Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Integrating Ethnic Minorities

If you've heard about the recent French vote to ban Muslim headscarves (& other religious adornments) in schools, then this article in The Economist will be an interesting read. The manner in which a nation incorporates "outside" cultures into more dominant cultures says a lot about the openness of that culture. I've mentioned a bit about French attitudes about Christmas (no outward displays of their apparently strong beliefs). This Ecnomist article sort of confirms that. Basically, everything ends up being lily-white (double-entendre meant). In France there seems to be no desire to see different cultures in public space. In the UK, however, society has many outward displays of different cultures. Of course, this may have lead to some un-desirable things, like race riots and the like. I have to learn more about the UK's legal approach to minority rights, but from what I know, it makes a lot more sense than France's. When it comes down to it, not allowing one to wear her culture on her shoulders (or head) can only lead to other sorts of subjugation. The linked article goes into some discussion about providing fodder for extremist mindsets. While that may take some time, I think it's clear this will happen. Isolation isn't the way to go here. While this French bill proposes to outlaw all religious adornments in schools, it's clear this is aimed at Islam.

Assimilation into the wider culture is one thing. Bleaching of one's culture is wholly different and will lead to many unintended consequences.

Desi Thugs

DesiBlog has referred to an interesting BBC radio documentary about Desi Thugs. Amongst friends, we've always joked about the idea of Desi thugs, but this is a serious take on the idea, how it fits into the Indian family lifestyle, the relationship between Desi men and women, and how it has contributed to the development of musicians in the British-Asian community. Nihal (of the Bobby & Nihal show) conducts interviews with artists such as Sona Family, Punjabi Hit Squad, and HardKaur are intermixed with hip-hop samples. Here's a direct link to the BBC documentary. It's 30 minutes long and well worth the time. I can't say that all of these rappers have the greatest lyrics, but it's a start. By the way, this just confirms that the BBC is making great inroads into serious examination of the British Asian community and perhaps helping desis in the US better understand how we fit into the general community.

Oh, and if you still haven't listened to Bobby & Nihal, check 'em out this week! They're on late Friday nights London time so it's a good Friday afternoon listen for folks based in the US.

Another interesting find via DesiBlog is EthnoTechno. Have a look.

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Scandal!

So I posted before about Willie Williams and his football recruiting escapades. He has since declared his intentions to join the University of Miami. Well, the story doesn't quite end there. Not only is Williams now being charged with committing some crimes while visiting the University of Florida. In addition to that, he apparently has a rap sheet a mile long. This all for a 19-year old high school sports phenom. This has apparently become quite a national thing, with even the New York Times writing about the situation. Anyways, always interesting to see how these things turn out.

Friday, February 06, 2004

"...politics and the markets seem inextricable"

Keeping with the more serious topics, I've just read a pretty interesting series of posts written by the head of the Eurasia Group on Slate.com. I've mentioned before that Slate has these week-long journals written by a variety of people. It's a novel way to incorporate "blog" type writing into a wider magazine's framework. Some are interesting, others are not. In this case, this topic is something a friend and I continually chat about: the intersections of politics & economic markets. In this case, Ian Bremmer, talks about the theory of examining economic fallout from political events, the setup of his think tank, as well as many current events. If you have some time, do read this set of five journal entries. If nothing else, these entries confirm for me the difficulties in assessing how economics, politics, and social structures affect each other. Good reading.

Thursday, February 05, 2004

The Economist

I've written before about some great media outlets. Even with the current trouble the BBC is in, I still think it's one of the world's stellar new organizations. One glaringly mistake I made before was in not mentioning The Economist. Rare is the news org which aims for the meat of stories rather than the fluff. Rarer still is the org which has a grasp on issues and they affect the entire globe.

At example is a recent opinion article about the US dollar's devalution. I read much about the woes Europe is facing because of the huge devaluation with respect to the Euro. I've also read about why the Bush admin has perhaps encouraged the dollar to fall, making US goods cheaper to buy internationally. This is the first time I've seen any connections between these ideas, Asia's response to it, and most importantly, the effects on the global economy (especially related to the US's international debt.

Of course, this article is an opinion and not clear news, but it's just a single example of how amazingly well the staff at The Economist can put seemingly disparate pieces together into a whole which is much greater than the parts. It sounds geeky, but in reading this op/ed piece, my eyes literally bulged out and my jaw dropped (eg "WTF?!"). Not because I can't believe this is happening, but because the connections made in the op/ed piece make you think "Why has nobody else made these connections?!?!"

Even so, an Op/Ed piece is not news. The great part about the Economist is that the staff take pains to provide just these types of connections in their news coverage. And another step they take is to consider multiple angles and opposing forces (politics, social realities, etc) globally. This all contributes to a fact-based and logcally reasoned conclusion that considers much more than plain-vanilla economics.

Some of the Economist website is for paid subscribers, but much of it is free. I encourage you all to take a gander. If not online, then at the newsstand. I've found the magazine to be an invaluable resource to help understand the world at large and many of the forces which play into shaping the world in which we live today.

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

Flip It

If you've been reading my posts you know that I've been listening to a lot of BBC Asian Network and getting into more desi-style sounds. I'm not a huge fan of bhangra, but there are quite a few interesting iterations of the bhangra formula (the best being the drum n' bass twist on bhangra). I've also found that quite a few American artists have been getting Indian remixes of their own songs done (a la Truth Hurts, but many more unique than that). These are remixes commissioned by the artists themselves so they tend to be much better than random deejays taking a track and slapping a new beat onto it (a la Puffy). Some of these commissioned songs are still pretty lame since the new beat just doesn't seem to go with the lyrics, tempo, or artist's style. But some are really very good. Some have new Hindi or Punjabi lyrics, other just have the new music.

coverOne example of a great mix job is for Nelly Furtado's new single, Powerless, done by a DJ named Josh. I've been really impressed with Josh's work on this for a few reasons. First of all, I should mention that I like Nelly Furtado. She's got style all her own and can groove. So anyways, the original track is not all that amazing. The lyrics are interesting, but overall, the song feels a little slow and muddled. That's fine I suppose, but honestly, it bores me. Josh, however, proceeded to flip this song and smack it upside the head. It's really catchy and most importantly, the beat he layed down goes very, very well with the song. Maybe it's just because I appreciate a desi beat when it's more than just a basic tabla or dhol, but this guy could go far if he continues to do remixes like this. Most amazing? He didn't speed up the song at all and the new beat, when overlayed on top of the original, is exactly the same tempo.

Ok, so now you're wondering what the versions actually sound like? Well, I finally got around to taking this blog multimedia, baby! Since the track is difficult to get a hold of, I've put together a little sample of the original song and two parts of the remix to give y'all an idea of what a great job Josh did with it.

Give it a spin here (low quality, WMV file on purpose).

Anyways, since I've finally gotten around to this music sampling thing, I'll try and provide more....Drop me an email (assuming you have it since I'm not gonna leave here) if you want this song, but you're having trouble finding it.

And hey...leave a few lines to let me know how I'm doing with this blog!

Monday, February 02, 2004

From the street?

While out in The City on Friday night we ran into an interesting street marketing campaign. Marketing campaign on a Friday night clubbing excursion, you say? Well, if you haven't heard of it yet, Scion (a new car brand created by Toyota) is running a campaign which targets young urbanites (for lack of a better term). When this campaign first start I wasn't feeling it at all. I mean who's gonna go for a bland car that seriously lacks any horsepower? The campaign came on the heels of the Nissan Altima & vaious Mitsubishi campaigns aiming to please the same crowd. There are some interesting options for the Scion cars like light kits and sub-woofers that are usually the fare of after-market, souped up cars. Bascially, these car companies have tried to appeal to urbanites by connecting their cars to the "real-ness" of "the street". Hmm...

In any case, I've found some interesting ideas with the Scion campaign (the Altima & Mitsu campains may have a good track or two on their TV ads, but there's nothing else unusual about them). Not that I've been roped in and want to buy one of these ugly cars, but I've found the ideas more off-the-wall than most car campaigns and I can really see where they're coming from and the methodical approach they're taking to find appeal. The idea of appealing to club-kids would have never been on the radar to car makers just five years ago, and here Toyota (via Scion) is directly courting young urbanites. If the website doesn't angle towards this market (check out the articles on Kanye West and other "street" artists), then the club-night promotions leave you without a doubt. Rather than just handing out flyers and such, CDs and mints were being passed around in hopes of creating lasting interest. Makes sense. You always need mints, especially if you're gonna be drinking and/or smoking. But, while CD compilations can be interesting, most are too bland and boring to making it through more than one play in the car. Apparently, previous volumes of Scion's marketing CDs were just compilations like this. But now Scion has taken a novel approach to the CD compilation marketing thing.

Instead of just hiring a producer to pick a dozen tracks and slap them on a CD, Scion held DJ competitions and awarded a DJ crew the reins on their own Scion CD volume. Out of the 263 competitors, the Backyard Bangers came out on top and have since put together a smokin mix CD of a wide variety of underground hip-hop. I'm not the type to listen to the same CD several times in a day, but I've already run this thing through the spin cycle a few times and I'm liking it more and more each time. Give the tracks a listen online. And if you find any Scion folks running around club spots on a Friday night, pick up the CDs they're handing out. The cars may be wierd and unappealing, but the CDs are definitely worth it. Does this make Scion more Street? Doubt it.

But hey, I wrote about them didn't I?