MELISMA EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Ross Bretherton Chelsea Wang
MANAGING EDITORS Grant Fox
Jordan Rosenthal-Kay
PRESS DIRECTOR Kristina Mensik
SENIOR EDITORS Kriska Desir Dan Pechi
LAYOUT & DESIGN Elias Jarzombek
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Charlie Billings Alex Dorfman Ella Harvey Teddy Obrecht Paige Spangenthal
FROM THE EDITORS
S
ince this magazine’s reinvention as a music journal two years ago, Melisma has seen tremendous growth in its presence in Tufts’ music scene. With a staff of 25, our mission remains very much the same as when we were just a handful of students with a passion for documenting music on campus. This year was marked by hurt and uncertainty, but with this, music became, moreso than ever, a means for congregation, reflection, and healing. In this Fall issue of Melisma Magazine, we looked into how Chance the Rapper and a handful of Chicago-based artists have been inspiring social activism in their communities through music. Here in Boston, we talked with Dee Diggs, a DJ who has tirelessly pioneered a space for women in our local Tech music scene through her collective Evlv Tech. We interviewed up-and-coming band Smoking Babies who organized an open mic set that turned into a locus of support and warmth the week after the election through musical collaboration. We sought an academic perspective from Tufts professors on today’s music culture, interviewing Professor Calvin “Chip” Gidney on one mom’s tearful YouTube rant about Vince Staples. And for insight into musical recommendation algorithms and their impact on taste, we turned to Professor Nick Seaver, who has been conducting a long-term ethnographic study on the engineers behind them. We’re always looking for individuals who are passionate about music in any form. Whether you write, take pictures, design, or bring something entirely new to the table, we want you involved in our publication.
STAFF
Matt Davis Sasha Didkovsky Charlotte Eccles Tess Hinchmen Darcy Hinck Yaa Kankam-Nantwi Niki Van Manen Polina Pittel Katie Sanna Kristen Schretter Federico Silva Noah Zussman
Ross Bretherton and Chelsea Wang Editors-in-Chief
Interested in writing, art or design? Questions, comments, adulation or hatemail? email melismamagazine@gmail.com
MELISMA | WINTER 2017 | 3
CONTENTS
4 6 8 10 12 16 19 20
REDEFINING TASTE
Professor Nick Seaver discusses music recommendation algorithms, and the engineers behind them Ross Bretherton
EVLV TECH IS THE RIOT GRRL OF TODAY
In the footsteps of the 90s Riot Grrl movement, Dee Diggs is pioneering gender equality in Tech music. Ella Harvey
VINCE STAPLES IN THE EARS OF A CHILD
Professor Calvin Gidney offers an academic perspective on one mom’s YouTube meltdown. Paige Spangenthal
SMOKING BABIES
The genre-bending Tufts band are at the forefront of a shift in music culture on campus. Chelsea Wang
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF FAME
Why Julian Casablancas needs to move on from The Strokes. Teddy Obrecht
ALL WE GOT
The social impact of Chance and the new Chicago artists. Charlie Billings
THE WEEPIES
For this Cambridge-based duo, less is more. Alex Dorfman
TRAP MUSIC GOES GLOBAL
What happens when a genre is removed from the social context which defined it? Dan Pechi
ON THE COVER / Smoking Babies - Photo by Chelsea Wang, Design by Elias Jarzombek Melisma Magazine is a non-profit student publication of Tufts University. The opinions expressed in articles, features or photos are solely those of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or the staff. Tufts University is not responsible for the content of Melisma Magazine. If you would like to submit a letter to Melisma Magazine, please send it to melismamagazine@gmail.com. Please limit your letter to four hundred words or less.
REDEFINING TASTE HOW THE SOFTWARE ENGINEERS BEHIND SPOTIFY ARE CHANGING WHAT WE LISTEN TO. BY ROSS BRETHERTON
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very Monday, a small cultural artifact appears in the inboxes of millions of Spotify users across the globe. Discover Weekly is what Spotify’s team counts on to distinguish its service from the handful of other offerings on the market. It is an algorithmically generated playlist tuned to each user’s individual taste, and the algorithm is frighteningly effective at keeping listeners engaged with the system. Last May, Spotify reported that over 5 billion tracks had been played off Discover Weekly alone. Despite the ubiquity of music recommendation algorithms in the modern listener’s discovery process, researchers have given little consideration to the engineers behind them. Yet, the engineers who design these algorithms play an important cultural role in shaping musical trends, defining new genres, and altering the way people treat music. This is where Tufts professor Nick Seaver comes into the picture. Professor Seaver has devoted the past six years of his career to an ethnographic study of the developers who create music discovery algorithms. To effectively study this group, Seaver has had to deconstruct the stereotypical image of engineers as culturally inept. “There’s this common trope – often in popular media, but also among academics in humanities and social sciences – that what happens when engineers encounter cultural stuff is that they sort of mess it up. They reduce everything to numbers, they assume that people behave totally rationally, they supposedly do all of these things that [academics in humanities] know better than.” The stereotype is rooted in a perceived disconnect between the cultural and the technological, a spectrum in which music is firmly planted in the middle. As a cultural phenomenon, music is universally human but distinctly different between societies, often to the point of sounding alien to unfamiliar listeners. As a technological phenomenon, music has always evolved with new technological developments. The sonic palate available to a modern musician is nearly infinite, thanks to the ubiquity of synthesizers and digital audio workstations that can incorporate both analog and digital instruments. More recently, it is the technol-
ogy underlying the means of production and distribution that has evolved – anyone can record music on their laptop, put it on Spotify, and find popularity without radio airplay. As with all technological upheavals, this disruption meets resistance from both record labels and music critics. The industry sees their business model disrupted by streaming services like Spotify. Likewise, critics are afraid that algorithms will not only make their job defunct, but further will fail to expand listeners’ tastes. They are too good at selecting songs that regurgitate the user’s existing palate. Music journalists like Ben Ratliff at The Guardian exacerbate this fear, pumping out thinkpieces with titles like, “Slave To The Algorithm?” Are critics like Ratliff right? Are the engineers who create these algorithms destroying musical taste?
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There’s this common trope that what happens when engineers encounter cultural stuff is that they sort of mess it up.
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Music discovery in the pre-digital era was a laborious process. Music aficionados would dig in the backs of record stores in search of obscure records. Others would turn to their favorite radio host or music critic to do the work for them. Even in the present day, the process remains the same; music blogs like Pitchfork sift through mountains of mediocrity to award their highly regarded distinction, “Best New Music” to a select few songs per week. A music selection algorithm takes the effort, and thus the creativity out of music discovery. To critics who have based their career on selecting songs that they feel are most culturally important, an algorithm taking the place of their job is the destruction of a culture. When a music journalist claims an algorithm will destroy musical taste, they base their claim on some definition of what culture is, or should be.
MELISMA | WINTER 2017 | 5 While the journalistic approach of the moment seems to hinge on the assumption that the writer’s definition of taste is the only correct definition, and any change to that detracts from the cultural value of music, professor Seaver takes a different approach. “Rather than going in and saying ‘I know what culture is. I’m a cultural anthropologist, therefore I’m an expert and I’m going to tell you how you’re wrong,’ I take from the outset [that] my job is to go in and study how a particular group of engineers imagine what culture is, what technology is, what taste is, and how they all interact.” Seaver’s work strays from the presumption that musical taste is static. “Taste is partly a technological phenomenon,” he says, in that the selection of music available to comprise a listener’s taste is constantly evolving. Two centuries ago, musical taste was defined by what live music was available locally to the listener, if they could afford it. Fifty years ago it was developed by digging through stacks of vinyl in a record store, an expensive endeavor both in time and money. Furthermore, taste as a signal of social status has also evolved. “In the past,” explains Seaver, “to be a high status person was to like the music of high status people – so you like Opera, you like Classical music, and you don’t like the cheesy, cheesy pop music. That used to be the way taste worked. Now, there’s a lot of research about omnivorousness.” Today, virtually all varieties of music are available to stream, for cheaper than a monthly utility bill. “Back ten, twenty years ago you would hear [people say they prefer] ‘everything but Rap and Country,’ which gives you a side of what’s going on. You like everything except for two genres, either associated with black people or with poor people.” Taste is clearly changing, and there’s no indication that it will stop today. The future could hold songs that automatically customize to a listener’s preferences. Modern musical taste is increasingly shaped by aesthetic movements like Vaporwave and Health Goth. According to The Fader writer Adam Harper, these aesthetic movements are replacing ‘scenes’ and genres. One critique of music recommendation algorithms is that big corporations like Spotify are wielding influence against listeners’ taste. However, Seaver notes that “a more important critique is that these corporations are changing what taste is. If we’re going come out of this decade with Spotify and maybe one other streaming company streaming all of our music, the hidden infrastructure they use is definitely going to shape what taste is on a large scale.” Consumer feedback, however, can also reduce the algorithmic bias in music recommendation. “In the little interstices of the ordinary day when you’re an engineer and you’re just tweaking something, you’re going to test [the algorithm] on yourself,” says Seaver. This once produced pretty extreme bias in how Spotify, for example, sub-categorized genres. “There used to be four different genre buttons for Metal – Heavy Metal, Death Metal,
Black Metal, and so on – and only one for Electronic. For both Electronic and Metal music, the fans are known for being very aggressive taxonomizers. The fact that one of these had a lot of categories and one had only one – that’s not in the algorithm per se, but that’s a very good example of how much attention you pay to something is a function of how much you know.” With feedback, engineers are able to work on a wealth of listener data from their service. The larger the services get, the more effective they become for all users. Seaver has also found that engineers of music recommendation algorithms are cognizant of the cultural significance of their work in shaping musical taste. Many actually entered the industry out of a desire to enable a middle class of musicians. In Seaver’s experience, “usually what people say when they are working in this space is, ‘I started as a musician, and I was wondering how anyone was ever going to find my music. I started studying computer science and I decided that I was going to work in this space to help people discover obscure music.’” Indeed, many new features on streaming platforms are targeted at promoting lesser-known artists, and although payment of artists is currently a contentious issue in streaming, there is some hope that in the future artists will be able to make a living while still making relatively unpopular music. Professor Seaver explains that many existing streaming services, notably Pandora, were founded with the hope that, “to become a successful musician, it doesn’t mean that you have to either stratosphere up and become super popular or live in misery forever.” Artists making a decent living is good for streaming services, too. While it is scary to contemplate the implications of algorithms redefining taste, it is important to avoid the paranoia that dominates most public discourse on the topic to date. While algorithms are not quite yet able to recreate the ‘back of the record store’ epiphany that music junkies crave, perhaps in the future they will do something even better. Professor Seaver’s work highlights the people behind these algorithms, and their awareness of their enormous cultural impact. These people are just as dedicated to cultivating a thriving music scene as the journalists who decry the centralization of recommendation systems; but while the latter are hung up on their own preconceptions of taste, the former are busy redefining it. Musical taste is constantly evolving, so it’s best to embrace the change with open arms.
NICK SEAVER IS A PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPLOGY. NEXT SEMESTER, HE IS TEACHING: INTRODUCTION TO THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNLOGY AND HOW TO PAY ATTENTION
EVLV TECH IS THE RIOT GRRRL OF TODAY
EXPLORING THE PARALLELS OF GENDER INEQUALITY IN PUNK AND TECH MUSIC BY ELLA HARVEY
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efore Kathleen Hanna took the stage, the front rows of Punk shows were unwelcoming places for women. While bands like Nirvana were becoming household names, violent and thrashing mosh pits kept girls at the back of the room. These girls desperately wanted to be in the locus of energy up front, but it felt dangerous to venture any closer. This, however, did not scare them away from trying. “I am sick to death of going to gigs, and coming back with bruises and broken ribs,” one female punk fan voices her frustration in Sini Anderson’s documentary The Punk Singer. “It isn’t fair!” The physical distance that was created between women and their favorite bands reflected the exclusion of girls from the inner circle of Punk by male peers. Punk in the 90s was characterized by angry males shredding their guitars, male show promoters deciding which bands got to play where, and maledirected labels picking which groups would make it. There was no space for the female Punk star. Women were pressured to stay in the back of the venues, condemned to tapping their feet while the boys yelled, crowd surfed, and threw punches up front. This gender disparity in Punk set the stage for an uprising, headed by Hanna. This revolution was called Riot Grrrl. Though the pre-Riot Grrrl era and today’s tech music scene are separated by three decades, the lack of diversity and stagnancy of gender roles that characterized 90s hardcore music also pervades today’s Electronic music. Though the Electronic music community presents as egalitarian with its PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect) mantra, these live
performances still fall trap to the same patriarchal structure as Punk. Like 90s Punk stages, it’s hard to find a woman behind the turntables. Diplo, Skrillex, Dillon Francis, and DJ Snake are names that rule the Hot 100 Electronic charts. Again, we see a genre dominated by men, their super-groups and labels, and most importantly in the acts that show promoters select. A survey done by female:pressure, “an international network of female artists in the fields of electronic music and digital arts,” found that across Electronic festival music lineups this past summer, female representation averaged a mere 10.8%. The Punk parallels extend into rave concerts where male-dominated dance culture continues alienate others from the front of the crowd. Electronic music is in dire need of a revolution led by women, and Boston DJ Dee Diggs is at the forefront of this fight. Dee Diggs’ growth as a DJ was stunted by the lack of female representation in electronic music. While traveling abroad in France in 2015, Diggs was inspired to pursue her passion for music after meeting artists and discovering the underground tech music scene in Europe. She admired how DJs are able to create music “in a very organic way, in a way that grows with you.” That summer, she bought her own DJ equipment and started to craft her sound in her parents’ basement. But when she was ready to perform, she hit the same roadblocks that females have been facing throughout music history. “You can be just as hardworking as a male peer and they will get gigs and you won’t.” This perpetuates a vicious cycle: without a space to perform, female artists are not able to grow as performers. The male artists that get booked instead are able to fine-tune their skills and make connections with promoters that get them more shows in the future. Without examples of artists who look like you, becoming successful in the tech music industry feels like an unrealistic expectation for many. Dee Diggs explained this dynamic, pointing out, “if you aren’t giving different kinds of people opportunities, your scene is going to look a certain type of way because you have basically crafted it to look that way.” Kathleen Hanna and Dee Diggs refused to stay in the shadows. Diggs asserts that, “it really doesn’t make sense to have all dudes playing every party because if you look at the
MELISMA | WINTER 2017 | 7 crowds at those reoccurring places, they’re not all dudes.”
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if you aren’t giving different kinds of people opportunities your scene is going to look a certain type of way because you have basically crafted it to look that way
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Kathleen Hanna created the iconic girl-focused Punk band Bikini Kill. This band busted through the gender norm barriers that restrained girl punks for so long. As their title suggests, they were angry, strong and female all at the same time. At their shows, Hanna made a point to bring the women in the crowd to the front, commanding the boys “to be cool for once in [their] lives and get back!” Diggs played her first shows with the connections she forged through other girl DJs in Boston that she danced with at local raves. She gushed with gratitude for this network of marginalized artists, saying “every opportunity came from another woman propping me up and showing me a way in and encouraging me to embrace everything that I am.” In the years since, Diggs has seen her performances as a chance for her to give back to this community that helped her on her rise as a performer. As she explained, women performing in tech music venues and being respected for their skill and artistry is important for others in the scene to see. “Purely existing and taking up space in places where people might still assume that you don’t have a right to take up space” is important. As a black artist who made a space for herself in a scene that was not particularly welcoming, Dee’s performances definitely have an effect on other artists that need a little push before making their own DJing debuts. In their respective scenes, Hanna and Diggs gave women a voice as strong as any man’s. This representation is important, but Hanna and Diggs knew that it takes more than female faces on stage to catalyze lasting change. Paralleling the exclusion of females at punk shows, thirdwave feminists struggled to gain traction in the 1990s society that felt feminism was no longer necessary. News headlines that highlighted the dropping wage gap and the increasing participation of women in higher education masked the continued exclusion of a diverse set of women and identities. In response, this wave focused on queer and women of color.
Hanna created a bridge between her Punk world in underground venues and her activist world on college campuses. She allowed the energy of her music to bring new life to the feminist movement. At her Bikini Kill shows, Hanna would distribute flyers advertising all-girl meetings for a new group titled Riot Grrrl. Though the original aim of the meeting was to start a feminist publication, Hanna adjusted when she found that this was not what the members needed. “It turned out they just wanted to hang out and talk without the men being there.” The meetings became a safe space for the women to discuss everything from sexual abuse to coming out – topics that they didn’t feel comfortable sharing anywhere else. Similarly, Diggs became part of a women’s collective in Boston called Evlv Tech. Through social media, this collective brought the safe space created by a frantically-flyering Hanna in the 90s to the world today. As Diggs described the private Facebook group where the collective started, it echoed Riot Grrrl’s original ideals. It was a place for local girl artists, “to complain, to tell stories, and to say things that they didn’t feel like there was any other place to say them.” The group grew into a platform for planning shows this summer when the women organized a music festival in Cambridge called Evolve Tech Fest. This four-day festival mirrored the collective’s balance between music and education. The collective showcased local girl talent at night, and held panels and workshops about being a woman in the tech industry and society during the day. In two different decades, Kathleen Hanna and Dee Diggs gave girls a voice through their music and the safe spaces that they created in their women’s groups. They set a powerful example of how individuals can help marginalized groups through art and conversation. As we enter a new presidency this January, where the futures of many different identities may be threatened, we should look to the examples set by Hanna and Diggs in creating meaningful dialogues, intentional spaces, and speaking up when voices are silenced. As Diggs asserts, “It can’t just be something that we post on Facebook and then expect to appear. We need to have sobering conversations in the daytime, so these ideas that we are talking about actually stick.”
VINCE STAPLES IN THE EARS OF A CHILD PROFESSOR GIDNEY OFFERS AN ACADEMIC PERSPECTIVE OF ONE MOM’S YOUTUBE MELTDOWN BY PAIGE SPANGENTHAL
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n October, an eleven-minute video of an anonymous mother decrying Vince Staples’ “Norf Norf” went viral. She explains that she first heard the popular rap song from Staples’ Summertime ‘06 on the radio while driving her eleven-year-old daughter to school. She recites the song’s explicit lyrics from her living room desk. “We can dip / fuck in the whip” she reads as her youngest daughter plays in the background. The anonymous mother expresses her deep concern that her daughter is being exposed to the explicit and provocative lyrics of songs like “Norf Norf.” Holding back tears, she reads the line, “I ain’t never ran from nothin’ but the police.” She laments to her camera, “This is on our radio station that our kids are listening to. I tell you right now, music has a strong influence on children.” She has a point. Media can telegraph messages to children that have a marked effect on risk behaviors in children[1]. It’s easy to dismiss this mother’s concern as racist misunderstanding, but her behavior and the reaction to it on the internet raises some important discussion. Think pieces from publications like the Stanford Daily and a flood of responses on Twitter prompted a series of questions. To what extent should parents monitor the media that their children consume? Is parental control of media use a new issue? What are the implications of a white mother freely using racist language in front of her children? To get some perspective on these questions, Melisma spoke with Calvin “Chip” Gidney, Associate Professor of Child Development at Tufts.
One of the hypotheses regarding the origins of the term ‘jazz’ is that it was a slang term for having sex.” Gidney made particular note of the movement to put warnings on inappropriate albums in the 1980s. In 1985, former first lady Tipper Gore became one of the founders of an activist group known as the Parents Music Resource Center, which fought for measures that would require ratings on albums to indicate their explicitness. According to an article in Rolling Stone, “[Gore’s] interest in labeling record covers had arisen when her 11-year-old daughter bought Prince’s Purple Rain and played ‘Darling Nikki,’ a song that references masturbation, on the home stereo” [2]. One sexually explicit line in “Norf Norf” that the mother in the video seems to find particularly horrifying is “folks need Porsches, hoes need abortions.” Her voice breaks reading the lyric. She seems devastated that her daughter is being exposed to the idea of abortion. One might find this to be an overreaction. After all, no child can be shielded from the
Gidney explained that parents have long been worried about the songs that their children listen to. This concern has often revolved around the sexualized and racialized messages in music. Gidney used the rise of Jazz and Rock and Roll as two examples: “When Elvis started bringing African-American music to white audiences, a big fear of many white parents [was] that he was teaching them the ways of ‘those people.’
[1] Tara Parker-Pope. “Under the influence of... music?” NYTimes, 2/5/08 [2] Kory Grow. “Tipper Gore Reflects on PMRC 30 Years Later.” Rolling Stone, 9/14/15
MELISMA | WINTER 2017 | 9 harshness of reality forever—every child learns about abortion eventually. Gidney explained that parents want to control the ways in which their children are exposed to difficult subjects. “You might not want your children to learn about the world in a certain way, but you might want to have them learn about it in a certain lens,” he said. As an example, Gidney pointed out the misogynistic implications of the phrase “hoes need abortions,” which fits into a greater trend of misogyny in hiphop. “That’s not the context in which I would like to introduce my children to abortion.” Gidney supported the mother’s right to monitor the music that her children listen to. “I want to affirm any parent’s right to make sure that the media content that their children consume is congruent with their values and belief systems,” he said. Interestingly, Vince Staples himself seems to agree with this sentiment. Staples posted a tweet that has now been deleted: “No person needs to be attacked for their opinion on what they see to be appropriate for their children. They have a right to it.” A recurring criticism revolves around the mother’s apparent hypocrisy. As she denounces the language used in “Norf Norf,” she simultaneously reads it out loud in front of her daughter. One might argue that hearing these words come from the mouth of her mother, a central figure in her life, will do much more damage to the girl than hearing them from Vince Staples. Fortunately, the daughter in the background of the video is most likely too young to be greatly affected by this. “A lot of times, kids hear these lyrics, but because of their own linguistic, socioemotional, and cognitive development, the lyrics skate right above their heads,” said Gidney.
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is every place in hip-hop, and you can’t control who likes your music and who says it. It becomes in everybody’s mouth,” he said. Gidney referenced Wale’s “The Kramer,” a rap song that explores this phenomenon. The lyrics of this song trace the path of the n-word from the mouths of black people to the mouths of non-black people: And niggas say “nigga” to a nigga, A nigga write “nigga” in a lyric, expect the white boy to omit it, The white boy spit it like he spit it, Recite it to his friends who, by the way, ain’t niggas, And say “nigga, nigga, nigga,” my favorite rapper did it And non-nigga friends got it with him, Incorporate this lyric to their everyday living. The mother’s definition of child-appropriate music seems contingent on the race of the artist. “I remember listening to the top hits when I was a kid. Like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Back Street Boys, NSYNC… Nowadays, it’s not the same,” she says. The woman pits white artists against black artists, using the former as a symbol for goodness and the latter as a symbol for inappropriateness and impurity. Gidney believes that the mother does not fully understand the role that race plays in “Norf Norf.” “[Staples] was talking about a particular set of problems for a particular set of urban, black men. Many of us can understand why a black man might want to run from the police. That criticism is a little unfair. Many Nlack parents have to have ‘the talk’ with their children. My parents had one with me when I was fourteen and started hanging out on my own in adolescence. [They said,] ‘Look, if an officer comes up to you, you can’t be like your white friends.’ I got that talk because that’s a reality. That might not be something that the person in the video understands.”
A recurring criticism revolves around the mother’s apparent hypocrisy. As she denounces the language used in “Norf Norf,” she simultaneously reads it out loud in front of her daughter
Even so, the number of times the woman (who is white) reads the n-word aloud is perplexing. She does not seem to regard it as a violent and hateful word, which leads her to perpetuate the violence she decries. Her use of the slur sparks an interesting conversation on these implications. Gidney pointed out that the rise of hiphop has moved the n-word into the vocabularies of non-black people. “Hip-hop is popular among everybody. Especially white boys like it, in terms of sales. A version of the n-word
”
It is difficult to detangle race from this conversation about music and its effects on child development. Beneath the surface of this mother’s scathing critique of Vince Staples is a historical pattern of white attitudes towards AfricanAmerican music and decades-old discourse on explicit music. By examining this viral video from a historical and raceconscious lens, we come to see parental monitoring of media consumption in a new light.
SMOKING BABIES BY CHELSEA WANG
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rom Solange’s A Seat At The Table to Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book to Anderson .Paak’s Malibu, 2016 has arguably seen the apex of the return of ‘90s R&B, Hip-Hop, and Soul. This is something Erykah Badu has seen coming for some time now; in a recent interview with ET, she says, “it makes sense chronologically… A lot of those people who are making things re-manifest were babies. This is what inspired them.” Whereas Neo Soul was marked by “a love for ‘70s music,” this generation’s resurgence sings its praise for ‘90s music. Whereas Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, J Dilla, and Lauryn Hill carried forth the birth of Neo Soul in the ‘90s, artists like Solange, Chance the Rapper, and Anderson .Paak are standing at the forefront of Neo Soul’s resurgence today. Carrying the genre-blending mentality of ‘90s Neo Soul is Tufts band Smoking Babies. Bobby Familiar (guitar), Julia Okun (vocals), Bryan Cleveland (keys), Zay Smolar (saxophone), Russ Gomez (bass), Max Hornug (vocals), and Jackson Fulk-Logon (drums) formed Smoking Babies under shared backgrounds in Jazz. “We’re all Jazz musicians,” Bobby tells me, so Smoking Babies is “Jazz-influenced.” But, “we wanted to find ways to play not-Jazz. So our idea is that we’re all Jazz-trained, but with that, you can kind of do anything. So from there we went on to play Funk, Neo Soul, R&B, Hip-Hop,” Bryan adds. “We all know all these standards, so sometimes if there’s a lull in practice we’ll just play Jazz and jam on that. If we like it, we’ll make it into something more…” While keeping the Jazz influence that Smoking Babies was built upon, they “want to play something more hip for 2016. Accessible.” Smoking Babies has a “wide array of musical influences” between its seven members, so naturally the band gravitates toward “music that blends genres.” Bryan tells me, “I listen to Moses Sumney, but I also listen to Chance the Rapper. And I can see parallels in that… So I think we try to do stuff like that where it’s a mix of hip-hop and a bunch of different genres.” Not surprisingly, when asked what the band’s favorite albums of 2016 were, everyone gave Solange, Chance the Rapper, and Anderson .Paak mentions. Zay adds that he’s also been listening to Tchaikovsky and Fiddler on the Roof recently. “This is Zay’s 2016,” Julia says laughing. An unforeseen ushering in of this new era of ‘90s Neo Soul in mainstream music came in the form of sampling in EDM. Think Hudson Mohawke’s “Ryderz” and Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk.” In a 2014 TED Talk, Mark Ronson talks about the transformative power of sampling in music, but warns “you can’t just hijack nostalgia wholesale. It leaves the listener feeling sickly. You have to take an element of those things and bring something fresh and new to it.” Bryan echoes this as a Jazz musician when he talks about the covers Smoking Babies performs: “There are standards that everyone plays [in Jazz]. But
MELISMA | WINTER 2017 11 you can’t play a standard and just leave it; you have to change it. Miles Davis would play songs that other people had written, but he would play it and it would be different. These are our standards today: Chance the Rapper, and so on. And we have to change it up to make it different and make it our own because you can’t just play the same things they wrote. You have to contribute.” So as the band covers everything from Amy Winehouse to Bill Withers, Bobby says, “We put our own style on it. We don’t play it in the same way the artist does because then we’re not contributing to the musical culture.” The band’s robust talent for musical collaboration and improvisation allows for a lot of malleability in the covers they play. Zay explains, “Part of having Max’s singing and rapping is that he can rap over anything. He can freestyle to everything. So a lot of what we play, what we’re covering, it doesn’t feel worth doing if it’s just us playing what someone else plays. So what’s nice is that we can open up a lot of stuff, and he can rap over it. Or we can throw in some solos. We have enough capacity among the seven of us to open things up.” The move away from Neo Soul resurgence in EDM sampling to being played by live bands (i.e. Coloring Book), Bobby sees as “retracing authenticity in music.” Though he notes, “I don’t really see us as doing that; I think we’re just trying to play something that sounds good with what our background is.” Julia sees it as a “response to that digital age” that played out in the ‘00s. Zay tells me, “I think of a lot of what we play as similar to the new rap that’s coming, like Chance and Kendrick, where there’s a lot of rapping but there’s a lot of Jazz and Gospel. It’s like the switch from computerized music to go with singing or rapping to actual people playing instruments. Not to say that someone doesn’t actually play the computer.” Bryan clarifies that what they play is different from computerized music because “it’s not just a four-bar loop all the time. That’s sort of what we’re trying to create. Real dynamic music that can go with lyrics and vocals, so that it’s not just the same thing over and over.” Bobby concludes: “We’re able to have a conversation when we play. You don’t get that with a loop. We have call and response. We are constantly communicating with each other.” The members of Smoking Babies vocalize the importance of communicating when they write and play music throughout our interview. When the band first started playing together, there was a process of careful smoothing and combing through as they began developing a rapport with one another. Bobby explains, “It definitely takes time to learn each other’s musical language because you have to understand that when you’re listening to somebody, [you have] to be able to predict their intention or what you expect out of them, so that you can respond to them. That takes time to develop in any band.” Julia tells me, “Max and I have been singing with each other probably for a year now, and I think our voices have always gone well together, but learning his timing and him learning mine... Because we
want to be able to have a conversation with our vocals, that’s the kind of thing that takes a lot of time to develop. Progressively as a band, we’re learning how each other plays and how each other solos. All of that, more and more, so it’s progressively becoming more cohesive.” So as different members of the band pull the sound in varied directions, the cohesion of Smoking Babies persists. Smoking Babies feels like a vaporous cloud carrying everything from a thudding Funk to a weighty and momentous Gospel-Rap to a thickly-honeyed Jazz. Warm vocals that swing back and forth between Max and Julia get woven in and out of pillowy sax parts, whiffling keys, and gliding guitar riffs. Smoking Babies is sweetlike-Sunday-Candy Soul generously fused with basshe av y H ip - Ho p and R&B. The sound they’re bringing to the Tufts music scene is a force to be reckoned with. Bryan tells me, “I think we’re trying to be different. I think we’re trying to create more music scenes [at Tufts]. I think, musically, we like to think that we’re different from other bands that play here just because we have so many different influences. We have a different sound and we try to put that on everything we do.” For a band that met each other through mutual admiration for one another’s musical ability, Julia says “I think more than anything, we want to put out good quality music. We want people to get excited about quality music and quality musicians. Not just the overall sound, but actually, get into music for what it is.” The visceral effect that music can have on a person. Zay resolves, “it’s kind of corny to say, but I feel like with our music, you don’t come and watch us and listen to us. I think you come and participate in the music as much as we do. I think that’s what feels different.”
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF FAME
WHY JULIAN CASABLANCAS NEEDS TO MOVE ON FROM THE STROKES BY TEDDY OBRECHT
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ot even a minute into their first ever photo shoot on the streets of the Lower East side, the up-and-coming NYC rockers The Strokes started a fist fight. A pack of teens had shouted at the band, “hey motherfuckers, you’re blocking the whole sidewalk.” Nick Valensi, the band’s lead guitarist, made an obscene gesture, and asked them to “fuck off.” The shoot quickly devolved as both parties started throwing punches. As the police broke the fight apart, frontman Julian Casablancas turned to an onlooking journalist and smiled before saying, “Welcome to New York.” Covering the mayhem in their 2001 summer issue, the British music mag NME set the tone for the hype that would soon chase The Strokes over the course of their career. They titled their article, “WHY NEW YORK’S FINEST WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE – FOREVER!” Yes, in all caps. Thirteen years later, fans found themselves asking what happened to these brash rockers. Casablancas normally tours with his bandmates. But on March 14, 2014, he took his new band, the eponymous Julian Casablancas and the Voidz, to the South By Southwest festival. He kicked off their two sets with the blaring, hazy “Johan van Bronx” – a shock to a crowd of Strokes fans expecting Julian’s brand of lyrically-focused pop-rock. The new material he played consisted of songs that would be released later that year,
on their debut album Tyranny. The audience knew they weren’t getting The Strokes from Julian, but instead had anticipated material from his 2009 solo debut Phrazes For The Young. What they got was a bombshell divergence from the sugary finesse of Phrazes. Critics of Julian’s new solo outfit wondered how, just thirteen years later, the former icon found himself so far removed from The Strokes’ debut, Is This It. Is This It garnered unprecedented hype from music media. The NME cover article sparked a wave of magazine coverage in the upcoming months. Not just in music magazines either: The Strokes had an extensive following in style and fashion publications. With Y2K and the grunge-heavy 90’s a faded memory, rock felt stuck in an identity crisis. Record labels pushed everything from pop punk to alternative metal. Subgenres fought for relevancy by increasingly using novel studio technology. The Strokes were regarded as messiahs upon their arrival. They were immediately hailed by NME as the “saviours of rock n’ roll.” It was a perfect moment for a band like The Strokes, who were propelled to instant fame by their accessible and pop-oriented melodies. With their debut album Is This It,five skinny boys from New York found themselves unwittingly taking the face of rock’s revival movement. Is This It exuded cool. Casablancas conversationally walks
MELISMA | WINTER 2017 | 13 the listener through the quotidian trivialities of New York life. Is This It exemplified the image the band’s members put on; The Strokes were the five handsome, leatherbound, skinny-jeaned rockers who had single-handedly saved Converse from bankruptcy. In late 2001, the band’s drummer Fabrizio Moretti modestly undersold the band’s music as only something they created that “sounded cool.” NME gave The Strokes’ music significantly more credit, dubbing Is This It as the album that “defined a generation.” The Strokes were trapped. Critics’ praises made it all too apparent that from early on, The Strokes had nowhere they could go but out of style. Julian understood this nature of his band’s music, foreshadowing what was to come he told one interviewer “people might think it’s perfect right now, but next week, they’re going to want to hear something else. I want to provide that something else.”
But months before its official planned release, The Strokes’ song “Juicebox” leaked onto the internet to a largely negative reaction. Intended to be the new album’s first single, their label rushed the song to an official release. Six years later, Julian Casablancas commented on the song and the events surrounding its release, calling the whole situation “ugly.” Newer sensational rock powerhouses had already endeared themselves to the public; The Strokes’
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lvis Costello once said, “you have a lifetime to write your first album, and a year to write your second.” While Is This It developed over four years, The Strokes began writing their second record, Room on Fire, while on the road during their hectic world tour. Following the tour, they rushed into the studio to record it, releasing the new record in October of 2003. The album was packed with more of the same – crunchy guitar riffs and mesmerizing solos laid over Casablancas’s lackadaisical attitude – and it brought less of the glowing success as their debut. Critics couldn’t ignore how Room on Fire simply felt like a “part two,” a second side to their debut album. Many detractors lamented a lack of the same “pop sparkle” when holding it against their more cheerful debut. People expected The Strokes to do something different; but they decided to stick to their already proven formula than to change it in any way. The Strokes’ underwhelming sophomore release found itself soon overshadowed by the subsequent debuts of their contemporaries. Strokes-inspired bands like Kings of Leon, Franz Ferdinand, and the Killers dropped records each outselling previous ones. “Mr. Brightside,” the Killers’ radio-ready first single, spent longer and reached higher on the charts than any previous Strokes output. Room on Fire hadn’t sold as well as hoped. As a result, The Strokes found themselves fighting for relevancy amidst a scene now more crowded. Moretti admitted how disappointed the band felt with Room on Fire and described the importance of their next planned release as “our second second album. It’s our chance to be born again.” With significantly more weight surrounding the success of their third record, The Strokes felt the pressure to establish themselves as more than just a passing fad.
An unsuccessful third album, hampered by impossibly high expectations, had split them apart with frequent internal tension
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misguided attempt at keeping up manifested itself in the grinding bassline of “Juicebox.” The band’s third album First Impressions of Earth came out in January of 2006 to even more negative reviews than Room On Fire. The album wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t fun. As the band’s guitarist Albert Hammond Jr, described it, First Impressions felt “heavy.” Five years before, poppy guitars and tight solos had fueled an energetic romp on “The Modern Age,” as Julian sang about being “in the sun / sun having fun.” First Impressions of Earth found Julian angrily crooning “I hate them all / I hate myself for hating them / so I’ll drink some more,” which understandably left many with a bitter aftertaste. After they finished their tour in the summer of 2006, the bandmates took a break. Their unsuccessful third album, hampered by impossibly high expectations, had split them apart with frequent internal tension. Casablancas blamed touring, calling it a “great way to break up a band.” Casablancas took the band’s separation as an excuse to disappear, adding only a few guest verses over the years. It wasn’t until the middle of 2009 thathe resurfaced, announcing Phrazes for the Young, his solo debut. He’d written practically all of Is This It and Room on Fire. With First Impressions, Casa-
blancas had loosened his creative control with his other bandmates receiving a handful of writing credits. Even so, he wound up writing over half the album himself. The high expectations for his solo debut were well-warranted.
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hrazes for the Young was conceived as a way for Casablancas to experiment. Having been confined to a more limited range of sound on earlier Strokes’ records – which had consisted of only a guitar, bass, drum, and keyboard setup until now – his venture as a solo artist allowed him to take whatever direction he desired, whereas he notes it’s “hard to experiment when you’re in a formal band.” The album floats from space-pop “Glass,” all the way to the country-inspired “Ludlow St.” Horn sections and sleigh bells abound on the album. Phrazes can best be characterized by the “weirdly futuristic” synths that Casablancas explored throughout the rest of his songs to varying degrees. In his interview with The Spin, while he described the release as a way to experiment, he notes, “I would’ve gone weirder with the music, but I wanted to be smart. I didn’t want people to say, ‘Okay, this is his weird abstract thing,’ and dismiss the album.
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from at least one other band member. Casablancas dubbed the record as part of “Operation Make Everyone Satisfied.” Angles came out in 2011 to mixed reviews; it was apparent that making “everyone” satisfied only applied to the bandmates, as the album only further alienated the band’s fans. The album’s first single achieved a modicum of success, but the rest of the album had little to offer to core fans. It became all too apparent that in an attempt to experiment with their sound, Angles came out fragmented, a product of five different band members who each had a separate opinion. The band toyed around with all sorts of ideas: implementing synths on some pieces, removing all guitar work from one song, and choosing to take out drums on another. Lacking swagger and confidence on their new record, The Strokes evidently struggle on Angles to find a new foothold, one separate and distinct from their old formula. The band went on another world tour, but by November of 2011, they were gone again, out of the public’s eye.
Julian’s venture as a solo artist allowed him to take whatever direction he desired, whereas he notes it’s “hard to experiment when you’re in a formal band.”
When he wrapped up his tour supporting Phrazes, Casablancas returned to the studio and finished recording a new album with his original bandmates. That album’s creation was collaborative, with each song receiving input
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It was only March of 2013, a quick two year turnaround from Angles’ debut, when The Strokes released their fifth record amidst a media blackout – there were to be no interviews or tour to accompany the release. Just as “Last Nite,” their most successful hit off Is This It, began to start getting airplay on more classic rock oriented radio stations, The Strokes released their fifth album, Comedown Machine, a funkier, more subdued effort, having all but abandoned their garage roots. Comedown Machine led many to question if The Strokes deserved to keep their title as a
MELISMA | WINTER 2017 | 15 “real” rock band. Even the nostalgia-riddled music video accompanying the lead single “All The Time” couldn’t help it seem like anything more than an awkwardly hammered out Is This It throwback. However with the exception of “All The Time,” Comedown Machine largely succeeds in its varied genre experimentation, from Casablancas’s falsetto riding on top of the synth heavy 80’s title track, to the funkier falsettoheavy “Tap Out.” With no live performances to accompany their fifth record, Casablancas took the time off to form a new group, Julian Casablancas + the Voidz, a call-back to Richard Hell and his influential punk-band Richard Hell and the Voidoids. But Casablancas’s new group held little allegiance to punk outside from their name. After three initial sets in early March 2014, notably their two poorly received performances at SXSW, it wasn’t until the fall of 2014 that Casablancas gave out more information about his new band’s record in a series of interviews. In one interview, he described their songs as “jazz and punk” or simply consisting of “amazing melodic things.” Critics took a different tone once the band released Tyranny in September. Casablancas addressed the evolution in sound from Phrazes, calling it a “foolish [decision] to go with what I thought people wanted more.” Tyranny represented Casablancas’s “weird abstract thing,” where he finally got to express his experimental urges and abandon any hint of pop sentiment. Released through his own record label, Cult Records, he had the freedom to put out his new record in whatever form he felt most appropriate. Critics felt strongly about the release; Rolling Stone criticized Tyranny as “the sound of a man shedding his skin,” nowhere near Casablancas’s initial comparison to “jazz or punk.” It is a layered production, often industrial. The album’s magnum opus, the Mozart inspired, “Human Sadness,” is an eleven-minute stretch of distortion and palpable agony. The album is a self-described “protest record,”; however, the album’s lyrics are more aptly described as political. From the topics explored in it’s lyrics to the “skin-shedding” instrumentation, Julian Casablancas + The Voidz proudly released a distinctly and intentionally unsexy debut album.
After a handful of festival appearances together over the past few years, The Strokes finally regrouped to release an EP in June of 2016 through Cult Records. Entitled Future Present Past, the band’s EP contains three songs and one remix. If the EP’s title is any indication, the band’s future sounds distinctly more like The Voidz than anything else. With lyrics focusing on Wall Street, two tracks “Oblivious” and “Drag Queen” are distinctly Voidz-style songs, only differentiating themselves through more pop-friendly melodies, which lack the layered textures of noise created through the Voidz. “Threat of Joy,” is lighter fare, though it only serves as a reminder that Casablancas can still write the same tunes that made him famous. If we interpret “Threat of Joy” as the “Past” in the EP’s title, it’s apparent that he doesn’t want to write those type of songs anymore. If The Strokes are only going to continue to sound more and more like Julian Casablancas side projects, why continue to produce songs under that moniker? Other than to make money? In 2011, following anextended hiatus, former members of the same garage rock scene, The White Stripes, broke up in order to “to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band.” It’s becoming increasingly obvious that The Strokes should consider doing the same. As much as we may crave the poppy cascading melodies and choruses they were once known for, Casablancas and his bandmates have had different intentions in recent years. The five friends deserve happiness where they may find it, but only if they allow The Strokes’ good name to be preserved while it still can.
LISTEN TO: THE STROKES - HARD TO EXPLAIN THE STROKES - MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM THE STROKES - IZE OF THE WORLD JULIAN CASABLANCAS - OUT OF THE BLUE THE STROKES - TAKEN FOR A FOOL DAFT PUNK (FT. JULIAN CASABLANCAS) INSTANT CRUSH THE STROKES - 80’S COMEDOWN MACHINE JULIAN CASABLANCAS+THE VOIDZ HUMAN SADNESS
all we got THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF CHANCE AND THE NEW CHICAGO ARTISTS BY CHARLIE BILLINGS
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hicago is a city of neighborhoods, each with its own distinct character. One of the most obvious reasons for this variation – an echo of the city’s history that remains a sad fact of life today – is deeply seated and deliberate racial segregation. Highways and train tracks were placed to cut off burgeoning minority neighborhoods, such as Bronzeville on the city’s South Side. Once second only to Harlem as one of the nation’s foremost African-American arts communities, the South Side’s cultural center was bulldozed to build the Dan Ryan expressway and the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, displacing the neighborhood’s residents and erasing the cultural mecca. Today, affluent neighborhoods thrive only a few blocks from endemic poverty, failing schools, and food deserts. The dueling pressures of gang violence and police brutality only compound these divisions, especially on the city’s South and West Sides. The local Drill scene reflects this violence. Drill is a style of dark, aggressive rap popularized by Chief Keef, which has been widely criticized for glorifying the violent atmosphere on the city’s streets. Out of this strained and divisive sociopolitical climate, a new movement of artists has emerged. Singers and rappers like Chance the Rapper, Noname, Saba, Vic Mensa, Jamila Woods, and Mick Jenkins are at the forefront of Chicago’s creative rebirth, using the power of music to catalyze political change. Chance’s music is indelibly influenced by the music of the South Side: the Gospel of Chicago’s churches, the R&B of his parents and grandparents, Footwork rhythms, and Rap blasting from the radio. From the beginning, his output has been profoundly musical compared to other recent Chicago rap, like that of the drill scene. On his most recent mixtape, Coloring Book, Gospel choirs ring out on “How Great” and “All We Got.” A marimba and a Footwork beat tangle together in “Angels.” Finally, in the spiritually moving track “Finish Line/Drown,” all of the prior influences on the album tie together into a cohesive, yet unique conclusion. Most of these new Chicago artists follow in the same musical vein. They rap, but they don’t just rap over simple beats; instead, like Chance, they work with a close-knit crew of talented instrumentalists called the Social Experiment. Two rising artists that exemplify the Chicago scene are Noname (f.k.a. Noname Gypsy) and Saba. After high-profile col-
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THESE ARTISTS are creating waves nationally, but the local change they have inspired is even more powerful.
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laborations with Chance, and Saba’s appearance with Chance on The Late Show, both released records this year packed with unbridled musicality. Noname’s Telefone showcases skittering, syncopated beats woven around gorgeous vocal harmonies, twinkling keyboards, and woozy synths. Noname’s singsong raps ebb and flow from serious contemplations on Chicago’s violence (“Casket Pretty”) to intimate musings on her personal life (“Yesterday”) to celebrations of neighborhood togetherness (“Diddy Bop”). The entire record balances criticism of the violent situation on the city’s streets and daily life on the South Side with wide-eyed nostalgia for the happier days of her childhood. Saba’s Bucket List Project is a more diverse album, including the somber, Kendrick-inspired “Church / Liquor Store,” the trap-styled “Westside Bound 3,” and the confident, but disenchanted braggadocio of “World in My Hands.” His music is boldly melodic, mixing virtuosic speed raps with hummable hooks, but it’s always tinged with a certain down-to-earth melancholy that exemplifies his split feelings about his city. In this manner, Saba’s music balances his civic pride with an emphatic concern for Chicago’s future and awareness of its present, painful reality. These artists have newfound national exposure stemming from Chance’s success as the movement’s figurehead and have created waves nationally, but the local change they have inspired is even more powerful. On his recent tour, he exemplified his passion for civic engagement by organizing voter registration outside concert venues. Additionally, through Chance’s collaborations with the Chicago Children’s Choir (CCC), he roots his own musical process within his community. By doing so, he amplifies the voices of Chicagoans and inspires them to tackle the problems of their city. Josephine Lee is a fixture in the Chicago music scene. As the president and artistic director of the CCC, she has transformed the non-profit into a world-class organization. By
providing music education to kids who otherwise wouldn’t receive it in the struggling public school system, the CCC gives Chicago youth the tools to express themselves musically in a safe place. For over fifteen years, Lee has lead the organization that serves 4,400 young people aged 8-18 throughout the city. With the CCC, Lee has had success in constructing “bridges across [borders of] race, religion, socioeconomic, and sexual orientation,” but Chance changed everything. “It wasn’t until the collaboration with Chance that people felt so proud to be with the CCC. People felt they could relate to Chance differently than with [past collaborators] the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Bobby McFerrin.” Lee met Chance when he was emerging in Chicago’s rap scene as a teenager through her friend Joe Shanahan, a prominent local concert venue owner and music promoter. She “wanted to collaborate, but the timing didn’t work out.” Fortunately, the opportunity to work together again came in early 2016 when Peter Cottontale, a frequent Chance collaborator, contacted her about recording for his new project, Coloring Book, with members of the choir. She immediately agreed. By this time, she felt Chance was ready. “Out in LA, he had a bad lifestyle,” she says. But while he was there, “he had a revelatory moment. Then he came back to Chicago and really changed.” Soon, Lee became deeply involved with the production on the album, bringing current and former members of the choir to sing choral arrangements, as well as instrumentalists to work on five of the album’s tracks. CCC singers sang on “All We Got,” “Finish Line,” and “How Great,” and Lee also assisted in the arrangement of parts of “Same Drugs” and “Summer Friends” during a whirlwind 48 hours in the studio. Before the album was released, Lee was still conflicted about associating the choir’s name with the project because of its profanity. However, when the album dropped with an official feature for the CCC on opener “All We Got,” she recalls being astounded by the immediate. Coloring Book “instantly sparked excitement and validation in a sector that we had never gotten before,” as current and former singers beamed with the pride at their involvement with such an important artistic contribution to the city. One of the singers involved with the Coloring Book sessions was Alex Du Buclet. For Alex, working with Chance on the new album was the fruition of years of singing with the CCC and in local talent competitions. “I’ve been going to his ‘Open Mikes’ [Chance’s open mics, named in honor of his mentor Mike Hawkins, the YOUmedia program coordinator that gave him his start as a writer] for over a year now where I’m sure he’s heard me sing many times. Peter Cottontale is
the one who recognized. She continues, “One thing led to another and about seven of us got to do a gig with Chance, and then from there Peter [Cottonale] and Josephine [Lee] reconnected and next thing I knew the Chicago Children’s Choir was in full partnership with Chance.” To Alex, the small group gigs at Chance concerts and the larger choir-affiliated collaborations were equally amazing, but very different. The first gig “felt more personal because it was like the seven of us did it on our own, while the other [Coloring Book sessions] brought greater opportunities, like getting to experience the life of a working musician and then see it all put into play with the Magnificent Coloring Day here in Chicago. There’s nothing like performing in front of thousands of people, getting that sort of high off of adrenaline.”
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heard: “That event contributed toward the fight for equity and the end of systemic oppression.” These kinds of grand statements and large-scale events are proof that artists like Chance, who make social justice a part of their mission as musicians, are able to inspire young people to go out and make their own change in the world. “Chance, Jamila Woods, and Vic Mensa are all great examples of Chicago artists who have gone out into the world and used music as a catalyst for change,” Sophia says. Her actions as a young Chicagoan speak volumes as to, first and foremost, her own courage, and also the influence of this new Chicago music movement.
As the voice of young people in the city, artists like Chance are worshipped as musical icons
Aside from Chance, Alex has had the opportunity to collaborate with two other great Chicago artists. When Alex sang onstage with Jamila Woods, who grew up in the choir, Alex was inspired by Jamila’s music and social involvement. “Not only was it incredible to sing next to [Woods], but it was incredible to sing with her on a song celebrating black women,” adding that Jamila’s success is a reminder that she could one day make it as a musician. A few years back, when she was just in middle school, Alex also sang on an unreleased Vic Mensa track. Getting the chance to dip her foot into “their circle just to see what it’s like [...] was almost like a slap of motivation in the face to do better and work harder.”
Sophia Byrd, also a member of the CCC who has sung with Chance, embodies the kind of active social and political engagement that the new movement of positive Chicago artists embraces. “A significant part of who I am is my passion for social justice,” she says. Over the summer, she and three friends started an organization called BLM (Black Lives Matter) Youth. Sophia explains that the mission statement of BLM Youth is “to validate and amplify the voices of young black people within the movement.” On July 11th, 2016, they held their inaugural event. “Hundreds of teens and young adults” (she’s being modest: there were eventually well over 1,000 people marching together) first gathered at Millennium Park in downtown Chicago for a silent protest against police brutality and gun violence. With cooperation from police officers, the protest transitioned from the silent sit-in at the park to a defiant parade downtown, walking down the middle of two of the city’s major thoroughfares singing “We shall overcome!” Sophia was proud that the message of her cause had been
As the voice of young people in the city, artists like Chance are worshipped as musical icons. Chance’s ‘3’ hats immediately became popular. Lee gives her own take on this: “The only other time I saw that kind of worship was when we performed for the Dalai Lama. If you have that kind of god complex, you can either be egotistical, or use that power to do good. And he’s chosen to use it to do good. It pleases me to no end to see Chance and Jamila embracing excellence and embracing their city, their community and doing something great with that art and that voice.”
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At a time when Chicago is desperate need of positive voices, a new group of thoughtful musicians full of civic pride have come together and inspired tangible action. The hardships of the struggling poor won’t go away because of a hit rap album: platinum records don’t end gang violence or solve the problems of a dysfunctional education system. Music can’t change everything, but it can be a powerful conduit of progress. Chance and the new Chicago artists are taking back the city with positivity in a beautiful process of progress. Together, they’re showing young people that they can have a positive impact on their own communities, and it can sound great, too.
LISTEN TO: CHANCE THE RAPPER - ALL WE GOT (FEAT. KANYE WEST AND THE CHICAGO CHILDREN’S CHOIR) NONAME - DIDDY BOP SABA - GPS JOEY PURP - CORNERSTORE (FEAT. SABA) CHANCE THE RAPPER - BLESSINGS (REPRISE)
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FOR THE WEEPIES, LESS IS MORE BY ALEX DORFMAN
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inger-songwriter duo Deb Talan and Steve Tannen met over a decade ago at Club Passim in Cambridge. Since then, they have formed the band The Weepies, gotten married and produced five albums. Now, they return to Boston, but they bring no band nor effects, and, true to the title of their tour, the two musicians sit on stage with only their guitars and a piano. This lack of frill, though, perhaps highlights the unique vocals and powerful lyrics of this quiet, folksy pair. Between each song, Deb and Steve fill the concert with their thoughts on everything from porn stars to Christmas Carols, and their children, all three of whom made appearances during the show. The Weepies made a concert hall feel like a coffeeshop and turned a gathering of strangers into a meeting of friends. The event title is The Weepies: Completely Acoustic and Alone. Can you tell me a bit more about this. Where did it come from? Why did you decide to go with it? Honesty is best! This tour is different and we wanted to let everyone know up front. Last tour we took a band and crew of 15…this time it’s just the two of us. We’re literally acoustic and alone! It also sounded funny while being true. You decided to focus this tour on smaller, more intimate venues. What motivated that decision? Big bus tours are awesome, but we began to feel a little numb on the road. We wanted to open ourselves back up to the audience in a way we lost. The few shows we’ve already done this way have been extremely powerful and connective. Like we used to, we’re now again doing literally everything from hauling equipment to the guitar solos, but we felt like we could play and tour forever. So we’re doing 18 more in a row like this. Not to get political, but I’ve been reading your posts on social media, and I was wondering if you could speak a bit about connecting in light of the recent election results. Absolutely. Fear can be very isolating. We’re eager to connect with as many people as we can. We all need to hang out together more. Live music is one way to do that, and we’re grateful this tour is coming right now. Community will come from all of this. Come on out. How’s Deb’s solo project going? Can you tell me a bit about it? What’s it like to work alone again?
Almost finished. It’s been really enjoyable to go in a studio and do whatever I want and focus completely on making music. It’s strange to not share stuff with Steve, but there’s something connecting with my teenage songwriter self in sort of keeping the songs in my cave for a long time, and that feels good and important. Deb, before you were in The Weepies, you were in playing in Boston. How is it to be back? How did the Boston music scene influenced you as a musician? Kind of a musical coming home! I moved there in 2000 and I had just gone from being a member of a band for six years (Hummingfish) to playing on my own, and there was an inspiring supportive folk scene I met that was instrumental in what I did next. Kris Delmhorst, Meg Toohey, Adrienne Gonzalez, Catie Curtis, Jess Klein, the list goes on – Club Passim was the central place. I think that place and time were very formative. How do your kids feel about The Weepies? Anything a parent does that takes away from total attention is difficult for kids. But in general, they think it’s a cool job. Wait, I’ll ask them and quote them verbatim: “They make things come to life. What I mean by that is I can sit back and enjoy the music and also see things.” Other child: We love to go on tour. And travel the world.” This is Steve again: I think they are buttering us up and angling for cookies! In other interviews, you discuss how Sirens was impacted by Deb’s cancer. How do you think this has impacted the overall direction of your music? Cancer made music seem like a good life choice – there wasn’t an urge to do anything else on a bucket list, and when the word “important” got thrown around, it held its own. The instinct was just make as much music as possible and hang on to the people around us. We’re probably not the best people to say how that has affected the music, we have no perspective. I mean, we still love sappy stuff with a heart, and in some ways we’re even more inclusive in our love of fun pop music. Sirens has some very serious vibes, but I think uplifting and comforting is what we’re still going for. In 2017, where do you think you guys are headed—musically? In life? Both? We aren’t big planners. We try to take things day by day – lean on the positive, and follow what move us.
TRAP MUSIC GOES GLOBAL BY DAN PECHI T
he internet has totally changed the way in which music is transferred across different cultures. While the days of the British invasion are certainly over, the internet has catalyzed the rate at which people from all across the world experience each other’s musical traditions. Modern genres like Hip-Hop, House, and Electronic Dance Music seem to defy any international boundary today, despite each being borne from a distinctive cultural context. If it weren’t for the internet, the proliferation of rappers and DJs in remote parts of the world would not be nearly as common as it is. One genre being transformed by the internet in ways unlike any other before is Trap music. Before getting into the globalization side of things, it’s equally important to understand what Trap music, a subgenre of Southern hip-hop popularized by Atlanta artists like Outkast and UGK during the 90’s, actually is. Trap music tends to focus on dark, crime-related subject matters specific to the region. The term “Trap” originated from the slang term for houses out of which drug dealers operated, “Trap houses,” whose names were derived from the cycle of poverty and crime endemic in poor urban neighborhoods from which it was difficult to escape. Trap as a slang term and genre signifier is inherently nihilistic, and the darkness of early Rrap music reflects this. Unfortunately, even the term “Trap” seems to have lost its original meaning. The genre progressed into the 2000’s with artists like T.I. and Gucci Mane coming to define the genre through their stark descriptions of life in the trap, often paired with bass-heavy drums from the Roland TR-808 drum machine and crisp snares. It wasn’t until around 2011 that elements of Trap music started making their way into the music of popular electronic dance DJ’s like Flosstradamus and most notably Baauer, the artist behind 2013’s viral “Harlem Shake.” More recently however, Trap music has made its way far beyond the United States. Artists like KOHH and Keith
Ape, from Japan and Korea respectively, have production almost indistinguishable from that of modern American Trap producers like Metro Boomin, Lex Luger and 808 Mafia. They also tend to focus on crime-related subject matters like their American trap counterparts. The spread of Trap music isn’t limited to just East Asia however; art-
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The integration of American music into these foreign cultures has created an environment in which domestic music becomes secondary to the sounds of American artists
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ists like Sweden’s Yung Lean and Russia’s Pharaoh possess style and subject matter very similar to that of American Trap rappers. The sound is so similar to American Trap, that some of these artists have collaborated with their American counterparts; Yung Lean featured Houston rapper Travis Scott on his debut album Unknown Memory, and KOHH has a song with Brooklyn’s J $tash. It’s obvious that artists like KOHH and Keith Ape, both middle class men from Japan and Korea respectively, have virtually nothing to do with the criminal underbelly of the South, bringing into question whether these artists are appropriating the culture of Trap music. Atlanta native OG Maco even went so far as to accuse Keith Ape of cultural appropriation in his music video for “It G-Ma,” noting the artist’s usage of lean cups and grills as “black stereotypes.” If that weren’t bad enough, Maco accused Keith Ape of stealing the basis for OG Maco’s track “U Guessed It” for “It G-Ma,” resulting in a deal in which OG Maco now collects royalties from “It G-Ma. Unfortunately, cultural appropriation is nothing new for American musicians of color, but due to the globalized nature of music, people of color are now even more at risk of exploitation. With services like Soundcloud and Youtube exposing musicians on the other side of the world to everything from Drill music to modern Jazz, it’s unsurprising that music and musical styles have diffused across international boundaries. Of course, this by no means justifies the cultural appropriation of artists like Keith Ape; there still exist innumerable ways in which to respectfully borrow from long-standing musical traditions without ripping off these unique styles and decreasing their value.
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Some international artists like Indonesia’s Brian Imanuel who goes by Rich Chigga have used the sound of Trap music for very different ends. Rich Chigga burst onto the scene this past summer with his viral single “Dat Stick,” in which he raps about shooting police and riding around in a Maserati. Unlike many of his international Trap Rap counterparts, Imanuel uses the sounds and subject matter of Trap to reflect on the absurdity of imitating Trap in his own environment. In the music video for “Dat Stick,” he very clearly mocks artists like KOHH and Keith Ape by dressing in an innocuous pink polo, khaki shorts and a fanny pack to further emphasize the fact that he is just a sixteen year-old kid.
Imanuel’s music serves as an active acknowledgment of just how ridiculous it is for artists on the other side of the world to pretend they face the same problems as Trap musicians in the states. This is reflected in the American Rap community’s positive reception of Imanuel’s work; artists like Cam’Ron and Tory Lanez have expressed their admiration for his work, and Wu Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah even collaborated with Imanuel for a remix of Dat Stick. Rich Chigga’s open acceptance of his identity as an individual who has nothing to do with the actual Trap scene is incredibly refreshing in a music world that has come to fetishize criminal lifestyles. The impact of American culture and music over the course of the past few decades is evidently the cause of this fetishization among international musicians. Rich Chigga stated in an interview with MTV that he actually learned English by watching videos from rappers like Tyler, The Creator and 2 Chainz. Similarly, Yung Lean has cited Gucci Mane and Lil Ugly Mane as significant influences on his own style. Is the cultural appropriation of artists like KOHH and Keith Ape thus just an inevitable consequence of American cultural imperialism in the digital era? While these artists are obviously aware of the fact that they are coopting Trap music, the integration of American music into these foreign cultures has created an environment in which domestic music becomes secondary to the sounds of American artists. Yung Lean has stated in interviews he finds native Swedish hip-hop boring and old-fashioned. American genres like Trap have essentially become a musical lingua franca; due to the international prevalence of American music, it has become increasingly difficult for foreign artists to attain global appeal unless their music is in a familiar
American style or with English lyrics. It seems unlikely that artists like Yung Lean or Rich Chigga would have experienced as much success as they did in the states had it not been for their usage of English and distinctive Trap sound. Of course, there exist many international artists who create music uninfluenced by American music, but these artists have generally not experienced mainstream success, especially not in the states. Artists who make music in their native language like Stromae and most notably Psy are incredibly rare in the otherwise English-dominated international music community. On the flip side, artists like MIA and Diplo have made careers off doing the reverse of what Keith Ape and company have. Instead, they take sounds from across the world and combine them into a hybrid that appeals to American tastes. Although it’s incredibly promising that artists like Stromae can make it in the states, singing or rapping in one’s native tongue nonetheless brings with it the risk of being othered by the international music community. While the digital revolution has certainly made it easier for international musicians to gain prevalence abroad, the same can be said for American music as well. It seems unlikely that distinctively foreign genres like K-Pop or Latin music will ever overtake the international ubiquity of American genres like Hip-Hop and Trap. To label Trap-influenced international musicians in the digital era as co-opting American Rap culture becomes increasingly problematic in light of the displacing effect American music has had on their native cultures. When American music takes the place of other genres in defining an international musician’s cultural experience, is the music these artists borrow from still technically not theirs? Unfortunately, globalization leads to more questions than answers about cultural identities. Young people
across the world who have grown up in the digital era have largely abandoned traditional cultural boundaries in favor of embracing aspects of American culture like trap music. It thus seems almost inevitable that American cultural imperialism will come to define the nature of music moving into the future, albeit at the expense of the continued exploitation of musicians of color. The lack of perceived cultural boundaries in the digital era will hopefully allow international musicians to play an increasingly larger role in defining musical genres in the future. It’s strange to think that music could one day exist independently of any specific culture when music has for so long been inextricably associated with one culture or another. Because of the internet, music may be headed in a truly unprecedented direction, one which will hopefully make popular music culture less Americentric and more inclusive than it ever has been before.
LISTEN TO: KOHH, J $TASH & ANDY MILONAKIS - HIROI SEKAI RICH CHIGGA - DAT STICK REMIX (FT. GHOSTFACE KILLAH AND POUYA) HIGHER BROTHERS - ISABELLAE FACE X ENIQUE - MEGAN FOX PHARAOH - X-RAY MHD - AFRO TRAP PT. 3
THE FIVE BEST MUSIC NIGHTS IN BOSTON 1. EMO NIGHT | ONCE A MONTH | THE SINCLAIR - As Luke O’Niel, journalist and organizer/DJ puts it, Emo Night is “rooted in
a feeling of community.” Hosted once a month in either The Sinclair’s spacious concert venue or timbered bar, the night is brings people “physically together with other people we know or don’t know, but have something in common with, commiserating together,” to belt out or dance to emo classics. “It’s a sort of ceremony of healing.”
2. ZUESDAYS | EVERY TUESDAY | THE MIDDLE EAST - Resident DJ Leah V was just voted Boston’s best DJ. Her weekly party
at Zuzu is a solid club night mixing some of Boston’s best up and coming DJs with contemporary all-stars like Kingdom, Jubilee, Shwarz, and Venus X. Go for the open and friendly environment, stay for the futuristic club music.
3. SHAKE | ONCE A MONTH | GOOD LIFE - Club music is impossible to define, but the curators of the monthly Shake parties at
The Good Life have their finger on the pulse of the cybernetic sounds of underground dance music. UK legends like One Man and L-Vis 1990 are alumns as are stateside up-and-comers like Dubbel Dutch and Dr. Jeep. Shake is probably the closest Boston will get to having an experimental club night and for that you should go.
4. DOWNBEAT MONDAYS | EVERY MONDAY | THE SINCLAIR - Matthew Stubs & the Antiguas drew such crowds at Plough &
Starts that they’ve moved to The Sinclair. An experienced blues-guitarist, Stubbs expands the Antiguas’ sound, drawing on varied influences, like Afrobeat, Cuban music and Psych rock, to step outside any particular genre and create absorbing, almost cerebral rhythmic jams that you’ll want to hear live.
5. SUBSTRUCTURE | EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE | MIDWAY CAFE - Since 2003, Soulelujah has been turning the venue into a vinylonly Soul, Funk, and R&B dance party so popular that it recently expanded to include both the Upstairs and Downstairs.
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winter PREVIEW WHO WILL BLOW UP
WHO TO SEE IN CONCERT
MOSES SUMNEY
January 23 | Rich The Kid | Brighton Music Hall January 27 | Phox | Brighton Music Hall January 27 | The World Is A Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid To Die | Mid East Upstairs January 29 | Cigarettes After Sex | Great Scott January 31 | Cloud Nothings & LVL UP | Paradise February 4 | Priests | Great Scott February 8 | Hamilton Leithauser | Sinclair February 18 | Sango | Brighton Music Hall February 20 | Japandroids | Royale February 23 | Lauryn Hill | Wang Theater February 24 | Run The Jewels | House of Blues February 24 | Kehlani | Royale March 2 | Thundercat | Paradise Rock Club March 3 | Noname and Heliotropes | Mid East March 5-6 | Clap Your Hands Say Yeah | ONCE March 11 | Los Campesinos! | Paradise Rock Club March 8 | Regina Spektor | Orpheum March 28 | Vince Staples | Paradise April 15 | The Nile Project | Somerville Theater April 15 | Xiu Xiu | The Hardcore Stadium (Cambridge Elks Lodge) May 11| Rhiannon Giddens | Somerville Theater
After moving with his family from Ghana to San Bernardino at the age of ten, Moses Sumney began songwriting on the school bus. Sumney claims he sang quietly to not be heard, but his signature soft falsetto has garnered the attention of Solange, Jamie XX, and us. Keep an eye out for his forthcoming debut album.
Photo: Luis Sinco / LA Times
NILÜFER YANYA For an artist whose debut EP, Small Crimes, came out in November, London-based Nilüfer Yanya is already picking up a lot of press. A gorgeous video for the lead single was featured on The Fader. Yanya landed a live performance on BBC Radio. Her jazzy sound reminds us Lianne La Havas, though Yanya distinguishes herself with a mature voice and production that overlaps with some of The xx’s outings. She’s managed by the same group that handles Scottish indie rockers Belle and Sebastian and popstar Leona Lewis. We think she’ll land squarely between the two this year.
Photo: Hollie Fernando
MILD HIGH CLUB
With just two albums out, Mild High Club’s Alex Bretton takes the kind of psychedelic surf-rock that appeals to the Mac-Or-Die types. He adds depth, though, with his background in Chicago Jazz, penchant for film-noir, and samples of both Soft-Rock and Synth-Pop to produce something that’s as mellow as it is interesting. As Bretton’s direction evolves like it did between Timeline and Skiptracing, we expect Mild High Club’s next record to bring him into the mainstream.
Photo: Madelyn Strutz
WHO’S DROPPING ALBUMS
January 27 | Japandroids - Near to the Wild Heart of Life January 27 | Sampha - Process January 27 | Surger Blood - Snowdonia January 27 | Kehlani - SweetSexySavage January 27 | Julie Byrne - Not Even Happiness February 17 | Ryan Adams - Prisoner February 24 | Kingdom - Tears In The Club February 24 | Los Campesinos! - Sick Scenes February 24 | Peter Silberman - Impermanence February 24 | Xiu Xiu - Forget March 24 | Jesus & Mary Chain - Damage and Joy March 31 | Nelly Furtado - The Ride