Sir Victor Uwaifo | Greatest Hits Vol. 1

Listen to "Guitar Boy"

Get it all here.

My God, but I love Queens. Have I expressed my undying love for this borough before? As far as I'm concerned, it's the greatest city in America. 

As I've hinted in the last week or so, I've been waiting for My Burmese Ship to Come In--specifically, Zaw at Thiri Video has been culling his archives for a number of CDs he says he has of older, more traditional Burmese music, which he promised to have ready for me last weekend. Well, on the appointed day I made the trip to Elmhurst ... only to find that, in fact, the CDs weren't ready for me.

But in Queens, when one door shuts, other doors open. As I wandered around the eastern edges of Elmhurst, suddenly realizing I was lost, I scooted under an awning to check the GPS on my phone. When I looked up, on another awning, two or three doors down, I saw the words "African Movies." What? Oh, my.

Blessing Udeagu (99-08 Lewis Avenue) is ostensibly a copy shop, with several photocopy machines, that also happens to be a used bookstore (there were dozens of old, dog-eared books fading in the storefront windows), a Nigerian DVD store (a whole wall of them, in fact) AND an outlet for African music, mostly from Nigeria and Ghana.

I asked the shop keep if it might be okay if I looked through the CDs. "They're African," she warned me. I nodded my head and proceeded to dig through what they had. After determining that each CD was $5, I chose a few that looked most promising and brought them up to the register. "These are in African," she reminded me. I gave her a Readers Digest version of my Ye Olde "I Happen to Like Music From All Over the World" assurance, which didn't, frankly, seem to assuage her concern that I might be buying the wrong music. With a pitying look, she put the handful of CDs I'd plucked out into a plastic bag and, shaking her head, took the money from my now visibly shaking hands.

"Sir" Victor Uwaifo is the legendary inventor of Joromi, which to my ears sounds like Highlife, which tells you just how little I know about Nigerian music. Uwaifo started recording in the 1960s and became famous for playing his guitar, live, with his tongue and feet in addition to his rather impressively dexterous fingers.

I'm supposed to check back in with Zaw next weekend; if I do, and if My Ship has come in, I'll be posting an awful lot of Burmese music in the next few weeks. Until then, if you like Nigerian music, you might want to check back here a few times in the coming days.

In other news: I think I'm going to try Twitter. Follow me here.

5'Nizza | 05

Listen to "Огонь И Я"

Listen to "Морячок"

Get it all here.

Found for $2 on Saturday in a Russian or perhaps Ukrainian media store on 108 Street in the gray area between Elmhurst, Corona and Forest Hills. Yes, I realize that, technically, there is no such "gray area"; I mean to me. As in, I don't honestly know what neighborhood I was in.

I'll be writing more about my Saturday adventures a bit later in the week as I post a few things I found that day from--are you sitting down?--Nigeria. I had meant to write about and post it all on Sunday, but for some reason Divshare wasn't uploading anything. (The third time since I upgraded that there's been a serious problem upping things.)

Meanwhile, I can't tell you how thrilled I was when I saw this thing in the store. And that all CDs in the store were on sale ("Just for today," the shop keep informed me) for $2. Because I had a sense of who these guys are, or were, from this album (which also turns out to be Ukrainian, not Russian).

This is 5'NIzza's third and last album; the duo, which formed in 2000, was not terribly prolific. But what they put out was, if this CD is any indication, totally sublime. Relying on nothing but guitar and vocals, the duo sounds, to my ears anyway, like some of the best Brazilian pop I've ever heard, sonically rich, fluid, various.

Verse, Stripped | Exhibit

This show, which I believe was curated by Katherine Litwin, just opened in Chicago at the venerable Poetry Foundation. It includes the original artwork of a few of my poetry comics, along with that of fellow travelers Sommer Browning, Bianca Stone, and Paul K. Tunis. Books by Kenneth Koch and (my all-time biggest hero) Joe Brainard will also be on view. My fellow cartoonist and occasional hangout pal Matt Madden will be giving a talk on the intersection of poetry and comics on August 1, the day after my 50th birthday. And, yes, I plan to be there for Matt's talk (as do the other artists), so say hi if you're there.

Selda Bağcan | Deniz'lerin Dalgasıyım

Listen to "Düşen Hep Yerde Mi Kalır"

Get it all here.

Another terrific album by the unimpeachably great Selda Bağcan, and much more varied and colorful than that sample above would have you believe. (I love the sample above, but I love it for its straightforward rawkin energy and Selda's so-soulful-you're-not-sure-if-I'm-actually-crying-while-I'm-singing voice, and there is soooo much more going on in this album--it's the most diverse Selda that I have, though I admittedly only have 3 of her CDs.) 

Found, as with 75% of of my Super-Posse of Turkish Music Burned into Discs of Polycarbonate Plastic, at Uludag Video in Brooklyn.


UPDATE: I didn't realize it when I posted this this morning, but Turkish Psychedelic Music! was recently shut down by Blogger. Unbelievable.

Bu-bu-bu-Burma Bomb | Myanmar Rap & Hip Hop

Sandy Myint Lwin, "Euu Ma Yar"

Burmese hip-hop pioneers, Acid, "A Sate Ein Met"

Unknown hip-hoppers, "TTC"

The first Burmese pop artist to rap (late 80s), Myo Kyawt Myaing, "Sat Thwe Mhu Area Pyin Pa"

Get all 18 totally kick-ass Burmese rap and hip-hop tracks here.

I know that one ought not look a gift horse in the eggs before they're hatched, but let's just cross our fingers and say that, inshallah, there might soon be a flurry of music from this insanely musically advanced culture hitting the aisles of your favorite bodega here.

Meanwhile, I've been going sort of crazy with FileTram. Y'all know about FileTram? Well, I'm sure there are other search engines like it, but for whatever reason, FT, which was just launched last year, is the one I discovered first and the one I presently feel most comfortable using.

Using. For what? Why, for finding music I can't otherwise seem to locate via Google, of course. What's beautiful about this engine is that whatever you type in, it will search not only sites like Mediafire and Rapidshare, but also the sites that link to the file, and both appear in the results. So, for instance, let's say you loved the Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her comp I posted last July and want to see what else is out there. You could do a search by the band's name and, say, "rar," and discover this. (But don't click through to any of the results; instead, cut and paste the URL in green and plop it into a new window. Trust me on that.)


N E Wayz. So, I've been doing a bit of hunting. And gathering. And sifting. And, now, posting. 


Rap and hip hop were slow to catch on in Myanmar, though Myo Kyawt Myaing started rapping a bit in the 80s. It took the four-member band Acid to release the first all-hip-hop record, Sa Tin Gyin, in 2000. Since then, the genre has really caught on in the world's 24th most populous country; I was able to dig up dozens of single albums and rap mixtapes on FT, most of whose original homes (e.g., the websites that linked to the files themselves) had vanished.


This weekend, when I wasn't out basking in the sun and hunting down Issan restaurants, I weeded through my findings, ultimately boiling it all down to the comp you're quite possibly downloading for your own give-it-a-listen now.

Portia Sedon | MP3 Blogging and the Urban Soundscape

Women and Gender Studies/Cultural Anthropology academic Portia Sedon has a really insightful take on music blogs in the latest issue of Norient, here. I was one of a couple of people she interviewed for the piece.

Soe Sanda Tun | Unknown Burmese CD

Listen to a sample track

Make it yours.

The Myanmar Question: How WTF do you want your music?

Nearly every song on this utterly bewitching CD begins as though someone--some very, very bad boy or girl--had catapulted it into a giant lake of melted processed cheese, where it flails about, choking and gasping for air, its oversized Margaret Keane eyes imploring you to rescue it by turning off your stereo and going out and enjoying life.

Then, perhaps 20-30 seconds into the song, Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, Paul Hindemith and Edgar Varese each takes his place at one corner of the Lake o'Cheese. Together, in unison, they kneel down, pressing their elderly chapped lips to the lake's orange bobbing surface. John and Paul gently suck the cheese toward them while Arnold and Edgar gently blow. Then, Paul begins to blow. And Arnold sucks. John blow-sucks, blow-sucks, blow-sucks. And in this way, these four cornerstones of 20th century avant-garde music cause the previously drowning song to lift and rise above the cheese, in exaggerated but nonetheless cool-looking feather steps, enchuflas, ronds and gonchos.

The moral of the story? When life catapults you into a lake of cheese, tell your thin-lipped avant-garde friends to suck it.

Cheikha Rimitti | Source of Rai

Listen to "La Camel"

Get it all here.

An absolutely sublime collection by the legendary grandmother of rai. Born in rural Algeria in May of 1923, orphaned at an early age, Rimitti began singing with a troupe when she was 15 years old. She recorded her first records in the 50s, scoring a hit and gaining notoriety with "Charrag, Gatta" (the 9th song in this collection), which implores young women to lose their virginity. ("Charrag, Gatta" means something like "tear, lacerate.") While we think of such a thing as remarkably brave (even suicidal) in an Islamic country, it bears reminding how depraved musicians and performers in Algeria were already considered. Until a later religious awakening, Rimitti could be said to have been playing into the stereotype of the sheikha.

Over the course of 50 years, until her death in 2006, she recorded more than 400 cassettes, 300 singles and 50 78s, essentially creating the model for what is thought of as modern rai. Read more about her here. 

Found in Paris many years ago, perhaps at the Institut du Monde Arabe, but more likely at a used CD place somewhere.

Warda | Necessary to Say Goodbye

Get it here.

Here's the third and last Warda album that I have, the bad Google translation of which seems, sadly, ironically, all-too-fitting. RIP, Warda. (Read more about her and get other albums, below.)

Warda | I Will Give You All My Life, My Love

Get it here.

If you haven't heard, the great Arabic singer Warda died Thursday evening at her home in Cairo. She was 72 (some reports say 71) years old. Pick up another album and read a bit more about her life in yesterday's post, below (where, if nothing else, you'll appreciate the irony of this album's title).

Watch a truly mind-blowing performance by Warda: