Sarcastic Rap Experiments from Belgrade

Podcast

Wikluh Sky is part of the hip hop trio Bad Copy from Belgrade, Serbia. In the Norient podcast he talks about making art in Serbia, their video «Esi mi dobar» – a sarcastic experiment in his words – and about what would happen when Hans Zimmer would call him and offer him a job. A podcast from the Norient exhibition Seismographic Sounds, written by Dragana Despotović, and produced by Nebojša Despotović aka Shonegrad O'Connor.

Bad Copy: «Esi mi dobar»

What looks exotic to you is bitter reality for us. In a shanty town in Serbia kids play with big guns for the camera. Three rappers enjoy doing nothing and show off with drugs and alcohol. This video is a persiflage on postwar Serbia where the true gangsters are not getting caught and no one seems to care.

An Army of Idiots

A text by Sky Wikluh, member of Bad Copy

«My name is Wikluh Sky. I’m a member of the very famous hip hop group Bad Copy, and I am also a producer and a composer. I am an artist par excellence, a writer, and a director, too. I do all kinds of stupid shit people don’t want to do.

Serbia encourages you to do very wrong things in art and music. It’s a tough place for a musician who doesn’t want to make something completely void of taste, skill, and knowledge. All successful music here is based on stupidity. So, it’s me against an army of idiots. I’m surrounded by wrong information, and a terrible amount of lies. An investor from the Emirates is currently constructing a giant tower in one of our rivers. The prime minister puts a whole lot of money into it. We really don’t need this «Arabian Dick» (that’s what we call it). We need to take care of people that live seriously bad lives. Never mind. You cannot battle this stupidity.

With Bad Copy we have socially conscious lyrics about how badly Serbia treats minorities, for example. But usually we just talk about what concerns us personally. They forbid us to drink beer after ten o’clock in the evening! Bad Copy is like therapy for us, but it is also about criticizing ourselves. Look how stupid we are! So we keep representing ourselves very intelligently in very idiotic ways. And, yes! If film composer Hans Zimmer called me and said, ‹Hey guy, you want a job in LA, I’m going to give you a three thousand square feet terrace and a pool›, I would say, ‹Hell yeah, I’m coming.›»

This quote was recorded by Dragana Despotovic on 17.3.2015 in Belgrade, Serbia. It was published first in the second Norient book «Seismographic Sounds».

Biography

Shonegrad O'Connor is one of the founders of Trash-hop movement in Serbia (consisting of more than 10 people), a member of Duboka Ilegala music collective and one of the founding uncles of the Righteous Church. Mr. O’Connor is a music recycler, wannabe composer/singer and a graphics person, although he is only partly real. His existence is not necessarily determined by reality, since his home is a small crack in time, located roughly at the end of the 20th century. He has failed in many things in life so far (being born in Serbia is just one of them) and continues to do so, with pride and joy. His life moto is: «You always miss what you don’t have.»

Shop

Seismographic Sounds: Visions of a New World

€50.00

The second Norient book «Seismographic Sounds: Visions of a New World» introduces you to a contemporary world of distinct music and music videos. Written by 250 scholars, journalists, bloggers and musicians from 50 countries.

order now

Published on April 26, 2017

Last updated on August 11, 2020

Topics

Parody

Place

War

All Topics

Specials

Seismographic Sounds

Seismographic Sounds: Podcasts

Snap

print as pdf

India’s Experimental Underground Vol. 1

Playlist

by Rana Ghose

Producer and curator Rana Ghose is an important reference point of New Delhi's nascent underground scene. He is part of the collective REProduce and organizes Listening Room Sessions: interventions in non traditional spaces as former mills, bakeries, hotels or abandoned places. With the SoundCloud Playlist he curated for Norient, he introduces a new generation of exciting artists from New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore between noise, electronic music and experimental.

Over the course of curating and producing a series called REProduce Listening Room, I’ve had the good fortune of being sent music spanning all kinds of genres on a fairly regular basis. Here’s an attempt at providing some examples of what comes my way. Most (but not all) of these acts are either quite young or yet to enter the mainstream booking circuit. On the one hand, I don’t think any of them are really in a position to play it safe artistically to get the kinds of gigs that dominate the nascent «scene» here. Also, most people haven’t heard these artists and have no idea who many of them are. Though, I suppose that will change. Most shows are still going down at what are essentially restaurants, spaces that cater to a certain clientele and «safe» expectation in terms of music. But of course, whatever «safe» may present is, thankfully, always up for reassessment. There is a certain momentum of people putting on their own shows outside of these spaces, and in doing so, there is a sort of new confidence that younger artists possess. Many of the acts here come from those arenas. Consider this a kind of insight into a distinct generation; the process of becoming jaded due to commercial artistic compromise is not reflected here.

Rana Ghose about why musicians in Delhi need a space to experiment as the Listening Room:

Rana Ghose about creating an audience and a community by organizing the Listening Room sessions – and why he trusts the power of pop culture:

Collage with artists who performed at Listening Room Session organized by Rana Ghose

Biography

Rana Ghose is a curator, economist, writer, and filmmaker. He steers the REProduce collective, a group of twelve musicians that mostly perform in the context of electronic music production. His current focus is REProduce Listening Room, a series of interventions in non traditional spaces that engages with music and video in modular, sequential plays – taking advantage of the aesthetics of spaces as varied as former mills, bakeries, and hotels and producing them into five hour embedded experiences where up to eight different performances unfold. His doctoral research was on risk constructions in a regulatory context, and the underlying dynamics of how we explore uncertainty. The theoretical framework of this research underpins his explorations in performative spaces and the capital intensive model that generates arenas that may or may not suit the wide range of artistic expression that a country like India increasingly generates, and how patrons and sponsorship models interact within the uncertainty that the resultant incentives present. He is based in New Delhi, India. Follow him on LinkedIn.

Published on May 03, 2017

Last updated on August 11, 2020

Topics

DIY

Place

All Topics

print as pdf

Kicks and Strings from Durban

Podcast

by Thomas Burkhalter,

Bit-Tuner

Daniel Jakob

Gqom from Durban is being added to our Norient playlists for quite a while now. On our recent South African tour we finally met some of the producers of this deep and dark electronic music in different townships around Durban. We interviewed them, and edited, mixed and manipulated their voices and music. First take of our gqom edits: Citizen Boy, and his grandmother. We met them at their house in Avoca Hills, Durban. Co-produced by Thomas Burkhalter, Bit-Tuner and Dejot. Check also the Gqom-Takes with Dominowe and Menchess.

Grandmother – Gqom Edits 002 by Burkhalter, Bit-Tuner, Dejot

Tracks (mis)used to create grandmother/SouthAfrican vibe: «Qwa (Lion)» by Qwii – Tebogo Tshotesi (Bushman) from the album Ancient Civilizations Of Southern Africa + «Rhaliweni (Railway)» by Sun Glen from the album The Thula Project / An Album Of South African Lullabies

#Fame

«When fame arrives, a lot will change. I would move from my bedroom studio into a professional one. And I would buy new equipment and then make more money. I would go partying, all Friday long.» Citizen Boy

Citizen Boy on Music Production

Citizen Boy in his bedroom studio, 2016 (photo: Thomas Burkhalter, Norient)

[Thomas Burkhalter]: How do you produce your tracks? What are the first steps?

[Citizen Boy]: Ok. You need a computer, two speakers, and you need the Fruity Loops software. You install it and you play it. The first thing you need for gqom is the deep kick, the bass. It has to be awesome and perfect. Then you need strings, some percussion, a snare, and few samples.

[TB]: How do you edit and arrange these sounds in your software?

[CB]: Ok, let me tell you what I do. I paste a kick, I listen to the kick, and I make it deep. I turn the volume very high – so that sometimes my family complains. I play the kick and I put the string. I listen to this beat properly and I go into that vibe. I take a sample, I put the sample in, and the beat just becomes perfect. Then I put the snare, and it becomes even more perfect. Then I listen to it all together and I have my gqom track. You need only like six or eight things for a gqom track.

[TB]: Do you mainly use presets from within Fruity Loops? And if so, how do you manipulate them?

[CB]: For samples I use effects. I use delay, flanger, phaser, and reverb. The string I don’t manipulate, I just use the preset. And I also don’t do anything with the kick. It is a preset too. I just turn the volume higher, so the music give you that vibe.

[TB]: From where do you take your samples?

[CB]: I find them via Google. I download them, I put it into Fruity Loops and slice it.

Quotes

Citizen Boy in the the backyard of his family house in Avoca Hills, Durban 2016 (photo: Thomas Burkhalter, Norient)

#Dreams

«It is like a dream. I always wanted to shine.» Citizen Boy

#Reputation

«When people come to my house, certain people like famous people, I make sure that someone looks at me while I’m going up. I make sure that I walk slowly so they can see like what’s going on. I’m showing off, basically.» Citizen Boy

#Family

«My parents at first didn’t support me at all but as soon as Francesco came they saw it’s going somewhere. So, they started to support me but they said I must prioritize studying first. So, during school days I don’t do music. I only do music during the holidays, maybe on the weekends and stuff, yeah.» Citizen Boy

Releases

Tribute To Malumz Kolè by Citizen Boy

#Friendship

«My EP Tribute to UK is my tribute to Francesco, my manager. I’m praising him for the good things he has done for me.» Citizen Boy

Malumz EP by Nan Kolè

Citizen Boy, Thomas Burkhalter, Bit-Tuner in Avoca Hills, Durban 2016 (photo: Dejot)

Biography

Dr. Thomas Burkhalter is an anthropologist/ethnomusicologist, AV-artist, and writer from Bern (Switzerland). He is the founder and director of Norient and the Norient Festival (NF), co-directed AV-performances and documentary films (e.g. «Contradict», Berner Filmpreis 2020 + Al-Jazeera Witness), and is the author and co-editor of several books (e.g., «Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut», Routledge, «The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East», Wesleyan University Press). He teaches regularly at universities, and runs workshops for arts institutions. Since 2022 he produces the Norient Mixtape for Swiss National Radio SRF3. Currently, he is working on his new music duo «Melodies In My Head», and on the podcast series «Long Take: Life as an Artist». Follow him on Instagram, Research Gate, Academia.edu, Bandcamp, Spotify, or Meta.

Biography

Bit-Tuner aka Marcel Gschwend, born 1978 in St. Gallen, lives and works in Zürich, Switzerland Born and raised in St. Gallen, Bit-Tuner works and lives in Zürich today. He's been producing electronic music with computers, mpcs, synthesizers, bass guitars and a fleet of analogue effect gear. He has a fondness for samples from old records, movies and has also been discovering field recording. Bit-Tuner works with heavy beats, blown up bass sounds, gloomy athmospheres, acid-driven melodies and uproaring soundscapes. His musical field of expression reaches from experimental hip hop to electronica, from bass music to noise, theatre productions, fashion shows, and shortfilm soundtracks. Follow him on Youtube, Spotify, X, Facebook, SoundCloud, or on his Website.

Biography

Dejot aka Daniel Jakob (aka Dubokaj) is a Swiss electronica producer, film composer based in the city of Bern. Follow him on Spotify, Facebook, or Instagram.