This poem was written for the Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy performance at the Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science (CCIS) building at the University of Alberta on March 12, 2015. The poem was inspired by radio-telescopic recordings of the sounds made by the planets in our solar system.
All the celestial bodies referenced here are in the video linked above. Enjoy!
What’s that sound?
Yes, that one
The ringing echoes
of the orb that wears the crown
This is Radio Free Jupiter!
Pugnacious punk ambient radiophonic red-spot rock ‘n’ roll
ringing through the solar system
like it was hers to begin with
Big sexy gas giant, switched-on solar circuitry with storms to burn
What’s that sound?
No, that one
That rumbling in the shadows
that frosty splash of sulphur ash aside the colossus
Hadal contrabass counterpoint
Volcanic blasts splattering at the swirling gaseous canvas
spread across its sky
Ionic artspace, Jackson Pollock studio, Jovian circuitry, silver and gold pockmarks
with guttural undulating undertones
What’s that sound?
No, that one
That swirling urgency
that plaintive pulse
from the dark side of the ringed one
singing and sobbing
Miranda is bleeding, scratched and forlorn
Saturnine by nature and temperament
forever howling at the canopy of night
What’s that sound?
Not that one, that one
For whom does that bell toll?
Ringing like arctic blasts
through a hundred haunted bell towers
Is this the solemn chill that calmed the waters to somnolent Sri Lanka?
The dissonant chimes that calls the Milky Way to prayer?
Váruna, Ouranos, sawing sideways through cosmic currents
buzzsaw of the beyond, slicing space with morbid grace
What’s that sound?
Yes, that one
That splash of blue ocean
amid the black beyond
delicately orchestrated typhoons
of silver strings
rhapsody in cobalt and ultramarine
Holst never stopped to listen to the blue voice
The Mystic, it turns out, was also the romantic
What’s that sound?
The slow hiss
Hubble’s dilemma
That pulsing spectral omnipresence
the gears of the cosmic wheelhouse
locking and grinding
forever stretching the perimeter
of the Eridanus Supervoid
Hello darkness, my old friend
In space everybody can year you scream
hear you scratch and rage against the void
skip along the stone paths of the Kuiper Belt
and sing along with mournful Sedna’s
Skeleton Woman blues
pausing at Señor Gomez’s burger bar
before a night swim in the gently lapping magenta lagoon nebula
Sounds like a nothingth of an eternity in the universe
where superlatives reign supreme and dark matter matters
Seeing tonight's performance of Body of Colour at the ATB Arts Barns in Old Strathcona reminded me of why I adore Edmonton's arts scene. In artistic terms Edmonton is truly the Goldilocks City - big enough that there's always something interesting going on but small enough that the local scene is accessible, friendly and relatively free from the sort of tribal fault lines that tend to carve up the scenes of the world's larger cities.
A number of years ago I interview Mile Zero Dance artistic director and Body of Colour collaborator Gerry Morita for an article in Avenue Edmonton magazine. When I asked her what it was that kept her in Edmonton after having lived and worked in Vancouver, Montreal and Tokyo, she responded that, among other things, it's Edmonton's natural inclination towards interdisciplinary artistic collaboration, a trait she attributed to the city's lack of 'tribalism' in the arts.
Having had the good fortune to be New Music Edmonton's blogger-at-large, I've come to realize how true this observation really is. Spend enough time in artistic circles in this town and you tend to see many of the same names in projects and contexts that you'd never expect. In this particular performance, Morita, the 'big name' on the ticket, opted for a supporting role for the show's real 'star', mezzo-soprano Michelle Milenkovic, whose magnificent instrument was matched only by her incomparable stage persona.
Nobody - not even NME director Ian Crutchley - really knew how to introduce this show. A few minutes into it revealed why. Body of Colour is in essence a collective brainstorm run wild, courtesy of singer Milenkovic, dancer Morita and stage, set and lighting designer Daniela Masellis. The dramatic set pieces (giant musical score canvas screens) and jarring lighting, combined with Milenkovic's haunting musical soliloquies, gave the show the dramatic tension of a Greenaway or Pasolini film, while Morita's understated choreography, much of which was behind the giant screens, had all the impish mystique of Balinese shadow puppetry.
The show began with a piece originally conceived for Mile Zero's Bodies in O show, featuring one of Edmonton composer Shawn Pinchbeck's characteristic noise soundscapes shoved against a lachrymal aria from Henry Purcell's opera Dido & Aeneas. The performance focused largely on the innovative solo voice compositions of Greek-French composer Georges Aperghis, an innovator best known for his blended singing-spoken word text looping compositions written for French stage actress Mariane Viard, as well as vocal works by NME favourite Luciano Berio.
An excerpt from Georges Aperghis' Récitations (source: sepia.ac-reims.fr)
But there was none of the dry, antiseptic sting that often comes with this sort of music. The show's steady parade of unlikely props, which included (in no particular order) a wheelchair, various carpentry tools, playing cards, a bathtub and honest-to-god shots of grappa kept things interesting.
The second half of the show was particularly rivetting. After some particularly flirtatious and sarcastic material by Aperghis, the mood shifted to the emotionally roller-coastery with a gut-wrenching performance of Cigane, a Serbian-language Roma (Gypsy) protest anthem that was adopted as the official Roma anthem for the First Roma Conference in 1971. (Spoiler alert: this is when the grappa shots were distributed among the audience. Ziveli, y'all!)
The show concluded with some re-imagined Mahler lieder centred on nostalgia and the beauty of the ephemeral, as represented by the 'Lindenbaum' (linden tree). And this too was taken to its dramatic logical conclusion, with Morita morphing into a shadowy forest imp and Milenkovic donning a tree goddess crown and assuming the role of some sort of Jesus of Nazareth/Lorax hybrid. These things don't explain themselves, but as a BC boy who's had his share of transcendental experiences in forests, I think I get it.
The incomparable Michelle Milenkovic (Source: New Music Edmonton)
The second-last performance of the 2013-2014 NME season might just have been its highlight. Funny, sexy, intense, disturbing at points and totally compelling from start to finish, Body of Colour is, if nothing else, a great showcase of what this city's artistic community does best - put a bunch of creative people in a room together (usually in the dead of winter) and get them to come up with something cool and improbable. And if you're in Edmonton and are looking for something interesting to do tomorrow night, I highly recommend checking this show out, which runs again tomorrow night at 7:30 at the Arts Barns.
And if you can't make it, at least carve out some time this summer to get down to the river valley with your Dr. Dre headphones, find an isolated corner of the wood and meditate to some Mahler. Or some Berio. Or whatever. We're a cool, weird town here - we all owe it to ourselves to take full advantage of that fact.
When academics assert that the 21st century belongs to Asia, they're generally talking about economics - not rock 'n' roll. And yet, if the current global musical landscape is any indication, it would appear the same can be said about rock and pop music. Pity, though, that the western world has yet to really take note. The global phenomenon of Psy's 'Gangnam Style' last year launched South Korea onto the forefront western pop music, but as I noted in a post back in December, foreign-language hits in the Anglo-American world tend to be flashes in the pan - as indeed he is proving to be. While Park Jae-sang deserves much credit for raising the profile of Asian pop music in the west, there's only so much one tuxedo-clad Monty Python horse-riding Korean rapper can do.
Sadly, North America is a veritable Hermit Kingdom when it comes to popular music. K-Pop, J-Pop and all its other regional variants are old news in much of the world, especially within Asia, where language differences have proven to be of little barrier onslaught of Japanese, Korean and Chinese pop and rock acts across the continent at large, with growing numbers from other Asian countries adding new vectors to the continental music picture. Beyond East Asia, artists from Korea, Japan and elsewhere are making waves in countries as divergent as Turkey, Poland and Brazil, places where, unlike in Asian countries, cultural proximity can in no way be counted on to compensate for language gaps.
While most of the Asian pop music taking over the world's airwaves is of the candy-coated teen pop variety, this is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Virtually all of the continent's major cities abound with punk, funk, prog, metal and electronic music, much of which seems to possess a rawness and energy that seems to be lacking in the Anglo-American west. A major factor, no doubt, is the fact that most of these countries are relatively young democracies with deeply rooted socially conservative mores, where tattoos, wild hair and loud music still count as acts of rebellion. Whatever the case, Indonesia's skatepunks and Vietnam's headbangers could well teach their North American counterparts a lesson on how to rock 'n' roll.
A list of must-hear contemporary Asian bands could well run into the hundreds. Here is my own semi-educated top ten.
1. Galaxy Express
Origin: Seoul, South Korea
Style: Alt-Punk
Recommended for fans of: The Ramones, Manic Street Preachers, Foo Fighters, Kings of Leon
Source: seoulbeats.com
Anyone who thinks the idea of Korean punk rock sounds absurd needs to better acquaint themselves with Korea. And punk rock. We're talking a hard-boiled country with a tumultuous modern history whose present-day economic prosperity (in the South, that is) has done nothing to soften its people's flinty temperament. It's a country where student protests are practically a national sport and parliamentary democracy is (literally) a bloodsport, with debates on national security occasionally degenerating into fisticuffs that would make Tie Domi blush. The language is gutteral, the profanity colourful, the food fiery and the road etiquette borderline homicidal. It don't get much more punk than this!
That said, South Korea's domestic rock scene hasn't always had it easy; as late as the 1980s the military government regularly censored various acts. But after a quarter century of democracy, K-Rock has truly come of age. And of the current crop of bands, indefatigable alt-punkers Galaxy Express are generating the most attention, with a Best Band award at the 2011 Korean Music Awards, three US tours and a major following in Japan. Since forming in 2006, the trio of guitarist/vocalist Park Jong-hyun, bassist/vocalist Lee Ju-hyun and drummer Kim Hee-kwon have built a reputation as one of the hardest working bands on the planet. Punk passion meets Confucian work ethic - that's the Galaxy Express trademark!
2. Dachambo
Origin: Yokohama, Japan
Style: Jam Rock, Psychedelia, Neo-Prog
Recommended for fans of: Phish, Juno Reactor, I Mother Earth, Hawkwind, Fela Kuti, early Santana
Source: i.listen.jp
For a country with such strict drug laws, Japan has a remarkably enduring love affair with psychedelia and all things hippie. A straight-laced society on the surface, the country does indeed possess a strong granola-crunching, Gaia-worshipping streak, as is evident in the Lorax-on-acid visions of Hayao Miyazaki, the peace-love-dope lyrics of bands like dub reggae legends Audio Active and the hemp-clad denizens that congregate every year at festivals like the Fuji Rock Festival, Asagiri Jam and so on. It's also a country with a longstanding devotion to progressive rock, with some Tokyo record stores seeming to specialize in rare King Crimson and Magma bootlegs as well as those of J-Prog legends like Hikashu, Shingetsu and the Ruins.
Combining these two national predilictions is Dachambo, Japan's premiere psychedelic jam band. Dachambo burst onto the local scene in 2004 with their debut album Dr. Dachambo in Goonyara Island with their mesmerizing brand of classic jam and psychedelic rock, and have since been a fixture at the Fuji Rock Festival, Japan's biggest rock music festival. Combining Santana-inspired guitar riffs and Latin percussion, Hawkwind-style space rock synth patches, a heavy dose of Afrobeat (including a memorable cover of Fela Kuti's 'Zombie' on their debut album) and their trademark didgeridu, this Yokohama sextet manages to sound like the entire globe - if it were ground up, stuffed into a bong and then smoked. By Japanese hippies.
3. Matzka
Origin: Taidong, Taiwan
Style: Folk Rock, Reggae
Recommended for fans of: Michael Franti, Burning Spear, Shokichi Kina, Ry Cooder
Source: thinktaiwan.com
Taiwan is a small island with a big, complicated personality. An independent nation state in all but official designation, it exists in political limbo while it continues to grapple with its legacy of Japanese colonialism, Cold War-era Guomindang authoritarianism and enduring friction between the 'native' Taiwanese (of Han Chinese descent), newer settlers from the mainland and the island's non-Chinese indigenous peoples. Add to that the influence of rapid economic growth and the wholesale urbanization of a once overwhelmingly agrarian society - coupled with political factionalism that, like in South Korea, occasionally results in parliamentary punch-ups, and you have a combustible culture ripe for artistic expression.
While Taiwan's aboriginal tribes represent only two percent of the island's population (and a significantly smaller portion of its economic pie), Taiwan's first people nevertheless occupy an outsized position in the country's contemporary music scene, producing international pop stars like A-mei, Difang, Samingad and Landy Wen. With an indigenous cultural resurgence now gaining strength, a growing number of aboriginal artists are loudly proclaiming their roots. Of this new generation, the most successful has been Song Weiyi (aka Matzka) and his quartet by the same name. Mixing reggae, folk rock and traditional vocals, in a combination of Mandarin and the Paiwan language, Matzka has proven to be a hit not only across the island but on the mainland as well.
4. Radioactive Sago Project
Origin: Quezon City, Philippines
Style: Funk, Jazz-Rock, Punk, Ska, Spoken Word
Recommended for fans of: Soul Coughing, P-Funk, early Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primus, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Source: shootingcorners.blogspot.com
When it comes to absorbing western musical influences and making them their own, the Philippines have had an enviable head start over all their Asian neighbours. With 300 years of Spanish colonialism followed by a half-century under Stars and Stripes, the land of jeepneys and adobo chicken manages to be simultaneously Asian, Polynesian, Hispanic and Yankee without any apparent friction. Moreover, the presence of large overseas Filipino communities in virtually all parts of the world has helped the motherland remain on trend, which helps explain why Korean soap operas, European art films and American rap music compete for the attention of this forever easily distracted country.
The Philippines' abiding love for jazz dates back to the turn of the 20th century, when the US wrested control over the archipelago from Spain, blossoming in the swing era with ensembles like the Pete Aristorenas Orchestra, the Cesar Velasco Band, the Tirso Cruz Orchestra, the Mabuhay Band and the Mesio Regalado Orchestra. In recent years Pinoy jazz has seen a resurgence thanks to groups like Johnny Alegre Affinity, Akasha and its most outlandish practitioners, the Radioactive Sago Project. Founded in 1999 by journalist/gonzo poet Lourd De Veyra, RSP combines slam poetry on sex, drugs, corruption and life in Metro Manila with a fierce, punkified blend of funk, ska and trashy Pinoy pop with some of the capital region's top session players. Fantastic stuff!
5. Modern Dog
Origin: Bangkok, Thailand
Style: Alt-Rock, Shoegaze
Recommended for fans of: Belle & Sebastian, Placebo, Mojave 3, My Bloody Valentine
Source: thaifilmjournal.blogspot.com
Thai rock music is one of Asia's best kept secrets. First introduced to the country by American GIs, rock 'n' roll was embraced by the Thais like few others, and more than anywhere else in the continent it has served as a protest vehicle. Most famous among Thailand's early rock rebels are the veteran folk-rock quartet Caravan, a group that emerged amid the 1973 democracy movement with their distinctive blend of rock and traditional folk music and more than anybody else established a uniquely Thai rock sound. But despite this and the countless other bands ranging from metal to shoegaze, Thai rock 'n' roll hasn't travelled very well - perhaps owing to the fact that Thai artists can't count on the kind of overseas diasporic support that their Filipino and Korean counterparts enjoy.
One of the few Thai bands to achieve success outside their homeland is Modern Dog. Established in Bangkok in 1992, this stripped down Brit-rock-influenced trio consisting of vocalist-rhythm guitarist Thanachai 'Pod' Ujjin, lead guitarist May-T Noijinda, drummer Pavin 'Pong' Suwannacheep and a rotating procession of bass players has been hailed as the leading lights of Thai indie-rock and have developed niche followings in Japan and the United States. While not an international household name, Modern Dog has earned the respect of many in the international musical community; their 2004 album That Song was produced by Tony Doogan (of Belle & Sebastian and Mogwai renown) and featured cameos by Sean Lennon and Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda.
6. Ngũ Cung
Origin: Hanoi, Vietnam
Style: Progressive Metal
Recommended for fans of: Tool, Queensrÿche, Porcupine Tree, Queens of the Stone Age, Rush
Source: rockstorm.vn
What is it exactly about the old Soviet Bloc and its near-universal prediliction for heavy metal? Is it the Soviet Brutalist architecture? The labour camp atmosphere? The bad fashion? Whatever the reason, from Minsk to the Mongolian steppe, Stalin's children have in vast numbers traded the hammer and sickle for the pentagram and collective farming for collective hair-thrashing. The land of Ho Chi Minh, it turns out, is no exception, although it took a bit longer for it to gain a foothold there. Vietnam's nascent 1960s rock scene, concentrated in wartime Saigon, was all but quashed by the communists following their victory over South Vietnam in 1975, and even with the Đổi Mới reforms of the 1980s it was slow to resurface.
The past decade, however, has seen Vietnamese rock music blossom like never before. And given that the country has all the requisite ingredients - a tortured past, a socialist present, a melancholy culture with a flair for melodrama and a language full of cool diacritical marks (Eat your heart out, Mötley Crüe!) - it was only a matter of time before Vietnam emerged as a metal powerhouse. Of this new generation of Vietnamese hard rockers, the most prodigious are the prog-metal quintet Ngũ Cung (lit. 'Pentatonic'). Made up of graduates from the Hanoi Conservatory of Music and led by operatic vocalist Hoang Hiep, Ngũ Cung first gained attention through a national talent show in 2007 and then drew international praise for their epic debut album 365000. Expect more from these guys!
7. Biuret
Origin: Seoul, South Korea
Style: Alt-Rock, Goth/Emo
Recommended for fans of: Evanescence, Flyleaf, Garbage, The Gossip, Muse
Source: londonkorealinks.net
Sadly, Asian rock, like rock music everywhere else, remains a very male-dominated affair. All across the continent, female performers have tended to be relegated to the bubblegum pop/male eye-candy category, wherein performers are judged more on their looks than their musical ability and tend to fade from the public eye after a brief halcyon period. While a few countries produced their own equivalent to the early 1990s Riot Grrl scene, with the exception of Japan (where female-led alt-rock units like Buffalo Daughter, Shonen Knife and Cibo Matto achieved substantial success), female-driven punk and alternative rock has largely remained underground, and information on such bands (in English at least) is hard to come by.
There are, of course, a few welcome exceptions. Of the current crop of hard-hitting Korean band taking Asia (and to a lesser extent North America and Australia) by storm, among the most incendiary is goth-punk outfit Biuret, led by charismatic frontwoman Won Moon-hye (who also maintains a double-life as a musical theatre performer). Established in Seoul in 2002, the band first gained prominence by opening for Oasis in the Korean capital and in 2009 shot to the top echelons of Asian rock by winning the Sutasi Pan-Asian Music Award, followed by festival appearances in Australia and the UK. With their gothic intensity and manga-esque style, Biuret have become helped elevate the stature of Korean rock abroad while combatting gender clichés at home.
8. Tengger Cavalry
Origin: Beijing, China
Style: Black Metal, Folk/Pagan Metal
Recommended for fans of: Turisas, Burzum, Hellthrone etc.
Source: last.fm
It should surprise no one that the tough denizens of the nation founded by Genghis Khan have developed a profound love for heavy metal. Metal bands began emerging in Mongolia almost immediately after the fall of the communist regime in 1990, led by acts like Hurd, Kharanga and Niciton. Veteran Mongol metalheads Hurd ('Speed'), with their trademark wolf pelts and portraits of the Great Khan, heralded the emergence of an eastern equivalent to Scandinavia's viking metal, and in doing so provoked a modicum of panic in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where in 2004 the authorities cancelled a Hurd gig on fears of ethnic unrest and riot police were forced to disperse a crowd of 2,000 irate fans.
Ironically, the most extreme of the Mongol Horde-inspired metal bands originates from the other side of the Great Wall in the city that Genghis conquered and made the centrepiece of his Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty. Named after the chief deity in traditional Mongol shamanism (Zh: 铁骑), Tengger Cavalry was originally formed as a one-man project by a multi-instrumentalist known as Nature Zhang, and has since grown into a six-piece behemoth, incorporating Tibetan/Mongolian throat singing and traditional North Asian instruments into Scandinavian-style doom metal - to terrifying effect. While the band has yet to tour outside China, they have begun attracting significant overseas attention, opening for Finnish pagan metal Turisas in Beijing this spring.
Fans of this genre should also check out the Kazakhstani band Aldaspan, who, like Tengger Cavalry, have married metal with the traditional sounds of the steppe to make music that will make you want to loot and pillage your way along the Silk Road.
9. Billfold
Origin: Bandung, Indonesia
Style: Hardcore/Skatepunk, Riot Grrl
Recommended for fans of: L7, Suicidal Tendencies, Bad Religion, Fugazi, Rancid
Source: facebook.com/thisbillfoldbandung
It's worth noting that in the vast majority of Asian countries, being a punk rocker (or any other breed of rocker for that matter) is considerably easier today than it was a generation ago. Of the artists profiled here, all but two hail from electoral democracies, and the two countries that aren't are nonetheless much more socially and culturally permissive now than they were 20 years ago. That said, socio-political challenges remain. In Indonesia the past decade-plus of uninterrupted democracy has also seen a rising tide of Islamism, which is making life increasingly difficult for the country's famously passionate hardcore/skatepunk community. In Medan in Islamist-dominated Aceh Province, 65 punks were arrested over a year ago and sent to re-education camps, and even in the liberal capital Jakarta religiously motivated crackdowns on punk venues have occurred.
In spite of rising religiosity, punk continues to thrive in the world's largest Muslim country, aided in no small part by the country's wholesale embrace of social media. (Jakarta alone produces 2.4 percent of the world's tweets.) Among the latest crop of Indo punk acts, one of the most compelling is Billfold. Founded in 2010 in the hardcore hotbed of Bandung, West Java, Billfold is everything the local Islamists love to hate - a female-fronted social media-savvy skatepunk outfit. While information on the band in English is hard to come by, the writhing masses of punked-up youth prostrating at the feet of frontwoman Gania Alianda and their 31,000-plus Twitter following (nearly half of Rancid's tally and nearly 20 percent of Henry Rollins') suggests these kids are on to something. Allah be praised; punk is not dead!
For a country that has long been placed on a pedastal by western artists, India's ascendency as a legit force in contemporary popular music was a long time coming. With the notable exception of prodigal son Farrokh Bulsara (better known to the world as Freddie Mercury), Indian artists have long chafed under western preconception of uncoolness, either lumped in with classicists like Ravi Shankar and Zakir Hussain or with the cheesy morass of Bollywood. This finally began to change in the 1990s with the emergence of diasporic artists like Talvin Singh, Sam Zaman/State of Bengal and Asian Dub Foundation in the UK and Karsh Kale and Monica Dogra in the US, whose varied crossover projects heralded a 21st century 'Cool India' renaissance.
In the meantime, social change and rapid economic growth have transformed the motherland's music almost beyond recognition in the past decade. In the late 1990s, Delhi boys Gaurav Raina and Tapan Raj founded the electronic crossover combo MIDIval PunditZ at a time when the Indian capital still barely had any nightclubs. Today live music venues abound in India's major cities, and the scene that Raina and Raj helped establish has created a powerful bridge between the diaspora and homegrown artists. With five studio albums under their belt, numerous overseas festival appearances and an impressive list of collaborators, including Karsh Kale, Anoushka Shankar, Monica Dogra and Assamese folk rocker Angaraag 'Papon' Mahanta, Indian music has never looked more enticing.
And one honourable mention
One country notably absent from this list is, not surprisingly, North Korea. I did so try to find a North Korean band to include here, but alas I came up empty-handed. The People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam may still be one-party authoritarian states, but the fact that bands like Tengger Cavalry and Ngũ Cung can not only operate openly but also perform overseas attests to their countries' increasing openness and social liberalization. Sadly, musicians inside the People's Democratic Republic of Korea enjoy no such freedom, and while closet punks, headbangers, emo kids and ravers may exist, there's little likelihood of any North Korean bands reaching western audiences anytime soon.
The video below was the best I could do. Given that official party functions are about the only gig to be had in this country, this type of thing is the closest thing to a rock concert any North Korean is likely to attend. I have no idea who these musicians are or even the significance behind this particular rally (possibly a missile launch, if the film footage a behind the band is any indication), but at the very least these ladies have a chance to make some music. And the pyrotechnics on display here are vaguely reminiscent of Kiss. That aside, the only silver lining is that China was just as despotic as present-day North Korea under Mao Zedong. Hopefully in a decade's time I'll be able to write about a rock renaissance in Pyongyang. In the meantime, though, you'll have to content yourselves with this.
Rumours of the death of Facebook, to paraphrase Mark Twain, have indeed been greatly exaggerated. While much has been made of statistics showing declines in Facebook use among youths in the Anglo-American world, the Coca Cola of social networking sites continues to grow precipitously across the globe, particularly in the developing world. By the end of the first quarter of 2013, Facebook's total population exceeded 1.1 billion, a population roughly on par with India and one out of seven human beings. And at its current rate of growth, it will exceed China's population sometime in 2014.
But while we're still a ways away from Peak Facebook, it is true that the world's largest social media network is in decline in certain quarters, most notably among adolescents and young people in the industrialized English-speaking world. This is not a new phenomenon, having been identified as early as mid-2011, but one that recently has become more pronounced. A recent Guardian article stated that Facebook has lost 10 million visitors in the US and seen no
growth in monthly visitors in the UK over the past year. While accurate data is hard to come by, anecdotal research suggests that the lion's share of this decline is among adolescents and twenty-somethings.
The reasons behind this decline amongst the youths isn't difficult to fathom. Facebook has long lost its coolness cachet, and now that most kids' parents are now on Facebook, it has now officially become the social networking equivalent of Dockers pants and minivans. Moreover, the past couple of years have seen a plethora of new social media compete for the kids' attention. The era of the big, all-encompassing social media networks like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter has given way to the era of niche tools like Pinterest, Vine and others - boutique tools that eschew the path of trying to be everything for everyone. Facebook already has that market cornered anyway.
So where are the kids going? According to Denise Rowden in her article in Empowering Parents, the under-15 crowd is migrating to photo-sharing networks like Instagram and Snapchat, as well as to Kik, a messaging app that offers greater anonymity than standard text messaging because there’s no specific number linked to the text. Meanwhile the young and hip are moving onto niche platforms like the monosyllabic trio Vine, Chirp and Pheed. At least they were last month. Who knows now?
Source: murraythenut.com
That said, there's a lot to be said for keeping at least a foothold in Facebookistan, at least if you're 30 or older and you care about being connected with people. From my own standpoint, Facebook, in spite of its imperfections, has gotten me back in touch with a hell of a lot of people I had previously fallen out of touch with. Many of these are old university pals I met in Tokyo who live in an assortment of non-English-speaking countries, including big fast-developing places like India and Indonesia where the almighty Book of Face continues to scale new heights. J'y suis, j'y reste....pour le moment.
But at the same time I still have an insatiable desire to be ahead of the curve (which is just grownup-speak for wanting to be cooler than thou). That and being a social media "guru" (as one person actually had the audacity to call me recently) at my place of business, it's my job to stay on top of this stuff. It's also my hobby, although at times I think I'd be better served taking up something more useful like knitting or carpentry. In the advent of the collapse of civilization as we know it, my LinkedIn endorsements for SEO copywriting and social media marketing will be worth less than a Zimbabwean banknote. Oh well, it's what I do.
Here are the most interesting alternatives to Facebook out there. As a caveat, I don't actually use all of these. That's why I don't like the 'guru' description - we're all just trying to figure this stuff out.
1. Pheed
Of all the new social media platforms on the block, none have generated as much online buzz as this one. Launched in October 2012, Pheed combines the basic microblogging format with a unified platform for sharing all forms of digital content, including photos, audio clips, voice notes, video, and live broadcasts. Users can subscribe to other users' channels and view their subscribed channels' content in real time and can can 'love' or 'heartache' specific pheeds, hashtags and 'pheedback' as well as 'remix' content in a fashion similar to a retweet. It also allows users to directly sell their creative work, making it a sort of amalgam of Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Etsy.
In less than a year of existence, Pheed is considered by many to be the 'next big thing' in social media. Described by Forbes as "Twitter with a business plan," Pheed was ranked the #1 app in the Apple Top Charts social category in February 2013, above both Twitter and Facebook. Thus far it has made inroads into a predominantly US youth market, boosted by celebrity endorsements by the likes of Chris Brown, David Guetta and Miley Cyrus and finding a huge following amongst the skateboarding community. Some commentators have expressed skepticism over this much-ballyhooed new tool, dismissing it as a copycat app with a lot of hype and little substance. But if coolness cred is what you're after, Pheed is the place to be.
2. Path Path is a photo sharing and messaging service for mobile devices touted by many as a potential Facebook-slayer. Launched in 2010 by Shawn Fanning and former Facebook executive Dave Morin, Path passed the 10 million user mark in May of this year. The network's sales pitch is a clever one, going for the jugular of its superpower rival. "Tired of managing 'friendships' with people you've never met?" its tagline asks. "Then come to us. You can only have 150 friends, making this the network you'll use to speak to people you actually like." An aesthetically pleasing app with a pithy focus, the site also functions well as a companion to Facebook and other social network platforms.
While Path's growth has been impressive, the now three-year-old platform has not been without controversy. In February 2012, the company landed in hot water for accessing and storing member phone contacts without their knowledge or permission, earning them an $800,000 fine from the US Federal Trade Commission. More controversy has followed this year when Path was caught spamming contacts without permission. (Guardian tech commentator Alex Hern quipped that CEO Morin, as an alum of both Apple and Facebook, has "inherited some of the worst traits of his old bosses.") But PR debacles aside, Path has an excellent project that continues to garner positive reviews. We'll see if it can stay out of trouble.
3. Medium and Branch
No it shouldn't.
The dynamic duo of Ev Williams and Biz Stone revolutionized the world of self-publishing with Blogger and were part of the team that recast the globe into 140-character Haiku format with Twitter. And now they've given us two new social networks, Medium and Branch. Launched in the summer of 2012, Medium is touted as a new approach to online publishing, described as an amalgam of the best elements of Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr. Branch, meanwhile, is touted as a sort of extension to Twitter, allowing Twitter users to have more in-depth topic-centred conversations than the usual 140 character format will permit similar to the format provided by Quora.
Unlike Pheed or Path, these two platforms aim to complement existing systems rather than compete with them (not surprising considering that Williams and Stone are still Twitter directors). Medium remains an invitation-only platform whose calling card appears to be quality control (some might say exclusivity), while Branch is open to anyone with a Twitter account. But both appear to be positioning themselves as grown-up, intellectually-oriented alternatives to the social media mainstream, offering, in Stone's words, "high quality public discourse [in which] curated groups of people are invited to engage around issues in which they are knowledge[able]." Not exactly the universal sales pitch of Pheed or Path, but an intriguing alternative.
4. Yammer
Those of you who work for a large company or organization have doubtless at least heard of this one, if not used it. Touted as Twitter for internal corporate communications, Yammer is an old fart in social media terms, having been established in 2008 and sold to Microsoft in 2012. By late-2010, the service was being used by more than three million users and 80,000 companies worldwide, including 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and it continues to grow. While mainly focused on internal communication for businesses, Yammer can, in theory, be used by any collective, although groups are limited to members with the same email domain name. But this could just as easily apply to an artists' collective as a multinational corporation.
In addition to serving as a creative convection space where people chime in on projects they're working on, Yammer also serves as a release valve for company employees, giving them a sheltered space to gripe about annoying clients behind their back and start sub-groups on topics (or grievances) of interest to them. It's also a great way to solicit feedback and forge connections with collaborators on the other side of the globe, without all the noise barriers presented by Twitter. While limited in its scope, Yammer is arguably the best possible digital tool for the world's introverts - a quiet, non-intrusive way of sharing projects and building connections. But not the sort of thing you can simply 'join' on your own.
5. Flayvr
Do we really need another photo-sharing app - especially one with such a nauseatingly cutesy misspelled name as this? The reviewers of this new platform seem to think so. Launched in Israel in 2012, Flayvr takes a new and welcome approach to organizing and making sense of mobile device-based digital photo and video collections and sharing them among friends, something that many have identified as a shortcoming of both Instagram and Flickr. Co-founder and CEO Ron Levy explains that he was inspired to create Flayvr
because it was something he needed himself. "I found myself trying to
capture [family] moments with my iPhone but I found myself stuck in these
endless camera rolls."
While not the first such application (Everpix, Keepsy, Snapjoy, and Batch have all attempted the same thing), Flayvr takes it a step further with a slick, user-friendly platform focused on grouping photos for the user's own benefit and ease-of-access. As an organizational tool, Flayvr has garnered rave reviews in the tech community, particularly for its ability to show videos
playing in real-time in thumbnails along with your pictures. Still a newcomer on the scene, it remains to be seen whether this new mobile photo album-creating app will be able rise above its competition, but it appears to be gaining considerable momentum.
6. Create your own SM network
Phuck you Pheed! I'm starting a Wiki!
Say what? Remarkably not as far-fetched an idea as one might think thanks to DIY platforms like mixxt and Ning, which seek to do for social networking what Blogger and Wordpress did for online content. The results won't be as fancy as that offered elsewhere in the social media universe, but they're nothing of not authentic. Ning, relatively ancient at eight years old, offers customers the ability to create community websites with blogging, discussion forum and video functionality with its own 'like' function, although it's not free. mixxt, a DIY social media company founded in Germany in 2007 (with a foothold in Poland, Turkey and the UK), offers similar capacity on a 'freemium' basis.
And of course there's always the grand-daddy of them all: the wiki, a concept that dates back to the earliest days of the Internet. Want to create an open-source repository of information open to as many (or as few) people as you deem fit to, at no cost? The old-fashion low-tech wiki might be what you need. And thanks to the exploits of Julian Assange and others like it, there's something positively punk about the wiki, as it allows people with minimal SM expertise to swap information on everything from strategic planning to death metal lyrics to egregious violations of international law by governments who would rather not have said information made public. What's not to love about that?
I don't generally do music reviews on this blog. It's not its raison d'être and there are far better blogs out there for audiophiles than this one. But I couldn't resist doing this one. Not only was Asian Dub Foundation's latest album my audio highlight for 2011 but it was also an album which, for whatever reason, fell completely through the critical cracks. Virtually nobody reviewed it. Here's my review, for what it's worth.
I first fell in love with Asian Dub Foundation in the late-1990s following the release of their critical breakthrough album Rafi's Revenge. At that time of their emergence, the Indo-British collective occupied completely unprecedented musical territory with their idiosyncratic blend of punk, rapcore, dub reggae, drum 'n' bass and Indian raggas and their angry-yet-nuanced lyrics that touched on everything from anti-Asian racism in the modern-day UK to Britain's colonial heritage in India and the social problems that continue to plague the Subcontinent today. Many pegged the band for eventual stardom along the lines of the Beastie Boys and Rage Against The Machine.
From left: Martin Savale, Aktarv8r, Cyber, Chandrasonic, Al Rumjen, Sun-J
Somehow this never quite happened. After two critically acclaimed albums, ADF's iconic teenaged frontman, the elfin Bengali rapper Deeder Saidullah Zaman, left the band, leaving a hole that ADF has continually struggled to fill. The first post-Deeder album Enemy of the Enemy (the band's big anti-Bush statement in 2003) took the approach of a 'collective', featuring various people in the MC role. The disappointing 2005 album Tank introduced MC Spex into the leading role - an arrangement that didn't last long - while uneven but occasionally brilliant 2008 album Punkara introduced a twin MC format featuring rapper Aktar 'Aktarv8r' Ahmed and the punk-oriented vocals of former King Prawn frontman Al Rumjen, as well as memorable cameos by punk legends Iggy Pop and Eugene Hütz.
With all the personnel changes that the group has undergone in its 15-plus years of existence, Asian Dub Foundation has come to resemble a prog rock group along the lines of King Crimson or Genesis. Of the original six members, only three remain: guitarist Steve Chandra 'Chandrasonic' Savale and DJs Sanjay Gulabbhai 'Sun-J' Tailor and John 'Pandit G' Pandit. Enemy of the Enemy saw the introduction of percussionist Prithpal 'Cyber' Rajput whose dhol and tabla mastery gave the band far greater rhythmic depth, while Chandrasonic's brother Martin Savale eventually replaced Dr. Das on bass. As always, the new album features a lineup of guest artists, which this time around include female vocalists Shahla Kartouti and Kerieva, hip hop-influenced flutist Nathan 'Flutebox' Lee, string duo Chi-2 and a group of Cyber's own percussion students under the banner 'Ministry of Dhol'.
One reason why A History of Now received very little press was that the album was not paired with a tour - at least not in the western world. However, the new album was marked by a significant event in the band's history, namely its first ever tour of the band's motherland, a four-leg tour that began with an appearance at the Bacardi NH7 Weekender music festival in Pune in December 2010, will follow-up performances in Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi. ADF's first ever India may have set the tone for the new album, which provides some of the freshest, most energetic and most focused music we've heard from them in a decade.
The album's epic opener 'A New London Eye' establishes a fierce intensity that refuses to let up until the album's gentle eighth track 'Power of 10'. 'Urgency Frequency' is classic drum 'n' bass-heavy ADF that hearkens back to Rafi's Revenge, while 'London to Shanghai' is a charming 21st century travelogue underpinned by sampled Bollywood orchestra and Cyber's peppery tabla. The album's title track (a smart little song about digital media overload) features Aktarv8r at his verbal finest, while the subsequent 'Spirit in the Machine' (possibly the best track on the album) is a thundering instrumental jam featuring Cyber's Ministry of Dhol drummers and some steroid-fuelled riffs by Chandrasonic.
Cyber, Sun-J and Chandrasonic at the Hard Rock Cafe in Mumbai
Other highlights on the album include the haunting, funereal 'In Another Life' (a number that evokes nighttime riverside funeral pyres in Varanasi) as well as the furious nu-metal-esque 'Futureproof', in which the band sounds like an Indian version of Pitchshifter. As is now ADF tradition, the album steers off for a track into decidedly un-Indian musical territory, this time into Tierra Latinoamericana with the Indigenous Resistance-themed 'This Land Is Not For Sale', featuring angry Spanish-language vocals from British-Roma vocalist Kerieva. And the album finishes with a decidedly un-ADF sounding piece of shoegazer dreampop reminiscent of Galaxie 500 or Cocteau Twins ('Hey Lalita'), possibly the closest this band has ever come to a bona fide love song.
It's not a perfect album. 'Where's All The Money Gone?' (Track 6) is probably the weakest number on the album, a retreat to the sort of tired leftist 'Occupy' platitudes that made Tank a less compelling album. 'Temple Siren' is a sludgy, slightly irritating statement on organized religion (or something like that) that doesn't quite hit the mark. But other than this, there is very little to fault the band on here. Among the few who have reviewed the album, some derided it for lacking the sort of undistilled anger that characterized their earlier albums. While this is unquestionably true, it's equally true that this is an older, more self-reflective band than the rage-fuelled sextet of Rafi's Revenge and Community Music. The big themes are still there but the lyrics are more philosophical and measured. And I'm inclined to think that they don't owe us anger all the time.
Even at their youngest and most petulant, Asian Dub Foundation always did an admirable job being even-handed in their political criticism. When criticized in some quarters for what was seen as focusing on anti-Asian racism and western imperialism while neglecting social problems within their own community, the band responded with '1000 Mirrors' on Enemy of the Enemy (memorably featuring Sinéad O'Connor as guest vocalist), a scathing indictment of misogyny and domestic violence in the Indo-Pak community. A History of Now carries on this tradition with 'In Another Life', an obvious commentary on poverty and caste in India. At the same time, their tireless solidarity with oppressed peoples around the world continues on with 'This Land Is Not For Sale', a track that will surely score them a continued following in Latin America.
There's more I'd like to see ADF do. While the band has notably stayed away from the Israel-Palestine conflict (and refreshingly refrained from any discernible Israel-bashing), it would be nice to hear ADF take a stance against Islamist extremists in the wake of cartoon and video controversies and continued religious violence in the Middle East. Coming from a band with a strong following on the ideological left and at least a couple of members of Muslim background, such a statement would pack quite a punch. I would also love to see these boys confront the enduring homophobia and LGBT discrimination within South Asia and the diaspora, particularly given recent moves by LGBT groups in India to push back the tide of homophobia. Guys, if you're reading this, those are my thoughts.
Requests aside, A History of Now is Asian Dub Foundation's strongest album in a very long time, both musically and lyrically. It's certainly their best material since Community Music - and certainly a more evenly excellent album than Enemy of the Enemy or Punkara. It's an album that points to a very bright future for these now-firmly middle aged Desi electro-Bhangra-punkers as they bang and riff their way into what looks to be a tumultuous decade both at home and around the world. This band's rediscovery of its old moxie is not a moment too soon. A revitalized Asian Dub Foundation might be exactly what this angry and confused world needs right now. ADF Zindabad!
A number of years ago, my wife introduced me to The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron - the mother of all creative self-help books. To this day it remains the only self-help book I routinely recommend to others and continue to employ myself.
Those of you who read my blog know how much of a fierce skeptic I am, be it about religion, new age trends, politics, marketing or anything else that has yet to prove its mettle in the face of cold, hard investigation. I also tend to be a knee-jerk skeptic when it comes to self-help manuals. I try to keep an open mind about them but I invariably end up getting irritated and putting them back on the shelf, opting instead for one of my usual nerdy history books, an angry screed by Christopher Hitchens or some ridiculous mashup of Jane Austen and zombie apocalyptica.
But not The Artist's Way. This is a book I routinely go back to for inspiration when my creative ideas dry up or I'm otherwise feeling stuck. When I first picked up the book I had just left graduate school with a vague notion of pursuing a career in writing/communications but no real clue what I was doing. Julia Cameron's elegant stepladder-type creative exercises coupled with down-to-earth creative advice not only expanded my notions of what was possible but sharpening my writing skills like nothing else. It got me writing in a far more focused and serious manner, which in turn led to a career as a freelance writer, a sharpshooter editor and a professional communicator. I give Cameron a lot of credit for this.
While this and her follow-up books (which I confess I have yet to work my way through) are replete with excellent advice, her one main tool has done more to hone my writing skills than any other - the 'Morning Pages'. It's very simple really. You get up, you make a pot of tea or coffee or whatever, you sit down and you crank out three pages of longhand. And then you carry on with your day. Not enough time in the morning? Set your alarm 30 minutes earlier than you otherwise would. Distracted by the computer? Turn it off. No distractions. Just you, a caffeinated beverages, a pen and a notebook.
Granted, I would be lying if I said I'd been completely consistent with the Morning Pages over the years. In fact I really fell out of the habit upon moving back to Canada. Since then it's been hit and miss, but in recent months I've put forth a major effort to make sure those pages get done in the morning. And if I don't manage them in the morning, I do three pages in the evening - although 'Evening Pages' really don't pack the same processing punch.
So what, exactly, do the Morning Pages do for you? I can only tell you what they do for me, and why I currently feel compelled to get up at 5:30 in morning to do them.
1) My writing chops improve markedly when I do them.
Not that my mornings scribblings are ever poetic. Far from it - it's pure brain-dump, and brain-dump while my brain is still waking up and often mad at being up at all. I rarely read my old Morning Page notebooks after the fact, and when I do the content is often embarrassing. But being a writer is like being a musician. If you want to get good at it, you have to practice every day.
2) I feel much more organized when I do them.
For me, Morning Pages are more than a writing tool. They're an organizational tool. I have a pretty good memory when it comes to things I have to get done on any given day, but rehashing them in prose form while I'm still waking up tends to make for much more efficient, smoothly flowing workdays. And when you're trying to juggle a full-time job, a part-time study program and other extra-curriculars, this really helps.
3) Writing longhand is a refreshing departure from my usual activities.
Like most 21st-century workers, I spend most of my working life glued to a PC, and the vast majority of the writing I do is on a computer. Putting pen to paper is not only a refreshing departure from having my retinas abused by a flickering monitor but also gives me a fresh perspective on words, how they look, which ones might fit interestingly together and so on.
4) It's a great place to brainstorm.
Remember when your junior high English teacher asked you to write quietly on your own in a notebook for maybe five minutes at the beginning of class as a brainstorming exercise? I always enjoyed that. As a blogger, my best ideas for topics have generally come from three sources: sitting on the toilet, running and doing Morning Pages. And as I'm generally not on the toilet for long enough to fully flesh out an idea, it's mostly the latter two - and more Morning Pages than anywhere else.
5) It helps me wake up.
I've never been a morning person. My Morning Pages sort of act as an extra spike of caffeine in my, er, caffeine. Like a shot of whisky dropped in a pint of beer - except with the reverse effect.
6) It's a very appealing ritual.
If there's one thing I envy about people with religious faith, it's the comfort to be found in ritual - be it the flicking of rosary beads, the unrolling of the prayer mat, the donning of the turban and kirpan at the gurdwara or the waft of incense that greets you at a Buddhist temple. These days the closest I get to religious practice is writing, but I find the same kind of comfort in the laying out of my favourite rollerball pens, my notebook and a piping hot pot of Japanese tea. Granted, there's usually nothing saintly about the contents of my Morning Pages, which are often rife with expletives, but it's a daily ritual that invariably sets me off on the right foot - even when I'm dealing with all kinds of crap in my life.
For more on Julia Cameron and the power of Morning Pages, visit this site.
