Snaps

Nairobi’s next generation music producers and performing artists speak out – Episode 1 of the new Timezones Podcast Series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe Institute.

Norient met with Firas Abou Fakher of the indie rock band Mashrou’ Leila who is among the progressive voices of the young Lebanese generation, to talk about Lebanon’s complicated history, clichés about the Arab world, and the role of music in times of change.

In this Norient Special, we examine how political contexts of our time are transformed into musical production. With case studies from all around the world, this Norient Special approaches sampling as a tool for critical thought and a way of alternative storytelling.

Eduardo Navas considers the political implications of sampling as a cultural variable in relation to aesthetics and labor in juxtaposition with the emergence of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Can music production portray nuanced, complex subjectivities relating to reminiscence and retrospection? In an examination of his track «22 – 122», Guy Baron shows how a musical interpretation of an «afterglow» can be made with audio processing and sampling techniques.

Noel Lobley considers if sampling ethnographic sound fragments must inevitably operate under pre-existing power dynamics or if there are other independent ways to sample, remix, and curate locally-owned culture.

Music scholar and producer Francesco Fusaro discusses one of his sample-based tracks. It is through the voice that dance music has proven a fertile territory for the expression of the political and social concerns that underpinned its history from the beginning.

What are the political implications and ethical concerns of sampling sounds of war? This is a question raised by «The End of Silence», a 2013 record from Matthew Herbert based entirely on a six-second field recording of the Libyan civil war. A critical examination.