: F, M to 14th St; L to Sixth Ave

Readings by Eileen Myles, Caroline Knox, Marjorie Welish, Charles Bernstein, Bob Perelman, John Yau, Cole Swensen, Joan Retallack, Kenneth Goldsmith, Peter Gizzi, Sharon Mesmer, Edwin Torres, Elaine Equi, Rob Fitterman, Drew Gardner, Lisa Jarnot, Noelle Kocot, Katie Degentesh, Nada Gordon, Gary Sullivan, and Elizabeth Willis

If you're a visitor of the Bodega and you come to this reading, please introduce yourself!

Messer Für Frau Müller | Hyper Utesov Presents

You are pooshing eet to your own self here.

[UPDATE: Shifted file to ADrive at readers' request.]

Found this trashy retro Ruskie gem at BORIS PRODUCTIONS, 64-49 108th Street in Corona, Queens, two weekends ago. Thought I'd post it tonight as last night I went to this fabulous evening of three generations of Russian avant garde poetry at the Poetry Project at St. Marks.

It's late and I need to get to bed, but wanted to assure you this blog's not dead.

Nyah, nyah.

Fairuz | Eh Fi Amal

Listen to "Al Ayel"


Listen to "El Bent El Shalabiah"

Pick it up here.

Released in 2012, Eh Fi Amal (Yes There Is Hope) marked the legendary Christian Lebanese diva's return to the studio after years of live albums. It was--according to Wikipedia (so, grain of salt)--her 99th album, recorded when she was 74 years old (she's now 77) and was a huge hit all over the middle east.

I picked up the album just a couple of weeks ago at the Nile Deli while biking down Steinway with my poet friend Brandon Downing to see Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers. Fairuz was the clear winner that day.

This is a bizarre album, not quite like anything I've heard before: part Arabic art pop, part cheesy lite pop, but one hundred and ten percent Fairuz. I've got a number of her other albums I'll be posting over the weekend--it's unconscionable that we've ignored her here for so long.

Kojima Mayumi | Me and My Monkey on the Moon

Listen to "セシルカットブルース" ("Cecil's Blues Cut")


Listen to "あの娘の彼" ("That Girl of His")

Get the 21-song retrospective aqui.

Well, lookee here: It's a fabulous collection of 1990s singles and rarities from one of our all-time favorite Shibuya-kei artists, Kojima Mayumi. I found this lovely item in Shibuya itself, almost certainly at one of the smaller indie used CD places dotting the Tokyo neighborhood's outskirts.

I'm currently cooling my heels with family in Corvallis, Oregon, where I'll be boxing up the "literally thousands of" (actually more like 20 or 30) Cambodian, Lao, Thai and Vietnamese CDs I found last week on Foster Road in Portland. If I find any of the covers online I'll go ahead and post while I'm here; but pretty much, if I do manage to post over the holidays, I'll be limiting myself to items like today's offering: Stuff I've already got on my computer but, for whatever reason, haven't yet shared with y'all yet.

Sezen Aksu | Serçe

Listen to "Ölürsem Yazıktır" 

Get the 2-CD album here. 

Perhaps because Portland is constantly overcast and drizzly, Stumptowners compensate with high-end coffee and music to cut through the gloom--you can't hold out your arms and flap them frantically like a baby chick crazily anticipating  regurgitated worms without hitting someone in the face who has just walked out of a record store on their way to a coffee shop.

Seriously, I have never seen so many record stores in my life. Two days ago, at one of the biggest (Everyday Music, 1931 NE Sandy Boulevard) I found a used copy of Sezen Aksu's second album, Serçe (Sparrow), which I've been searching for for years. 

I'd write more about it, but my friend and Portland host Rodney is throwing me a cocktail party that is set to begin in--eek!--15 minutes. Meanwhile, you can read a bit about Aksu, and get her first record, here. 

Tuấn Anh | Rau Dắng Mọc Sau Hè

 

Listen to "Rap: Vo chong lam bieng"

Get it all here.

Greetings from Beervana! Forgive my absence these last several days, but I'm on the road for the next couple of weeks, currently in Portland, Oregon, where dear friends have been shuttling me from one Southeast Asian media store to the next. I was not aware of this before, but the City of Roses has quite a significant population of people from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam--and I've been grabbing up music from each of these places to restock the shelves of the old bodega.

I will not be posting too much while on the road, mainly because I lack a scanner. However, in cases where I'm able to find images of the covers online, I'll do my best to keep this humble blog active during the holidays.

I found today's offering by Tuấn Anh at a wee Vietnamese media store nestled in Fubonn Shopping Center off SE 82nd Ave, in what is more or less Bridgetown's current Chinatown. I know nothing about Anh other than that he's got a Facebook page and is apparently very popular among the Vietnamese living in this area. The rap song above (one of two on this album) is a duet with Family Love member Christian Le; most of the songs on this CD are not, however, rap, despite the groovy drop-out white letters on the pink field in the bottom right-hand area of the cover.

That's it for now--I've got a hot date with the biggest bookstore in the continental United States, where I'm hoping to flesh out the International Music section of my modest book collection.

Thanh Thúy | Một Chuyến Bay Dêm

Listen to "Tam The Bai" (and wait for the guitar solo)

Get it all here.

Here's the third album I have by the supremely fabulous Saigon diva Thanh Thúy. The other two are here and here. Obviously, my number one life goal for the immediate future is to find the other two volumes in this series.

When I do? You'll be the first to know.

Thanh Thúy | Buồn Trong Kỷ Niệm

Listen to "Tau Dem Nam Cu"

Listen to "Hinh Bong Cu"

Get it all here.

This is Holy Fucking Shit-level pop, the kind of music you'll take one listen to and wonder who the evil motherfuckers are who have kept you from experiencing it for so long.

Everything I know about Thanh Thúy, along with an earlier recording (with some fabulous guitar work) is in this post. I'll be upping a third recording tomorrow, so stay tuned.

10 Bollywood Memories I'll Take with Me to My Grave

A piece I wrote (with lots of embedded video) just went live on Indiewire's Press Play here.

Jintara Poonlarb | Krob Krueng Vol.3

Listen to "Sao toong kula tum ai"

Get it all here.

Found yesterday at Thailand's Center Point in Woodside, Queens. Jintara "Jin" Poonlarb is to contemporary mor lam and luk thung what Hakim is to shaabi: it's most prolific and yet distinctive practitioner. While I've yet to develop enough of an ear to immediately distinguish Jin's voice from any number of other Isan-born female vocalists, I can usually tell when it's Hakim being blasted from the morning bagel and coffee or halal lunch cart. But, then, I've been listening to Hakim for more than a dozen years and to Jin for a mere two or three.

In addition to picking up every one of her CDs that I can find, my other Jin-related mission is to someday, somehow find--online or on VCD--her music video "Arlai World Trade" ("Mourning the World Trade Center"), which, in an article titled "The Morlam, the Merrier," ThaiSunday.com described thusly: "The reigning Morlam superstar of Thailand laments the attacks of Sept. 11 while young, bare-midriffed Thai girls gyrate in front of a surging American flag."

Update: Peter Doolan found it; and it looks like someone literally just uploaded it 3 weeks ago:

La Merde Chaude! | 19 Hot French Trax

Listen to "Quai No 3"



Listen to "Le P'tit Clown De Ton Coeur"



Listen to "Sex Accordeon Et Alcool"



Listen to "Le Travail"



Listen to "Au Revoir"


Get the 19-song mix here.


Despite New York's reputation as one of the most expensive cities on earth, there is not a single day of the year that you can't find at least one totally free event to partake in--everything from live performances to gallery openings to street fairs. Today, of course, was Bastille Day on 60th Street in Manhattan, which is held annually on the Sunday following the actual Bastille Day. For several long blocks along 60th Street, just below Central Park, you can listen to free live music as you wander by stalls offering French eats, groceries, knick-knacks, books and--you guessed it--music. 

Last year, I picked up three French hip-hop records for $1 each, one of which I posted here. At today's fair, the Alliance Francaise Library was offering French CDs withdrawn from their library for 25 cents apiece. I happened to be at their stall the moment they opened. Fifteen seconds after they opened, I walked away with all 16 CDs they had out for sale. I knew it was a gamble; after all, these were rejects, la merde de la merde. I stuffed them all in my backpack and promptly forgot about them as I wandered around, taking in the sights and smells and sounds. Hours later, when I returned home, I plopped the first CD into my computer to have a quick listen (Arthur H's first album, Arthur H--that's an image of him from the back of the CD at the top of this post).

The opening track, "Quai No 3" (listen to sample above), had me sitting up and taking notice. I created a new playlist in iTunes, titled it "Merde," and dragged the song into it. Not that I thought every album was going to be a winner, or even have single listenable track. But I thought it would be fun--and appropriately French--to perform a kind of oulipian experiment using the Alliance Francaise Library's withdrawn CDs I had picked up this year and last.

When the second CD (Johnny Hallyday's Les Grands Success De Johnny Hallyday--second sample above) turned out to be as great as the first, I figured I'd just gotten lucky. When the third, fourth and fifth CDs all proved to each be as fabulous as the last, I almost started to cry. Really? I'd spent four lousy bucks on this merde. And all of it was kicking my ass.

In creating tonight's mix-tape I gave myself a couple of rules: (1) I could only include one track per CD and (2) I had to use EVERY CD I'd gotten at the fair, both this year and last. I admit that I broke the second rule--while I found a couple of tracks on Florent Pagny's Re:Creation that didn't make me want to do violence to myself, I also remembered how OuLiPo creators had embraced the "clinamen"--or "unpredictable swerve." In layman's terms, it means the Oulipians allowed themselves one opportunity to cheat. So I took mine.

That said, this is an effing supremely fabulous mix, especially considering the fact that I only passed on one of the CDs I picked up in the last two years at a street fair. Do note, however, that while I did stay true to the first rule of only including one song per CD, I wound up getting two CDs each by two artists Java and Dominique A, which is just as well, as they're both incredible. Also, JL Murat's Lilith is a two-CD set; I picked a song from each disc.

Obviously, this is not a representative sample of contemporary French pop. It seems skewed toward the experimental (Franck Vigroux's collaboration with Elliott Sharp!) and the music dates from as far back as the 60s to the present, with quite a bit of 90s action.

If there's anything you find yourself particularly thrilled by, let me know and I'll perhaps post a few entire CDs of the creme de la merde.

21st Century Chinese Rock & Punk

Subs vocalist Kang Mao (photo by Bjørn Gausdal)

Listen to "Asshole I'm Not Your Baby"



Listen to "No! No! No!"



Listen to "Eat Me"



Listen to "Wahaha"



Listen to "爱之过往"


Get the 30-band, 30-song compilation here.


For decades now it seems like the most exciting expressive culture--no matter the discipline--has been coming out of mainland China. Ai Weiwei, Gu Wenda, and Xu Bing are at the forefront of a huge explosion of visual and conceptual art that a number of phone book-thick catalogs published here and in Europe can barely keep pace with. Writers as diverse as Ma Jian, Liao Yiwu, and Mian Mian are creating some of the most raw and genuinely engaging fiction and creative non-fiction in recent memory--and making international headlines in the process. And I don't think I'm alone in thinking there is no greater, more inventive living film director than Jia Zhangke.


So it should probably be no surprise that, over the last decade or so, the PRC has produced quite literally the most thrilling rock, punk and post-punk in the world. Or that much of this music--unlike so much else on this blog--has become increasingly available through western channels.



Watch Subs perform "So Fine Emo"


For this compilation I gave myself a couple of rules: I wouldn't poach from any pre-existing, readily available compilations (although I did wind up using one song from a free comp that some of you may already have) and I would only allow myself one song from each band, no matter how hair-raisingly great their other tracks may be.



Watch Rebuilding the Rights of Statues' "TV Show (Hang the Police)"


I'll keep this post to the bare minimum, hoping the reader will listen and judge for herself, and use the opportunity to seek out more, as the interest strikes, through Amazon, iTunes and the great independent Asian-focused site Tenzenmen.com.


And, as always, I'm totally curious what you think. ...

Fairuz | Best of Fairuz

Listen to "Mush Qasah Hay"

Get it all here.

This being a post about Fairuz, one of the greatest living artists on the planet, a woman with a voice so powerful, so soulful, it was capable of bringing moments of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, it seems manifestly appropriate that I begin this post by talking about the Music Industry.

Oh My Fucking God, please tell me, Gary, that you're not going to add to the Emily White slash David Lowery meme. We've already read dozens, maybe hundreds of articles, tweets and blog posts about it. Please, Gary. Please. Not that.

Look. I don't want to add to it. For one thing, I don't care about white alt rockers of the 80s and 90s and I most certainly do not care about anything involving NPR. For another, you've already made up your mind, one way or the other.

That said, I implore you to listen to the Fairuz sample above and tell me, even if it involves scraping the last honest layer of sentiment from your nearly emptied-out heart, honestly and truly whether or not this music has even the slightest bit to do with the White / Lowery debate. Right? Right. I mean, right.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with it. Because this song--as is true of most, maybe even all of the songs on this terrifyingly sublime CD--is neither yelp nor yawp nor for that matter 80s/90s ironicized yelp or yawp. It is an extended moment of formalized, yes, but extremely convincing emotive realization. It isn't, in other words, the kind of shit that the music industry is trying to sell you; nor is it the kind of shit that you ("you" being NPR interns) are illegally downloading. That shit is one thing and one thing only: Product. They know it. You know it. We all know it. And that's all it is. It isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, art. It feeds an immediate, gnawing need, like a cigarette. And, just as quickly, it's forgotten.

It absolutely sickened me to read David Lowery's suggestion that illegal downloading might have contributed in any way to the suicide deaths of Vic Chesnutt and Mark Linkous. Like David, I've had two friends, both artists, who have taken their own lives. Both were poets. One of them, oddly enough, wrote a book titled Product, which I--in my 20s in San Francisco--published two decades ago.

The poet who wrote the book titled Product was seriously ill. His illness had much to do with his suicide. His economic situation had a lot to do with his suicide as well (he was on SSDI). But what ultimately led to it was his decision and desire to commit the act of suicide. There are plenty of poets who are or were in as dire or worse straights, physically and economically, who just kept on living, some of whom kept on writing poetry, despite the fact that it doesn't, ever, sell.

The fact that there are people, lots of people, with just enough twit of brain to cheer on  David Lowery's rant completely baffles and saddens me. Really? Really? Some unpaid laborer (cough!) at NP effing R admits to getting whatever she can for free (just like, uh, her "employer"), and this sets you off? Pushes you over whatever brink exists between sanity and the completely insane act of publicly making a connection between willful suicide and downloading crappy, forgettable pop and "alt" rock music?

Give me a fucking break. Where--in all of this insane debate--is the suggestion, anywhere, that the music industry might have some possible responsibility here? Or that musicians who willfully enter into contracts with these corporate scum have a responsibility to themselves? If you want to look at producing music as a livelihood, as a profession, as a job, then who is your employer? The audience? No, no, no, no, no. It's the music industry. It's your label. It's your label that isn't giving you vacation time. Who isn't providing you with health care. It's your fucking label who reaps everything you sow and maybe tosses you whatever coagulated bits are left after they've finished sucking the blood from your labor. If they even do that much. You signed the contract, dumbass, not the audience.

The music industry switched over to digital in the first place for one reason and one reason only: They saw that they could resell the same sad albums by Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteen on this new format to the same poor suckers who had bought them on vinyl. Their greed led to the greed of everyone taking advantage of the fact that this new format is easily shared. Period, end of discussion. You want to make things right, by which I mean profitable, again? End digital and go back to analog. Or come up with some other solution.

I'm not sure what's worse: that people like David Lowery who imagine they are artists and not what they really are, freelance contractors, have never successfully fought for their rights as laborers and instead blamed everything on the general public, or that people like David Lowery and his employer have no idea who Fairuz is and why she makes everything they've ever done in their lives, beyond making or not making money, ultimately moot. What does it say that the crux of this debate is around making money and not making art?

If you want to make money and you can't make money making music, then do something else and shut the fuck up so people who care about music can hear people who are, like Fairuz, actually making it.


UPDATE: Another poet, a great one, and a great friend, Rodney Koeneke sent along a link to the video above in response to this post, so I thought I'd pop it into the mix. Thank you, Rodney!

Osadebe | Best of Osadebe

Listen to "Osadebe 77"


Get it all here.


This will likely be the last Nigerian album I'll post for a while, although I do still have a couple more I found at Blessing Udeagu. For one thing, my Burmese connection came through last week and I'm gearing up to post the lot of it. (It's fabulous.) For another, since I started posting the African music a week or two ago, the traffic on this blog has gone through the roof. I assume it's because most people wandering around the various interlinked music blogs are looking for African music, but that's just an assumption. Maybe I've just got more visitors. If the stats take a dive, I'll know for sure.


This is an odd collection of Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe--a couple of the tracks have surface noise, having been clearly ripped from LPs. There is not a single hit on the publisher's name anywhere online, so I'm guessing they're out of business, or just internet shy, which seems impossible in this day and age.


In any event, this is a pretty fabulous collection and I hope you enjoy it.

Flashback 2 | Nigerian Pop 1970-1980

Listen to "Nmere Giri" by the Apostles



Listen to Aktion's "Sugar Daddy"


Get it all here.


By way of explanation, here is the email I received last night from John B at the fabulous Likembe in response to this earlier posting of Flashback 1:

Gary: I've uploaded "Flashback II" for you (sorry no cover). Feel free to share. I got this from the Comb & Razor blog a few years ago, so if you post it, give Uchenna some props.

Thank you so much, John and Uchenna!