The encounter between experimental club music and mainstream pop has become ubiquitous in the sampling practices of avant-garde electronic musicians of the 2010s. These practices have worked to question the inclusivity of electronic music scenes, our author argues.
Cristiano Figueiró and Henrique Souza Lima created a track made by sampling, editing, and remixing recordings from a performance made by the Brazilian group Côco de Umbigada (CdU). Here, they contextualize the CdU as a cultural and political agent.
Music is certainly a way to express or reinforce our identity, but is it possible to represent and recreate an identity through the process of sampling? Our author says yes and mentions Stregoni, an Italian refugee project and an experimental space for music production.
The frenetic cutting techniques by electronic music producer Kyoka stand for what our author calls «techno punk». With this techinique, the producer ambiguously positions herself outside of the club music versus experimentation binary and the unpolitical becomes political.
How does the relationship of artists with their gear affect the composition? Listen to a mind bending mixtape-collage with statements about gear in electronic music compostion, eerie sounds and weird loops by the Peruvian musician and sound researcher Ale Hop.
2,816’000 people are suffering from a mental disorder in Ghana. In her essay, Ghanaian journalist Akosua Hanson reflects on how the perspective of wholesomeness in African philosophies could tackle this problem.
The Romanian music genre manele has recently undergone a very postmodern reception. Widely shared through memes seemingly ironically, the genre could also be the predecessor of a new counterculture.
The Norient Special «DisOrient» presents contemporary music videos from the Middle East as well as Central and South Asia, that challenge Orientalist stereotypes. Project curators Dara Shikoh Channa and Theresa Beyer know this is a sensitive topic.
When Saad Lamjarred’s hit song «Lm3allem» topped the charts, little attention was given to the self-Orientalist imageries that were propagated by this song. If anything, this music video is another invitation to further endorse the global trend of Orientalist consumerism.
Six international curators from the Norient community have researched contemporary music videos that re-imagine, parody, or deconstruct Orientalism. Here is the shortlist by curator Neil van der Linden, who predominantly focuses on videos from Saudi Arabia.
With four main notes only, the video game «Prince of Persia» tries to build a soundscape that illustrates a mysterious and timeless «Orient». Composer Rehab Hazgui took the Orientalist motive and turned it on its head to create a spooky deconstruction of musical stereotypes.
