Wednesday, July 30, 2008

A favourite Chinese rock artist of mine - He Yong



his defining song 'Garbage Dump'. Quite interesting and rather pertinent social understanding. Chinese Rock Music has always been quite interesting to me and more often than not, it has been a genre allowing a creative interpretation of social unrest/discontent of our social existence, through a medium which has traditionally been defined and associated as a 'Western' mode of music. An excellent song from a little while back...

A fluttering introduction... A Tattoo, A Post, A Farewell

Having been welcomed by my great friend on to the blog has made constructing a self-introduction a far easier job than it would otherwise be. As S- has already remarked, I'm Ye and I will be contributing to this exciting blog of his. We've been good friends for a while, and as one would expect, we have similar interests and ideas, as well as differing interests and ideas; part of what makes collaborative blogging an event within social existence, and what makes it interesting and fun. Anyways, I hope to be able to contribute to the already full flowing dialogue present in this blog. It's also a way for me to keep in touch while I'm in Japan.

The pictures of the tattoo below this post are the ones S- did for me. Thanks heaps bro... looks awesome!

I'll be blogging from Japan from August 3rd as I'm going there for work purposes. Another migrational existence and another negotiation of identities within a different social space. The tattoo...an imprint of the influences over the years, especially from the master S- himself.

Anyways, should be interesting.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

OUT FOR A WHILE

Im out trying to finish the thesis in the remaining few weeks as it is due end of next month but my blog buddy Ye will no doubt keep these pages filled with his writings...go Ye you the man!!! hurry up and put something up hahaha....

Interesting clips for the Blog - DawnRaid and South-Auckland 'World-wide'






SAVAGE Doco clips

SOME AOTEAROA INDIGENOUS HIP-HOP ENGAGEMENT



DAM NATIVE & CHE FU 'THE SON'



DAM NATIVE 'BEHOLD MY COOL STYLE'

SOME VIDEOS FOR NEXT DISCUSSION





SUNNI PATTERSON

Friday, July 25, 2008

WELCOME YE

..like to welcome Ye, he's going to be contributing part-time to the blog...

CRAAAAAZZYYYYY!!!!



...I was talking about the NZ Media in general (news especially) earlier in relation to Tapu Misa's column in the aftermath of the triple-crime week in South Auckland as committed by Polynesians. I think what we can assume from this clip is a general impulse amongst any media in any ‘Western’ country with ‘illegal-alien’ problems—especially people of colour—or immigration problems to look upon these problems through similar perspectives. Now, I think everyone who has come across O’Reilly would agree that he has‘personal’ problems with ‘low-socio-economic communities’—which I think is just another way of referring to coloured-people without making references to race or even deny the existence of racial problems in his country—Nas’s even directing his ‘war’ on the media and Fox on O’Reilly.

I’m not saying that it is the same problems here in NZ but we can assume for the time being that there are apparent and observable similarities upon which there is a basis for argument. I like the idea of ‘Discourse’ here as an informing element or process in how certain institutions peopled by similar voices with similar causes manifest themselves in relation to the society they are in.

DAVE CHAPPELE SLAVERY AND RACE

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Savage MTV Performance (WARNING XXX CONTENTS)



..Let me first apologise for the contents of the blog—Sorry about it. I’d also like to implement hopefully in readers’ mind that what is posted up here is never to promote some kind of opinion of mine but they are to help understand what it is I hope to get across in terms of ideas. The importance of the Savage videos is to hint at an aspect fundamental in and across the ideas developed here—of course the whole notion of ‘assemblage’ and ‘relationships’—but the importance of bringing back the concept of ‘aesthetic’ in analysis of popular culture and especially urban-Polynesian cultures not only here in Aotearoa; but also elsewhere in the world. The inescapable idea that we are living in a consumer-orientated world is important in that it points to us back to the idea of relationship and of course aesthetic.

There is an essential space existing between two primary dimensions important to the understanding of contemporary and economically advanced societies—not to be disrespectful to those who thinks otherwise but I am hoping to sketch a general context that is highly ‘urbanised’ and connected to the overarching notion of ‘world’ or ‘globalisation’ or whatever you’d like to call it through means resistance to traditional notions of boundaries or any sketchy and related idea of it. And it is this ‘space’ existing in-between these dimensions that are of most important value here in my analysis—now; we can substitute these flanking dimensions with various kinds of understanding depending on the context and the things that we are actually discussing but the ‘in-between-space’ I am hoping to roughly sketch here remains almost the same in terms of function but not necessarily in terms of content—which I’d like to further add that whatever these contents may be, they are determined largely by the things constituting the flanking dimensions and its nature. Also, these dimensions don’t necessarily flank in the sense that they are connected to the ‘in-between-space’ that I continually refer to here through various terms such as ‘assemblage’, ‘relationships’—rather, the emergence of this ‘in-between-space’ is the result of these dimensions’ overlapping impacts such as when I mentioned beforehand concerning the nature of the elements at work (whether implicitly or explicitly) giving rise to the manifestation of ‘knowledge’ or ‘re-presentation’.

Put it simply—using Savage and the Music Market; the artist exists as an intersecting point between his music and the Market. No one can ever convince me that there exists a musician who doesn’t anticipate the reception of her/his music otherwise that person is not a musician—as every (or at least most) artist who is or has been successful would say “the fans made me or my music” or at least something along those lines. What I’m trying to put forward here is that the music put out by artists or musicians manifest various things understandable only through a relational sense of understanding or analyses. The artist informs about various things important to him/her and the community in which they are a part of; now the idea of community here can be understood as or comes to us through various forms—hip-hop community, youth-community, Samoan or Tongan community, Urban-community—and these are not necessarily actual and physical understanding as it may be informed by or through a geographical sense. By this goal or impulse to ‘inform’ the artist simultaneously ‘formulate’ certain manifestations which also simultaneously ‘transform’ the ‘space’ or environment or conditions upon which these manifestations exist. By now we can determine that this kind of understanding echoes the ‘Hermeneutic-Circle’ in a general sense.

But by being ‘in-between’ is not as straight-forward as I’d want it to be for the sake of not having to type more and more into the complexities of this understanding. What I can say is that this ‘space’ is not in itself independent to the extent that it can exist on its own in isolation to the flanking-dimensions; rather, this ‘space’ is dependent on whatever may exist around it—so it doesn’t come into being unless regulated or stimulated by a certain event of intersection between two elements or dimensions of life. Yet also, and likewise, these elements are not what they are as we might understand them at a particular point; rather, their understanding at a particular point in time is dependent also on what can be determined between it and other elements in life. Generally, we might all agree that no music exist on its own without a market—what I’m trying to say is that apart from a certain ‘image’, ‘song’ or a certain ‘re-presentation’ having being expressed through an author and that also to an extent we can see the author in that work, it is also an appeal to something beyond the presence of the author and everything that he or she is. That we can see the nature of what it is that such works appeal to intermingled and intertwined within the complex make-up of that certain work—even if not in an explicit sense, we can still find traces of that ‘space’ to which the work ‘appeal’ to in the work.

See you soon…

SAVAGE INTERVIEW



From DAWNRAID site

PAUL GILROY



…Weighing the claims of the Past against the problems of the Present…

…Gilroy’s opening proposal about the reason for making a few disagreeable statements I think for the time being reflects what I was talking about in the bottom regarding Cornell West’s idea of ‘knowledge’ as we might understand only—and I mean only on the basis of that clip as it is quite wrong to actually judge a person solely on the basis of a few sentences in isolation from his/her body of works as well and especially making criticism in the absence of a writer or thinker—on what we can extract from the clip. I am talking about this whole notion of assemblage in the sense that ‘knowledge’ might emerge as a manifestation of various elements or pieces even in dissonance. That is, ‘knowledge’ is a product of an ongoing struggle between opposing elements working against each other although not always intentionally. For this, we can see the irrevocable connection between ‘knowledge’ and ‘power’ as two fundamental elements (or entities?) at work always whether implicitly or explicitly in the process of life.

I’ll come back to this…I just came across this clip so I’ll watch it first before I make some statements out of assumptions about what I hope to anticipate on the basis of the opening line…

EDDIE - SLAVE and NIGGER

JUST FOR A LAUGH NOW AND THEN..


Karate Man
Uploaded by jmana3

'KNOWLEDGE' -- "informs-forms-transform" CORNELL WEST




Sorry about it, I will carry on the previous talk after this one; I came across Cornell West so I had to open my keyboard here—although, it is still related to the previous discussion…

“...informs, forms, and transform…”

I’d like to extent Cornell West’s idea of ‘Knowledge’ here on the basis of the above temporal sequences between ‘inform-form-transform’ yet also circular in the sense that we can interpret these notions simultaneously. As I was saying in the bottom about the idea of ‘re-presentation’ and the temporality upon which it is understood as well as which it informs in a vice versa sense of understanding, we might assume for the time being that ‘re-presentation’ as ‘knowledge’ is couched within a certain vision—and as he asserts:

“…vision is rooted within a certain both analysis and as well as certain kinds of moral sensibility, so if I were to give the world ‘knowledge’, it would be ‘knowledge’ couched in a larger wisdom, a wisdom rooted in love and compassion—a love and compassion driven by a fight for justice for others, a fight for justice for the poor, for working people, for women, for peoples of colour, gay brothers, lesbian sisters…all of those who are so readily rendered invisible in the world in which we live. And that ‘knowledge’ is more than just information, but it’s an ‘information’ that is inseparable from transformation, so that it not simply informs but it forms and transforms who we are…”

He states in the beginning he doesn’t believe that ‘knowledge’ comes in the form of pieces—something which I cannot agree with but that’s not to say that it does. I think therefore—being influenced by various notions other than my own culture—it might be more viable for me to discuss or think of ‘knowledge’ first of all as an assemblage of different pieces or elements not necessarily originating from the same dimension of a certain given time and space understanding but emerge even from opposing directions. ‘Knowledge’ here in close relation to the idea of ‘re-presentation’—whether through art, music, or whatever—is an assemblage of various elements drawn from different realities and even from imaginary constructions of reality already embedded in the ‘space’ constituted by one’s own ‘reality’. That it is—knowledge—a conjuncture which materially manifests an instant amongst collections of implicit realisations directly connected and influenced by what it is that the individual is surrounded with. Such that ‘knowledge’ in this form is a result of aesthetic experiences with both transcendental as well as immediate aspects of all that we experience as well as what is put in front of us—whether art, music, texts, or whatever.
That ‘knowledge’ is a product manifesting instances of implicit overlaps and intersections between the different elements and dimensions of what we understand as life.

‘Re-presentation’ then as ‘knowledge’ might be seen here in this blog as an inherent and historical process orientated towards informing—which utilises elements already in existence largely—through certain ways or means of formulating the images to carry out this informing act whereby the effect of such process informs a state of transformation in what it is the ‘artist’, ‘author’, ‘singer’, ‘rapper’ and etc. is a part of—whether it is culturally, economically, politically, and so on. Yet, such organism is always already from the outset a simultaneous and circular event or being resistant to external definition…

2bcont…

JESUS COME

'ARTISTS', 'ART', and 'LIFE/REALITY'

…There is something about most cultures which brings them together in certain stages of cultural analogies. That each in their history reveres certain figures in society and assigns them with very special roles—especially with regards to the maintenance and well-being of its people in relation to the culture as a whole. I’m talking here about ‘artists’ which I guess prior to ‘Western’ domination were referred to as ‘orators’ or ‘storyteller’ amongst other terms related to the creation of elements ‘artistic’ in that society’s own interpretation. Obviously, with these figures in the ‘video-boxes’, we can understand that elements of what they express are exaggerated if we are to distinguish between what they re-present and actual reality in a scientific-positive sense—yet this is not the nature of ‘art’ as it might be generally understood. Yet also, ‘art’ and ‘life’ here as therefore two very distinct elements must be and are united in the self or the artist as I mentioned beforehand through Mikhail Bakhtin.

One thing about ‘art’ in general we have to understand—it is a reflection of reality but which is slightly organised and anticipated; which is why we refer to it as re-presentation. By this, it is a process orientated towards the present but which draws itself from the past—a backward temporal motion yet facing the front if it is to be perceived in a sequential nature. It creates a particular imagined ‘space’ constituted by assemblages of various elements drawn from different dimensions of life. Their certain co-existence in this ‘space’ is the source of its imaginary perception since we can assume that these elements—as important as they are to the telling of a certain story—don’t really exist together in a single magnitude or spatiotemporal frame of reality. Yet, for this, we can still suppose that its ‘real’ on the basis that we can identify some of these elements as events in our life—to which we can further relate our own life. So this answer between the individual, ‘life’, and ‘art’ does not only exist between the ‘artist’, her/his ‘life’, and ‘art’ but also extends to the experience other people (audience) have in relation to these ‘creations’ or ‘re-presentations’.

It has been asserted that African-American comedy—given its contents—is a peculiar process of rising above the oppressions and situations of African-American in America. By turning their situations and packaged them into absurd ‘images’ some have claimed gives them ownership over their own selves as opposed to being ‘owned’ by the oppressive system in which they are a part of. Turning certain negative stereotypes about themselves into elements which they can laugh at eases the rigidity and struggle which is their reality—which further aide the process of moving forward even amongst these negative elements about them inherent in their reality. Even if these elements are perceived as immoral and offensive, how do you tell someone growing up in a violent and racist environment to stop carrying themselves upon a plane infused with violent and racial elements, in a way that is non-violent, no profane languages, and insensitive to racial elements?

Are what we understand to be profane and violent universal that it is perceived also upon the same level of understanding as the communities these artists are from? I remember Bernie Mac in ‘Original Kings of Comedy’ analysing the word ‘motherfucker’ and how it is used amongst “brothers”.

“...everybody can understand it, don’t be afraid of the word motherfucker, I’ma break it down to you. If you’re out there this afternoon and you see about four or five brothers talking, you might here a conversation, and it goes like this—You seen that motherfucken Bobby? That motherfucker owe me thirty-five-motherfucken dollars. He told me gon pay my motherfucken money laaas motherfucken week. I ain’t seen this motherfucker yet!! I’m not gon chase this motherfucker for my thirty-five-motherfucken dollars. I called the motherfucker four motherfucken time!! But the motherfucker won’t call me back!! I called his mama the motherfucken day, she gon play like the motherfucker wan’t there. I start to cuss her motherfucken ass out!! But I don’t want no motherfucken trouble!! But I’ll tell you one motherfucken thang, the next motherfucken time I see this motherfucker, and he ain’t got my mohterfucken money, Im gon bust his motherfucken head!!!...”




The idea of taking ownership of social elements which once (or even still) worked fundamentally within the process of enslavement (both mentally and physically) in African-Americans relations with America or Jim Crowe is an important process to the understanding of present events which might be found offensive by many people of moral and ethical conduct. Such as what has been discussed here about Nas’s new album ‘Untitled’ and the word ‘Nigger’. On a similar level—although definitely not the same in terms of historical impact—we as Polynesians can call and tease each other with the term ‘coconut’ and it wouldn’t generate any sense of political and racial episodes yet, when someone of a different ethnic or racial belonging do the same, it would surely have a different end otherwise. As Nas said about the word ‘Nigger’, I can say it and I can use it, but you can’t—referring to the ‘Colbert-dude’ who is ‘white’.

Surely, most people can argue that Chappelle is very wrong about the ‘ghetto’ as he was making jokes about passing through gun-stores after liquor-stores successfully, yet it is something most people from the ‘ghetto’ can answer to as an actual part of their reality—interesting analogy is the movie ‘Boyz in the Hood’ where the father (played by Laurence Fishburne) was almost preaching about the systematic and institutional assault and condemnation of low socio-economic areas in America—which happens to be filled with African-Americans. That is, the overwhelming presence of gun-stores and liquor-stores in street-corners. Now, the same can be said about the low socio-economic areas which happens to be populated by Polynesians and Maori here in New Zealand where there is a ridiculously large amount of liquor stores conducting business in these areas—if someone was to joke about it the same way Dave Chappele has (except for the gun-stores), I would not only laugh my ass off, but I would also agree with it to the extent that out of the three nearest sets of shops or corner-stores in the area I grew up (recently moved out two-years ago—but still go there as my parents and family still live there) in, two have liquor stores. If that same person makes the same joke about mini-gambling places with Pokie-Machines consistently with Money-Loan businesses, I would not only laugh my ass off again but agree with it to the same extent as the former evidences.

Lets continue this later…

RE-FUGEES



Check out Wyclefs talk to the kids...

TAKEN TO THE GHETTO

I'll talk about this soon...Enjoy

NAS PEDITION

MMM

SLY-FOX video

BACK TO NAS...

Monday, July 21, 2008

TAKE IT OUT SOUTH

more conscious....

RACE AND ETHNICITY

“But race is a convenient distraction. It’s easier not to care for those in prison, for the children of beneficiaries, for the poor, if they look different from us, if we can blame their failings on race or define them as ‘the underclass’...Tapu Misa ‘The Dangers of Our Indifference’ (nzherald, June 23, 2008)

Tapu Misa is a freelance writer who has a weekly (or may be monthly) column in the New Zealand Herald and the above quote is extracted from her opinion in the wake of a 3-crime-wave in a week committed in ‘South-Auckland’....and yes by “Polynesians”. You can read this on the ‘nzherald’ site (www.nzherald.co.nz just do a search on Tapu Misa) to know what she means by the above assertion as I won’t analyse any of it here. But what I’d like to add is the peculiar yet systematic utilisation of one’s racial and ethnic identity in his or her portrayal and the dissemination of that particular ‘goal-orientated’ image across the New Zealand media in general. One’s connection to such historical ethnic-racial image is dependent or conditioned by various factors—usually (at least as it seems to me) two primary yet fundamental factors: we can understand it in various terms but what is probably true about them across every interpretation is that they are two-opposing-binaries—either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘black’ or ‘white’ and so forth. But they can only be understood if we consider the vast plane upon which ‘our ’Polynesian’ and ‘Maori’ people have been reallocated incessantly in their stories of ‘individual-personal successes’ or ‘communal fallings’ like chess pawns.
The stories of ‘crime’ committed by people perceived to be ‘brown’, Polynesian, Maori, or even now stretching towards the recently established communities constituted by the problematic rubric ‘Asians’ is more than often depicted as an element of communal-responsibilities—that the communities (or racial-ethnic groups to which these ‘criminals’ belong) are answerable to these events. The ‘spaces’ constituted by these stories are confused not so much with the individuals responsible for these crimes but rather, interweaved by the overarching presence of the racial-ethnic communities they ‘belong’ to. No agency and no individual identities are given as the principal identity marker in such ways that the people of New Zealand can consider their guilt or innocence in connection to a given name. The entirety of ‘South-Auckland’ is to blame as a low-socio-economic-urban-pacific area conceived and thereafter internalised by its own youth as a place of violence, gangs, and etc. Not to mention its ‘ethnic-chaotic’ aftermath in which the ‘Asian’ communities voice their concerns by looking to form vigilante groups so as to counter these crimes against their kind as ‘good-honest-business-owners’ and hard-workers’—which does not give us much choice as to what the ‘other’ group are in opposition to the former image-making and self-representation—significantly aided along by the media. The discontent with the conducts of the ‘Police’ as anything but helpful in protecting these hard-working members of New Zealand society can only initiate assumptions proposing the uncontainable and unmanageable crimes of ‘South-Auckland’—one life, think twice, hold up what’s goin on, seems everything is going wrong, South A.K is like South L.A...? (Scribe—Think Twice_Aotearoa All-Stars)
It’s hard to think of such things as systematic if there are various mannerisms in which these ‘images’ can be understood—especially as not all generalised interpretations of ‘South-Auckland’ is negative if we regard the tourism aspect to Manukau’s identity as a ‘multi-cultural’ city infused and stimulated by ‘colourful’ and diversified cultures in harmony as a counter-balance to the above issues. We can argue that this is just another extension to the negative image of ourselves in connection to the low-socio-economic-urban environment we have made ‘South-Auckland’ what it is today—attributed much to our happy-go-lucky characteristics as a lazy people concerned more with stuffing ourselves with unhealthy food and island delicacies rather than working harder for better conditions, concerned more with dancing and ‘ancient’ ceremonies and preserving a past that is neither applicable to the modern-world and the nature of time and so on.

Yet, so many of ours have succeeded in sports and other departments important to the maintenance and development of the well-being of New Zealand society as a nation incessantly appealing for the acceptance and recognitions alongside higher and more economically-advanced countries in the outside world. Yet, when these individuals of ours succeed, more often than not, they are perceived as individuals belonging no longer to the slump from which they emerge but to the country as a whole—they are perceived as members and identified more often than not as ‘New Zealanders’ rather than South-Aucklanders or belonging to the Polynesian communities existing in this peculiar suburban-space the country seems to look upon it always with dismay. Their connections to these racial-ethnic communities are perceived to be an element of their past because they are now successful New Zealanders, successful boxer, professional rugby player and so on. These communities are no longer perceived as answerable to their road to success; rather, these very same communities are perceived as an element of their past identity—before David Tua was ‘David Tua the bronze medalist’, ‘David Tua the number 1 contender for the Heavyweight belt of the World’, he was just David Tua in Mangere South Auckland, before Jonah Lomu was ‘Jonah the youngest All Black ever’, ‘Jonah the guy responsible for making rugby into a world-sport’, he was just Jonah Lomu in Mangere South Auckland. Off course it has to be this way, yet how each of these two ‘New Zealanders’ stories are told further perpetuates the negativities we as citizens always rush to associate South-Auckland with upon the plane of re-presentation....

AOTEAROA ALL-STARS

Had to put this one up, its pretty old now but its a good start for what I am hoping to talk about next in terms of how certain images connected to Polynesians are disseminated across the NZ media....

D-KONZ listen to the Music

DONT LOOK BACK --SCRIBE



This guy is already featuring in tracks with Wyclef...

BABY GIRL--SCRIBE

Just out of style and pride over how NZ-Music is making big noise..This guy's talented man...

Sunday, July 13, 2008

TONGA

COOL-BAD

I think it’s important that we understand the nature of the elements responsible for the mobilisation of our own images—even if such are seen with dismay in relation to our own process of cultural-negotiation. I emphasise (and will continue to) the importance of looking at things in terms of what their surface present or offer before moving towards an understanding of it in terms of the objective-domain known to us as ‘re-presentation’. Must we always assume that visual elements have some deeper meaning detached from its immediate presence? And as important as these tacitly implemented elements to a certain image’s understanding is: are the people assumed to be at the receiving end of its presentation—giving meaning to its nature as a re-presentation—always equipped with the reflective-impulses we have incorporated into our appreciation of the world through academic texts and so forth—reflective-impulses which have become integral in our own personal reactions against what is being offered visually and musically to us through the media?

The problematic of moving towards a common and unified notion of ourselves within an identity-axiom might not be resolved if the majority (if not its entirety) of such a process takes place upon a ‘traditional-heritage’ bedrock insensitive to the significance of immediate spaces imbued with our presence and vice-versa. Must our present concerns always entangled in the matrix-like net of our ancestral-past? We must agree that the latter is fundamental to understanding ourselves yet must this understanding be guarded and defended against any modern elements of our ‘alien’ surrounding?

The surface level of images and musical elements of popular-(sub)cultures dominant in the T.V-boxes of our urban living-rooms is attractive and eye-catching because it is infused and filtered through with ‘STYLES’—to which our youths consign and relegate the ‘COOL’ and ‘BAD’ aspect of their own self-carrying outside these living-rooms. How does this work? I don’t know dude but it is the concern of this blog as referred to earlier. We don’t know the complexities of the operations and dynamics behind the virtual-forces driving and regulating the surface as we see it in the media but we know that it works in communion with the elements on the surface as we see and experience it on T.V and computer screens and so forth. Certainly, we now know for sure that culture as we aspire ourselves in connection to its maintenance and processes is likewise a highly politicised and regulated element of our being.

2bcont…

Saturday, July 12, 2008

unauthored

THE VISUAL and RYTHMIC EFFACEMENT of ‘WRITING’

Merchandising of Graffiti—is its slow-death, by relocating something into a commercialised space means its death; it’s a systematic process of integrating an element of society beyond control into the spatial-order that is regarded with intentions connected to the well-being of society as a controlled entity. The relocation of ‘writing’, ‘bombing’, ‘graffiti’ and so on from mobile train-cars into an ‘art-space’ that’s commercially controlled by a specific community of taste means its death if death means the destruction of a moving process. The very movement towards unification is simultaneously towards its death—and death here means the deprivation of one’s identity as a distinctive being within an assemblage of elements contributing to the dynamics of a certain urban-social-being.

Most that are regarded as or perceives themselves as ‘Writers’ can now enjoy their ‘works’ within a space ordered and regulated in accordance to a certain ‘artistic-declaration’ formulated in a space detached from the elements it hopes to integrate into its life. Once, this ordered space was the observer as the works of visually and rhythmically talented youths passes them by in train-cars, walls, bridges and so on. Now, it is these talented ‘writers’ who observes works and ideas originating from them flaunted in their faces but in spaces far beyond their influences—art galleries and so on. It’s something else now, far detached from the connections it once had with its street-authors. It is no longer executed and implemented in the dark as it mostly did and its ‘authors’ no longer feel the excitement of disappearing into unknown. It is no longer ‘un-authored’ as it appears to the observer and its enigma no longer lies in the one responsible for its implementation but more so in the characteristics of the actual work. ‘Writing’ has been brought into an ordered and open space which systematically demands its author’s existence and identity—the ‘artist’ and his ‘work’ type of stuff.

Friday, July 11, 2008

OUT OF THE BLUE

…a baby is being born the same time a man is murdered, the beginning and end.. NAS 'Nas is Like'

WHY HIP-HOP IS DEAD..This is a comment on another discussion somewhre else but I thought I'd put it here...

HIP-HOP is dead; it was born and died the moment it took its first step beyond its own space--the very moment its voice(s) declared life to it. Anything that's not unified and dismantled and fragmented across not only America but the world is dead. There was never hip-hop, it was just music which emerged from the suppressed communities of F.U.S.A... .Its contents are still very much alive and inherently breathing continuous life into the people in these communities but it was never attached to the 'music' form it claimed to give it life. Battling existed a century before hip-hop the music claimed it, struggling existed before and likewise to everything hip-hop claimed as its contents. What Nas was talking about as Hip-Hop is Dead is metaphorical and it means for everyone that claimed it should think of what they are doing as something different from what they think they are doing--hip-hopping. Meaning what they are doing and claiming as hip-hop in attachment to its urban-contexts and sub-cultural elements is something which never existed.
Why do everyone look to hip-hop (the music form) as some guideline which can trace back the origin of battling, emceeing, and so on when these existed historically beyond what hip-hop can take us back to? Hip-hop is dead cos it never manifested the conditions of suppressed peoples--and the moment it claimed to manifest these elements as its dynamism, it detached itself from it and therefore it carried on as something else yet still believing itself to be what is held in its face.

Look at Nas' 'Hip-Hop is Dead' and 'Untitled'...basically, it means 'get over yourself' and 'start something else' that’s more real than what you think yourself to be...basically saying that 'hip-hop' is what we say it is--what Kanye said when winning his award for best rap-hip-hop album last year, and likewise what everyone else who thinks they got something to say says in their own opinions. 'Untitled' is a new-growth metaphorically referring to the reality of black and other people's conditions in this f'd up world--something which the rubric 'hip-hop' can never embody. We can no longer look to hip-hop as an inspiration because it’s dynamically polluted with heterogeneously hateful shit rather than spiritually healing materials. What we should look to instead is individuals and how they utilise the elements of the social world for the betterment of oppressed people. And later, we can look at how some individuals with similar causes and styles can be grouped into a movement or sub-culture rather than just jumping into the wagon without being able to know your way around something historically unified into a term within which its elements contradicts each other in conflicts and all other types of shit…..2bcont…

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

QUESTIONS - SPACE-ART

It has to be understood (which I should’ve provided earlier in the blog) that I am talking about ‘space’ here—commercialised, art, hip-hop or whatever—in terms or what ‘art’ may mean within popular discourses—that it’s a highly regulated ‘space’ appealing firstly to popular ideas but which is imbued with personal intentions. It incorporates almost every analysis about art I can think of—at least some elements of these analyses. From Plato to Aristotle, Nietzsche to Heidegger and every other dude who has attempted to centralise it into a particular understanding. Firstly, I would assume for the time being that music as in hip-hop is a ‘space’ within a ‘space’ or ‘art’ within a ‘art’ in a door within a door sense of understanding. This is in relation to the media—especially as there are no instances in which both are regarded with agency radically detached from society or an actual author. It is always from the outset a mechanical element in the sense that its constitutive elements—whether physical or conceptual—are externally united in time and space—Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘Art and Answerability’.

Here with hip-hop and Nas, there is already an anticipating event in which we must regard the awareness of the author in relation to the filtering ‘space’ through which his art must always be processed—that the first element we have to look for in his art is the ways in which he has incorporated the media into his contents. Given the highly regulated and politicised manner of this space, how does he put together these elements into such an ‘art’ which must be defined in part by this space? How does his art incorporate this fundamental and transcendental fact into the dimensions of his art?—in ways that these factual and inborn elements would have no negative effects on the message he hope to portray and inform the outside world? Or, how does he appeal to these fundamental facts imbued in our understanding of the media as a commercialised space? How do you package a certain history created over hundreds of years into a ‘space’ regulated against any elements which display risks of undermining it and the power that overlooks it?

2bcont…

CLASSIC

DEATH & RE-GROWTH

How can it be re-presented without jeopardising or endangering what has already been dehumanised and acclimatised into a power-relational dynamic between oppressors and oppressed? I think appealing to the commercialised space of the media through which rap and hip-hop has been attached with negativities and so on proves to be the best if not the only way. I think rappers like Nas and Rakim or KRS-1 fully understands the nature of such a highly-commercialised space and its ties to politics and the oppression of all types of people. Therefore, the process of appealing through this filtering space demands their knowledge of history as well as the current climate in terms of the relationship between discourses and peoples and the tools with which these relationships are determined and expressed. Where do they draw their inspirations from?—the very grass-root conditions and contexts from which they emerge. There is no denial of the negative elements historically associated with their own image(s), rather, these are twisted into tools of expression and empowerment—against the very conditions which aspire to maintain the history and current atmosphere working against them…

Coming into terms with the nature of commercialisation and its attachment to politics and power and as well as to the poor conditions of low socio-economic spaces demands a new flip on one’s approach as to the ways through which he or she advances into the significance of this very ‘space’. It demands a set-back period in which the tools of expression has to go through a process of re-invention and re-consideration—hip-hop is in a state of 911—was the catch-phrase just prior to Nas’s HIP-HOP is DEAD album. Can we assume for the time being that this project exemplifies introspection and a rupturing event?—and that ‘Untitled’ is the moving forward phase? It’s almost as if rap-hip-hop has been denied its significance and attachment to the concerned people fenced in the mental and physical-dominance of history, rather, it is perceived by Nas as actually going through the very same struggle which is associated with its voices—that the very tool which gives audio to these voices itself is mashed up in the slow-mental death of its so called voices—that it has become for a while now a subject suppressed and robbed of its sovereignty to the disappointment of the people who created it and envisioned it as a liberating element; that it has become the opposite of that envision.

Its revolutionary characteristics and things which made it peculiar and different to its outside has been slowly pulverized into the commercialised-space it utilises for mobility. The fundamental flip to its profitable sense needed to become or manually moved to its fore (since it has been slowly yet implicitly secluded)—such that its present face(s) needs to be destroyed or at least be seen as ineffective to those who rely upon it—such also that it needed to be deprived of its significance by announcing its DEATH and who better to do it than Nas?

2bcont…

NAS & RAKIM INTERVIEW









BEST of Both Offices: Nas talks NIGGER





HOW?

What do we say to a generation who utilises an element of social consciousness in a way difficult for us to understand and actually recognise it? In a way we disagree with on the surface yet our real opinions are secluded from reality and the obvious dynamics of life as we relate to each other’s otherness? Do we prescribe to them how ought to relate to each other and the form or tools with which they ought to communicate? Do we prescribe the temperament and the kind of morals with which one ought to express her or his very own conditions? Colonial Discourse thrived through similar en-routes. How we are colonised and suppressed are carried out through similar tools and elements. So how does one resist being the very oppressor he/she attempts to ward off? How do we de-colonise the mind with which we communicate and express ourselves? How do we re-present ourselves to the world in ways other than our very own conditions? How do we tell the world that we are ‘niggers’ and ‘coconuts’ at the same time we are not? How do we flip the identity-structure with which we have been identified throughout history so that the negative connotations become transparent? In a way that in the moment of articulation there is no space for reflection and no time to theorise in accordance to some problematic dimension of that which is being used to re-present ourselves?

2bcont…

HIP-HOP BINARY

The multi-foldedness of a term always already suggests its irrevocable ties to the idea of image as it exists within our social understanding. Hip-hop is a binary term in itself in the sense that it is irrevocably tied to the spatial understanding of battling—which demands polarities for itself to take place. A generation’s socio-economic conditions and imagined image of themselves stimulates the existence of such binary understanding from the outset—from the street, to the club, to the studio, to the stage, to the club, to the media and commercialisation. It infuses dimensions into our understanding of such phenomena which therefore cannot be fully grasped in one moment or instant of criticism. Therefore its criticism or any which is based on prior articulations is always already from the outset problematic if directed into this articulation’s singular spatial existence. Likewise, ‘Nigger’ is undoubtedly negative in relation to its history prior to its positive appreciation within and amongst the generational space it seems to be dynamical. Surely, we can assume that its obliteration from everyday usage is the best way to resist its historical significance, yet can ‘we’ also overturn this dimension of its existence and flip it so its positive connotations dominate the consciousness of those around us?
Can Nas’s music and image flip the cube and seclude the negativities with which the world looks upon this term?

2bcont…

NIGGER

THIEF

You 2

How do you appeal to a generation undermined by re-presentation and history (written by the blind)? By negative re-presentations and connotations of every aspect of their lives through systemised social tools such as the media, text, as well as the word of mouth? How do you appeal to a denigrated generation who perceives negativities in connection with themselves in processes of introspection and self-representation? What do you utilise in this appeal? The very elements with which we have been associated with historically or with something radically other that are very much detached from our reality? Can the concept of ‘thief’ in association with a generation be reversed the same way it was prepared and processed? Can we perceive ourselves positively yet still in connection with these images?
These images in history are ‘our’ axioms in response to self-representation and its alleged impossibilities. It is the implicit and inborn elements of our historical own which we make public in ourselves. It is the ‘heritage’ which we continuously tap for our appeal to the outside world. It is that process of utilising a certain commodity assigned to us and made through history yet from which we relentlessly attempt to distant ourselves from. You’re coconut 2, you’re nigger 2….

2bcont…

You A Nigger 2

AXIOM

There are certain axioms dynamically influencing the surface level space to which I refer with regards to commercialised-media. Certainly we accept that Nas’s music and image exists here as well as stimulated by these axioms—such as the facts that we accept the commercialised aspect of this ‘media’ as relentlessly driven to the minds of youths with negative connotations. Such that we accept hip-hop and rap as phenomena associated with violence and sexual images. Yet, can we also accept that through Nas’s music and image(s), there is hope to overturn these systematic assaults on vernacular-forms of cultural expressions? Can the ‘Untitled’ album and the issues explored there be accepted into this space as well in terms of a Trojan-like virus? That the infused negativities of this expressive tool be utilised as the very element to overturn it?

2bcont...

HERO

Friday, July 4, 2008

1969 Ivy Green Cougar - Engine Roars!!!!

NAS - MR. JONES

TRIP OUT TO THIS DUDE’S TRACKS AND VIDEOS

…I was hoping that these didn’t come out at this time, at least for another month as in anticipation, I was hoping to proceed through the former discussions (on NZ hip-hop) onto Nas’s new album—now entitled ‘Untitled’ rather than ‘Nigger’ or I think ‘The Nigger Tape’. Nevertheless, it’s here sooner than expected so I might as well get to it. I wanted to use Nas as an underlying example as to the idea of ‘urban/popular aesthetics’ and the significance of what I mentioned in the blog introduction as ‘prose’ and the ‘everyday-slang’ instrumental in how younger generations communicate—which on the surface level might be mis-interpreted as broken-English—which it is but we have to understand that tools of communications are not necessarily confined to a historical system and thereby we ought to understand elements existing therein in adherence to such systematic thoughts; I am referring here to proper English grammar.

Rather, what Nas (and every other hip-hop/rap artist out there) exemplifies and reveals is first of all the commercial side of the media and the aspects of ‘culture’ that are ably slipped in through this filtering apparatus. The idea of exploring a historical term with negative and dehumanising connotations can generate various responses depending on the magnitude of its receptions—certainly, it might evoke or provoke criticism as to the commercial exploitation of a struggling people’s history—especially its irrevocable tie to ‘slavery’ and so forth. It can generate or amass oppositions in terms of regenerating such terms within the conscious of the people—whom might be argued as actually in a process of moving forward and beyond such histories. It can also be criticised in juxtaposition with other black people who has actually contributed (quite relentlessly) to the betterment of black conscious and most of which authored books and texts with guidelines and histories of such conditions. In this, criticism may accuse Nas of cashing in on a history which has been relentlessly defended and costs people’s lives elsewhere in the world and so forth. Therefore, these people’s effort may have been affected by the enormity of Nas’s influence and so forth. So many angles can be argued in opposition to this case but it is also important to understand that as mentioned above, the surface level upon which younger generations conduct and understand their identity and make sense of themselves—such level exemplify or generate an awareness towards a different kind of space in which identity-negotiations and self-re-presentations actually takes place more so than what we might perceive as ‘heritage’ and ‘tradition’ and so on.

Such that I feel it is this very space to which Nas appeals. It is this very space which the artist has in mind and which he hopes to shape and overturn. It creates another discourse which is concerned with negotiating the self within an age imbued and overrun by/with information. The track ‘Sly Fox’ exemplifies this overturning process in which he essentially informs the listener with the nature of the media using FOX news presumably as a striking example—thereby equipping the perception towards the information which one draws from the media with negative connotations and crooked values.

I’m interested more so in the surface level within which we tend to understand the nature of the mass media and commercialisation. We’re quick to dispute the idea of such spaces as having any significance to the values of our cultural-self—especially as we understand ourselves in terms irrevocably tied to a historical space which at times transcends our contemporary experience and move towards justifying its importance in implying its existence within our ways of life implicitly—which is not to be disputed here but I think we should rethink our perspectives on how commercialisation as a heterogeneous and superficial space is an important element fundamentally. Nas invites us to an album which is able to bring forth important issues emphatically into a space highly regulated yet also de-regulated. The artist responds to the leaking of his album before its release date with excitement rather than resentment—which shows the importance of the de-regulated nature of this space to the spreading of his messages.

It therefore requires us to regard popular prose and everyday-slang as intrinsic element of a space allegedly robbed of essential and historical contexts in relation to its appreciators—at least in our thinking and discourse concerning our very own culture and heritage as Pacific people. It is important to understand that our identity must be connected to history but it is just as important to recognise that what we mean by history is not confined to the past.

The ideas of popular prose and everyday-slang is realistically a tool with which our younger generation communicate with and express themselves to one another, and aspects of these tools do exists in the majority outside the systemised space of language to which we appeal in issues of communications and clarification. Listen to Nas’s lyrics and the issues he explores are deeply entrenched in socio-historical and political discourses that are available only to a few privileged enough to attend Universities and similar Institutions, who find the spare time to sit down and read books rather than being overwhelmed with worries about where he or she’s gonna sleep tonight or where their family’s dinner gonna be from and so on. Yet, it is packaged in a way sensitive to a generation addicted to commercialisation and thereby imprisoned both mentally and physically within it.

The timing of the album and the issues are timely right as Nas as an image is highly popularised whilst rooted in ground zero—where the majority of our youths operate—tagging and escaping into the darkness of night, confined to a secret space behaving ‘offensively’, conforming to a system insensitive to their very existence as ‘mis-understood’ members of society and so on. We cannot help but appeal to figures such as Nas and hoppers in the space of commercialisation. Yet finally, someone’s words seek out our repressed consciousness and decide to speak truthfully about the importance of the elements we surround ourselves with. Over-flipping the regulated and politically pulverized space of commercialisation—at least an aspect of it.

2bcont….

FOX

SLY FOX

Sly Fox is a comedic play by Larry Gelbart, based on Ben Jonson's Volpone (The Fox), updating the setting from Renaissance Venice to 19th century San Francisco, and changing the tone from satire to farce.

It premiered on Broadway December 14, 1976 at the Broadhurst Theatre. Directed by Arthur Penn, the play featured George C. Scott, Bob Dishy, Hector Elizondo, Jack Gilford, and Gretchen Wyler.

It was revived on April 1, 2004 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, again directed by Arthur Penn, featuring Richard Dreyfuss, Bob Dishy, Eric Stoltz, René Auberjonois, Professor Irwin Corey, Elizabeth Berkley, Rachel York, Peter Scolari, and Bronson Pinchot.

Like Volpone, and Puccini's opera Gianni Schicchi, this is a story of a con-man who convinces others that he is near death, and turns their greed against them for his own gain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sly_Fox

NAS - SLY FOX

[Intro]

So we look at what's going on -- this as an EXTREME aggression, um
I'm also hearing about it from EVERYWHERE!
It's-it's on the islands, it's on the continent, it's here: it's everywhere!
And this is, if you will, a WAR -- An all out assault by...

[Verse 1:NaS]

The sly fox
Cyclops
We locked
In the idiot box
The video slots
Broadcast
The Waco Davidian plots
They own YouTube, Myspace
When this ignorant shit gon' stop?
They monopolizing news
Your views
And the channel you choose
Propaganda
Visual cancer
The eye
In the sky
Number five
On the dial
secret agenda
Frequency antenna
Doctor mind bender
Remote control
soul
Controller
Your brain holder
Slave culture
Game's over
What's a Fox characteristic?
Slick shit
Sensin'
Misinformation
Pimp the station
Over stimulation
Reception
Deception
Comcast digital Satan
The Fox has a bushy tail
And Bush tells
Lies and Foxtrots
So I don't know what's real

[Chorus]

Watch what you watchin'
Fox keeps feeding us toxins
Stop sleeping
Start thinking
Outside of the box and
Unplug from The Matrix doctrine
But watch what you say Big Brother is watchin'

Watch what you watchin'
Fox keeps feeding us toxins
Stop sleeping
Start thinking
Outside of the box and
Unplug from The Matrix doctrine
But watch what you say Fox 5 is watchin'

[Verse 2:NaS]

The Fear Factor got you all rattled up
O' Reilly
Oh really?
No rally needed
I'll tie you up
Network for child predators, settin' 'em up
Myspace pimps, hoes, and sluts
Ya'll exploit rap culture, then ya'll flip on us
And you own the post, and ya'll shit on us
What is they net worth?
They gon' try to censor my next verse?
Throw 'em off the roof neck first
While I'm clicking my cursor
Reading blogs about the pressure they put on Universal
It gets worse while I'm clicking my mouse
While they kickin' my house
They figured us out
Why a nigga go south
It's either he caught a body, no sleep they watchin'!
I watch CBS
And I See B.S.!
Tryin' to track us down with GPS
Make a nigga wanna invest in PBS

[Chorus]

Watch what you watchin'
Fox keeps feeding us toxins
Stop sleeping
Start thinking
Outside of the box and
Unplug from The Matrix doctrine
But watch what you say Big Brother is watchin'

Watch what you watchin'
Fox keeps feeding us toxins
Stop sleeping
Start thinking
Outside of the box and
Unplug from The Matrix doctrine
But watch what you say Fox 5 is watchin'

[Verse 3:NaS]

They say I'm all about murder-murder and kill-kill
But what about Grindhouse and Kill Bill?
What about Cheney and Halliburton? (Halliburton?)
The backdoor deals
On oil fields
How's NaS the most violent person?
Ya'll don't know talent if it hit you
Bringin' up my criminal possession charges with a pistol (pistol)
I use Viacom
As my firearm
And let the lyrics split you
Who do you rely upon?
They shoot shells at Leviathan
I'm dealing with the higher form
F**k if you care how I write a poem?
Only Fox that I love was the red one
Only black man that Fox loves is in jail or a dead one!
Red rum
Political bedlam
Don't let the hype into your eyes and ear drum
Murdoch on Fox
Not 18 with Barracas
And he hate Barack cause
He march with the marchers

[Outro]

I pledge allegiance to the fair and balanced truth.
Not the biased truth
Not the liar's truth
But the highest truth
I will not be deceived
nor will I believe
In the Propaganda
I will not fall for the Okey-Doke
I am tuned-in

[NaS]

Watch, cause they're watching
Watch what you're watching

Better watch, cause they're watching
Watch what you're watching

Me-Me-Media
Misleading ya

Watch what you're watching

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