First of all, can somebody smarter than me please explain to me what the hell is going on in this province?? First we were suddenly broke and hemorrhaging money left, right, and centre thanks to sagging global oil prices. Then, somehow, inexplicably, the province was running a surplus. And now gas prices are back up to nearly a buck a litre. And wasn't the whole gas price slide a punitive measure by the OPEC bigwigs against the psycho KGB cowboy in Moscow and his pals in Tehran and Damascus? I don't get it.
Whatever the case, our boom-and-bust economy is now, apparently, bust again, and our esteemed crown prince now tells us, in a nutshell, that it's our own fault. According to Jim Prentice, we all have to “look in the mirror” and take responsibility for the province’s precarious financial situation. OK Jim, I take responsibility. But what I want to know at this juncture is how much responsibility I, personally, should take. After all, I'm not from Alberta originally and have only been taking advantage of government programs and opportunities here since mid-2008. Does that mean I'm less responsible for our present mess than someone who's lived here all their life, while at the same time more so than someone who just arrived?
If we were to portion out blame equally, among all Albertans, we would technically be looking at about 7.6 seconds of penance per Albertan per year. Given that there are now 4,146,000 of us in this province, and 365 days in a year, that's literally how our wages of guilt would be monetized. You know, like the flat tax our esteemed leaders still stubbornly stand by.
But that's based on the assumption that everybody currently living in Alberta is equally culpable for getting us in the pickle that we're in. Which, as I previously mentioned, strikes me as unfair given our current rate of population growth. Alberta's population grew by 3.8 per cent in 2014, which means that of the aforementioned 4,146,000 people, about 150,000 just arrived from elsewhere, and frankly it would be unfair to saddle them with this burden of economic shame. Especially given our provincial leaders' heretofore urgent tone with regards to impending labour shortages here.
This reduces our pool of culpable Albertans to around 3,996,000. That raises our individual burden of guilt to around 7.9 seconds. Still totally manageable. That said, I don't think our dear leader would see it that way. Clearly Alberta's urban centres bear more of the blame than rural areas, given their pesky demands for better roads, better transit, more schools, more . . . everything, frankly. As of 2011 (the most recent statistics available), 83 per cent of Albertans resided in urban areas. That takes us down to roughly 3,316,000 people who are really blameworthy. So if you've lived in an urban area in Alberta for more than one full year, you now officially have to feel bad for 9.5 seconds a year.
Not so fast. At least 20 per cent of the remaining population is 18 years old or under, and clearly they can't be held responsible for the mess we're in - much as we'd like to blame them. So that takes us down to about 2,652,800 culpable individuals, or about 11.9 annual seconds of penance. And that's more substantial - more time than most of us stand with our heads bowed and our eyes closed on Remembrance Day.
And of course we haven't even begun to talk about the province's urban Aboriginal population, from whose ancestors the land now called Alberta was stolen in the first place, or the province's ethnic Japanese, Chinese, Ukrainian (that's at least 10 per cent of Edmonton), and Afro-Canadian populations, who at various times have faced fierce discrimination. Or women, who, it turns out, earn less than 65 per cent of their male counterparts in this province, putting Alberta nearly on par with South Korea, the OECD country with the worst gender wage parity. And while we're at it, LGBTQ Albertans, who still suffer from de-facto top-down discrimination through the provincial government's refusal to mandate gay-straight alliances in schools, get a pass as well.
So who are we left with? Basically a coterie of overpaid straight white men who live in urban centres and occupy positions of power. In other words, people like you, Jim. Perhaps you need to, ahem, take a look in the mirror.
It's time again for that most hallowed of Brush Talk traditions: the annual Top 10 Sexiest World Leaders contest!
All in all it was a rough year for many of 2014's Top Ten. Of the previous ten, four (Bratušek, Tymoshenko, Yingluck, and Touré) have since been put out to pasture (some democratically, some otherwise), and Haitian President Michel Martelly's days in the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince may be numbered, with ongoing protests and a corruption probe threatening his tenure. Meanwhile, Mexico's guapo president Enrique Peña Nieto has lost a great deal of lustre over his country's declining press freedom, a recent mass kidnapping of students in Iguala and frequent gaffes, while Italy's young premier Matteo Renzi faces an uphill battle against his country's old guard.
This year's list features an almost entirely new lineup from previous years. While Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck is still a hottie, after two years atop the sexy list it was time to move on from the Kingdom of Bhutan. And while Albanian prime minister Edi Rama continues to charm, most recently taking steps to improve his country's long frictious relations with neighbouring Serbia, we decided it was time for fresh blood. Except for Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who is simply too glamourous and wonderful to leave off the list. She makes the Top 10 for the third straight year.
It should perhaps be mentioned that when we're talking about 'sexiness' we're not simply talking physical attractiveness. Nope, we may be shallow here but we're not that shallow. Our contestants are rated on a totally non-objective range of criteria, including looks, fashion sense, personal charm and magnetism, and, wherever possible, competence in their line of work. Also, pains have been taken to assure that all regions of the world are adequately represented, although this has never proved to be a problem in these posts. So without any further ado, here is our Top Ten International Political Hottie list for 2015!
1. Helle Thorning-Schmidt
Source: dagbladdet.no
Why HTS again? Well, in addition to being arguably Europe's most glamourous sitting head of government, Denmark's Gucci-toting, Obama-selfie-snapping PM has a lot to show for her three years in office. Under her leadership, Denmark has emerged as one of Europe's best-performing economies, with an unemployment rate half the eurozone average, the lowest youth unemployment rate in the EU, and a global ranking of fourth in 'ease in doing business' (best in Europe). The country also continues to lead by example in combating climate change, with Denmark now on course to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
Of course Give-em Hell Helle hasn't been without her controversies. Obama selfies aside, the centre-left leader has antagonized many on the left in her country by clashing with teachers' unions, cutting corporate taxes, and overseeing the proposed sale of Denmark natural gas consortium DONG Energy shares to Goldman Sachs. Up for reelection in 2015, she currently trails behind Lars Løkke Rasmussen of the centre-right Venstre Party. But with an impressive list of achievements under her designer belt, Gucci Helle still enjoys substantial support - and is certainly not to be discounted.
2. Xavier Bettel
Source: purple-monkey.com
Luxembourg? Really? C'mon, I thought we were sticking with real countries here! Well, aside from having roughly similar sizes and populations, the postage stamp-sized Grand Duchy of Luxembourg also shares a certain va-va-voom factor with the similarly liliputian Kingdom of Bhutan. Instead of a smoking hot Dragon King, Luxembourg has as head of state the dashing Grand Duke Henri, who has presided over this curious vestige of the Holy Roman Empire since the death of his father Jean in 2000. But while the Grand Duke might be a looker, no man has of late been turning heads in the tiny country like its dreamy head of government, Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who in December 2013 became only the third openly gay world leader in modern history.
So how is Bettel faring thus far as Luxembourg's PM? Hard to tell. Luxembourg remains the second wealthiest country in the world by per-capital GDP (trailing only Qatar), with it and Singapore the only non-oil-based economies in the top five. Moreover, the Luxembourg Tax Avoidance Controversy that dogged his predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker appears to have had little impact on his popularity. And in August of this year the country was treated to the PM's wedding to longtime architect partner Gaultier Destenay. That and, well, how hard can it be to govern a place as small and placid as Luxembourg? Well, giventhe spectacular implosion of Iceland (a country with a population even smaller than the Grand Duchy) in the global financial crisis, that the political fallout that ensued, perhaps it's not as easy as it looks.
3. Joko Widodo
Source: metalsucks.net
Given the fact that Indonesia is a) the world's fourth most populous country; b) the world's third-largest democracy; and c) the world's most populous Muslim country, it's remarkable how little media attention the country's 2014 presidential elections received. While John Oliver famously lambasted the US media for ignoring India's general election (before Prime Minister Narendra Modi became a post-election neoliberal icon), the Indian election was a relative global media circus next to Indonesia's, which went by practically without a murmur. That said, the Southeast Asian nation's 2014 presidential election was a refreshingly placid and uncontroversial affair, which, given the country's relatively recent history of violent coups, ethnic cleansing, communal violence and systematic kleptocracy, is a refreshing sign of a maturing democracy that has come a long way from the end of the ugly Suharto era.
Indonesia's newly minted president Joko Widodo, or 'Jokowi' as he is universally known, shares Modi's rags-to-riches story, but that's where the similarities between the two leaders ends. Whereas Modi's past is clouded by controversy and his present tinged with strident religious nationalism, the colourful former governor of Jakarta appears to be remarkably controversy-free, and his presidential campaign was one centred on pluralism and religious tolerance, earning him the ire of the country's Islamists and the support of just about everybody else in a country long fraught by religious and ethnic conflict. He has also pledged to grow the country's economy by seven per cent a year for the next three years while continuing to overhaul its strained infrastructure.
Aside from his humble background as the son of a village furniture maker, he is probably best known for his abiding love of heavy metal, most notably Metallica, Lamb of God, Slayer and Napalm Death, leading LoG frontman Randy Blythe to dub him the "World's First Heavy Metal President." And at age 53 he looks at most half his age. Guess metal really does keep you young!
4. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
Source: pri.org
Argentina's Iron Lady and Presidente de la República since 2010, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has perhaps been something of an oversight in the last two years' top ten lists - if for no other reason that she seems like too obvious a choice. Style-wise she falls into the same category as Denmark's governing glamourpuss, with whom she shares a love of designer labels and haute couture, but Argentina's cougar-in-chief's sexy points stem mainly from her status as a fierce, take-no-shit political warrior with few equals. While Argentina's inflation-ridden economy remains as wobbly as ever, the widow of former president Néstor Kirchner has proven herself to be a fighter equal to her late husband, taking on billionaire US hedge fund managers and British prime ministers with equal aplomb.
Of all of Argentina's leading lady's jousting matches, the most spectacular may have been her KO against the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now known to the world as Pope Francis. While the current pontiff has made admirable, if tentative, steps towards softening the Church of Rome's hardline stance against homosexuality, it was the same Argentine cleric who took to the ring against Señora Kirchner on the issue of same-sex marriage in Argentina. She won, making Argentina the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage, and in doing so just might have helped push the Vatican's sexiest virgin in a more liberal direction. Gracias, Cristina.
5. Michelle Bachelet
Source: paula.cl
Remaining in South America's Cono Sur, 2014 saw the return to power of another one of the continent's leading female political pugilists, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, after four years in opposition. While on the surface, the hippie chick-turned-political refugee-turned-bookish socialist politician might seem like the polar opposite to her Rioplatense counterpart, the Chilean president is no less of a fighter. In her first term as president, Bachelet wasted no time exorcising the country's Pinochet-era ghosts by refusing to grant the late dictator a state funeral following his death in 2006, and three years later opening Santiago's Museum of Memory and Human Rights - a museum dedicated to documenting the horrors of Pinochet's 16-and-a-half year dictatorship.
After four years out to pasture, Señora Bachelet appears to have lost none of her old fire. Her current legislative priorities include legalizing abortion in this longstanding bastion of conservative Catholicism (abortion remains banned under all circumstances in Chile) and educational reforms aimed at narrowing the country's still pronounced socioeconomic divide. At age 63, the guitar-strumming, poetry-loving physician remains one of South America's most eligible bachelorettes. Just be prepared to take a back seat to her three children and her beloved country.
6. Taavi Rõivas
Source: LinkedIn
Estonia may not immediately spring to mind when you think of 'sexy' countries, but the small Baltic state has certainly earned its share of coolness cred since gaining independence from the USSR in 1991. From a melancholy backwater of the Soviet Union, the country has since emerged as an economic and cultural powerhouse, with the highest concentration of tech start-ups anywhere in the world and one of the world's most exciting contemporary music scenes. And while the country took a severe beating during the the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, Estonia's healthy business climate, strong ties to Scandinavia, and growing tourism industry helped make its recession far less painful than many of its fellow ex-Eastern Bloc countries.
If geek-chic has become Estonia's new modus vivendi, the country definitely has the right leadership for the job. In the largely ceremonial role of president Estonia has a bow-tied Bill Nye lookalike named Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a social media-obsessed tech maven who famously got into a Twitter spat with economist Paul Krugman over Estonia's 2008 austerity program. Meanwhile, this year's parliamentary election brought to power the baby-faced Taavi Rõivas, who at age 35 is currently the EU's youngest head of government. Combining Justin Timberlake's hair, Leo DiCaprio's jawline, and an easy fluency in four languages, Rõivas might just be the dishiest figure on the EU scene. But don't get your hopes up - his marriage to local pop princess Luisa Värk is one the the best-known things about him.
7. Portia Simpson Miller
Source: pri.org
When it comes to Gross National Sexy, the land of rum, reggae and rastafarianism has it made. Jamaica may have its problems, but lack of sex appeal has never been among them. From the seductive Irish-influenced lilt of Jamaican English to the island's bad-ass cuisine and its irresistible musical smorgasbord of reggae, ska, dancehall, rocksteady etc., Jamaica oozes sex appeal like few other places. Sadly, however, the island's politics have been decidedly less sexy over the course of the nation's young history, as its diverse economy has long been hampered by corruption and fiscal mismanagement to such an extent that a 2011 revealed that 60 per cent of Jamaicans would, if put to a vote, opt to return to direct British rule. Such sentiments are further compounded by the island's stubbornly high rate of violent crime, with poverty and corruption continuing to fuel the country's notorious gang problem.
Jamaica's current prime minister Portia Simpson Miller represents a significant departure from the island's previous leaders. As the country's first female head of government, Sista P, as she is commonly known, has shown a willingness to swim against the current when dealing with her country's warts. Most notably she has been the first Jamaican leader to publicly advocate on behalf of LGBTQ rights, a thorny issue in one of the world's most notoriously homophobic societies. While her performance on this front has been mixed in recent years, her administration has overseen a gradual opening of dialogue with gay rights groups and reforms aimed at curbing homophobic violence. And at age 69 she still looks glamourous, which helps when you're blowing kisses at LGBTQ rights protesters in New York City.
8. Joseph Kabila
Source: gabonlibre.com
Unless you're a wannabe mercenary with a serious danger fetish, the Democratic Republic of Congo is about the furthest thing from a sexy tourist destination one could possibly think of. The Central African country formerly known as Zaïre and previously known as the Belgian Congo has for most of its post-independence history been the sum of every negative cliché about the continent, from the cartoonish kleptocracy of dictator Mobutu Sésé Seko to the horrors of the country's two post-Mobutu civil wars, which together resulted in as many as 5.4 million deaths - more than any armed conflict since World War II. Even now, over ten years after the end of the Second Congo War, the eastern regions of Kivu and Ituri remain humanitarian disasters, where rape continues to be employed as a weapon of war with terrifying regularity. Indeed, using the word sexy in the same sentence as the DRC might strike some as inherently in bad taste.
That said, there once was a time when the nation's capital Kinshasa (formerly Léopoldville) was a hip and happening metropolis known affectionately as 'Kin la Belle' (Kin the Beautiful), which teemed with jazz joints and cafés, even as Mobotu and famously hosted Foreman and Ali for their legendary 1974 'Rumble in the Jungle' bout. And while much of the country remains a humanitarian nightmare, there are signs that life in the capital and other more peaceful regions is returning to normal - such as an emerging jazz festival in Kinshasa. As for sexy leadership, former guerrilla fighter-turn-president Joseph Kabila is certainly the handsomest head of state the country has had since the assassination of its dapper founding president Patrice Lumumba. While Kabila's 2012 reelection was marred by irregularities, he's been a saint compared to his predecessors - and at the very least is easy on the eyes.
9. Atifete Jahjaga / Tatiana Turanskaya
Sources: gazetadita.al / iefimerida.gr
In the ninth spot we have a split decision between two leaders whose countries fall into the category known to political scientists as 'places that don't exist'. The post-Cold War disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia left in its wake a bizarre assortment of self-declared nation states ranging in size from Kazakhstan (about four times the size of Texas) to places small enough to defend with a single large man with a Kalashnikov and a pack of rottweilers. It is into this latter category that fall the republics of Kosovo and Transnistria, two 'countries' that remain unrecognized by either much or nearly all of the world. On this front, Kosovo is on slightly more secure ground. Nearly nine years after its declaration of independence in 2008, it enjoys full diplomatic recognition from most developed western countries, including most of Europe. Transnistria, on the other hand, only enjoys recognition from fellow unrecognized breakaway republics Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia, although Russia, which maintains a troop presence in the region, continues to accord it 'special status' - whatever that means.
Transnistria and Kosovo also share the distinction of being led by two of the youngest female political leaders around. In 2013, the parliament of Moldova's breakaway eastern sliver selected as its prime minister the 40-year-old Tatiana Turanskaya, a former city administrator and mother of two, which is about all we could find out about her. (Concrete English-language information on the secretive Transnistrian Republic seems to be hard to come by.) More, however, is known about her Kosovar counterpart Major General Atifete Jahjaga, the country's former Deputy Director of Police who in 2011 became the region's youngest and first female head of state at age 35. While her ambition to move Kosovo towards EU membership might seem a long way off, she looks to have at least secured her country's place within the International Olympic Committee. Which is more than can be said for Transnistria, whose athletes have no option but to compete under the Moldovan flag.
Jahjaga and Turanskaya are both lookers - and therefore both make the list, but for all intents and purposes Jahjaga's worldly charisma and tough cop image puts her on top in the beautiful-women-running-tiny-states-struggling-for recognition category. Turanskaya appears to be more of Eastern European Danielle Smith than anything - possibly ready to cross the floor to Russia or Moldova at any moment.
10. Park Geun-hye
Source: New York Times
Of all the innumerable US-backed dictators of the late-twentieth century, few cut as jaunty a figure as South Korean strongman Park Chung-hee, who dominated his country's political scene from 1961 until his assassination in 1979. A former Imperial Japanese military officer during the colonial era who seized power in a 1961 coup, General Park is simultaneously loathed by modern-day Koreans for constructing a police responsible for a laundry list of human rights violations in the 1970s and 1980s (including the infamous Gwangju Massacre of 1980), and revered for his instrumental role in the country's spectacular economic ascendancy from the 1960s onward. Koreans' conflicted relationship with their former dictator has been thrown into sharp focus in recent years with the dramatic ascension of his daughter, Park Geun-hye, to the office he once held, making her the first female leader of any of East Asia's 'tiger' economies.
A little-known fact about South Korea's sitting president is that in 1974, as a 22-year-old university student in France, she suddenly found herself in the official role of First Lady following the death of her mother in a botched assassination attempt on the president - a direct link to the country's most autocratic period that makes many Koreans uncomfortable. But while her administration took a beating in the aftermath of the Sewol ferry disaster (although her decisive response to the disaster earned her many plaudits) and more recently has been shaken by an influence-peddling scandal within her Saenuri Party, she remains East Asia's most powerful woman according to Forbes Magazine, and her popular nickname 'Queen of Elections' if nothing else confirms her unquestionable commitment to the democratic principles her father once usurped.
While 'sexy' might not be the right adjective for the stern, buttoned-down mother of the nation, she nonetheless manages to blend Margaret Thatcher's charisma and resolve with the maternal streak of Michelle Bachelet. She remains unmarried, alluding in the past to being 'married to South Korea'. It's therefore doubtful that Korea's Iron Lady has a profile on Plenty of Fish, or whatever the Korean equivalent to that is. But with her maximum term in office to expire in 2018, one never knows for sure.
Between the Quebec Liberal Party's triumphant return to power in April to the Montreal Canadiens' inspiring run at the Stanley Cup (alas no more), something interesting has happened in Canada in the first half of this year: English-speaking Canadians seem to be rediscovering a love for La Belle Province.
What a difference a year makes! A year ago the rest of Canada seemed to have all but given up on Quebec. From the standpoint of most English Canadian media outlets, Quebec was a basket case mired in cultural and political isolationism, economic dysfunction and an alarming xenophobic streak in the form of the Parti Québécois' so-called "Values Charter" that would have passed a raft of laws against public displays of hijabs, turbans and other religious accoutrements. At the peak of the Values Charter debate, Western Canadian animosity towards Quebec was reaching such a fever pitch that it appeared a "yes" vote on sovereignty would actually be welcomed by many.
Today, however, the mood appears quite different. Canadians coast to coast cheered as the myopic, mean-spirited PQ government of Pauline Marois crashed and burned in April's election and mild-mannered brain surgeon Phillippe Couillard took the reins in Quebec City. All of a sudden National Post, a paper that can normally be counted on to blast Quebec's provincial leadership, started printing articles with titles like "Time to take Quebec seriously again" and whatnot. Even the Sun Network (once led by would-be PQ Sith Lord Pierre Karl Péladeau) has softened its usual anti-Quebec stance.
All of this is of course music to the ears of western Canadian Francophiles like myself. At the same time, though, we've seen enough of this teeter-totter in Anglo-Franco Canadian internal relations to know that if we're to build a bona fide bridge between Canada's two "solitudes" we need to try something different. My modest proposal, and one that's a win-win for everybody in my opinion, is that Anglophone Canadians can start by not only getting to know Quebec's lively homegrown music scene, but genuinely embracing it as part of a greater Canadian scene.
The fact is, in spite of all of Quebec's current problems - a moribund economy, rising unemployment, skyrocketing provincial debt, ugly (and still lingering) ethnocultural friction and the ever-present spectre of separatism and language politics, Quebec's cultural scene, and in particular its music scene, is as vibrant as it's ever been. Trouble is, almost nobody west of the Ottawa River knows this, as Francophone artists hardly get any radio play outside Quebec - and Quebec artists (understandably) feel it's more worth their time and effort booking tours in France and Belgium than in Alberta or BC.
It's a real tragedy - and a really unnecessary one at that. Unlike French-language TV and movies, which is unlikely to develop a significant following outside the French-speaking world, music has the well-demonstrated capacity to travel well outside their geolinguistic roots. Back in the fall of 2012 I wrote a post about the history of foreign language hits within the English-speaking world, including one of the few French-Canadian pop hits to ever hit the Anglo-Canadian charts, Mitsou's extremely silly but equally catchy 1988 hit 'Bye Bye Mon Cowboy'. (To Anglos she's a one-hit wonder; to Quebeckers she's a pop icon and the granddaughter of a legendary playwright who's still in the public eye as a TV host.)
The real paradox of Anglophone Canada's complicated relationship with the country's rogue province is that Anglos love visiting Quebec, especially the city of Montreal, especially in summer when the city's bazillion performing arts festival are in full swing. But as much as the rest of Canada has a love-in for Montreal's cultural scene, they tend to regard it as a foreign country - basically Paris except you don't need a passport to travel there. The result of this, of course, is that while Just for Laughs, Osheaga, the Montreal Jazz Festival and other cultural extravaganzas are well attended by non-Quebeckers, the province's homegrown acts (unless they're English language acts) are completely overlooked. Why is this? If a nerdy-looking Korean rapper can command the attention of English-speaking Canadians, why not our fellow passport-holders east of the Rideau?
My theory is that English Canada's reluctance to embrace French Canadian artists is rooted, at least in part, in fear - fear of the unknown, fear of reproach from the other "solitude" for some sort of perceived cultural Philistinism. I suspect this goes both ways, which is why Quebecois bands and solo artists hardly ever make appearances in Canada's other major cities, even as they make appearances in Paris and Brussels. Quebec and English Canada are like a strained married couple who haven't had sex in far too long, and are now in marriage counselling and trying to make amends but each one is scared to make the first move in bed.
To my mind the best prophylactic against future sovereignty SNAFUs is a genuine cultural rapprochement, starting with a genuine embrace of Quebec's currently exciting Francophone music scene. In other words, less politics, more rock 'n' roll. And for those Anglos looking for a primer to get them started, here are ten very different acts worth getting to know.
1. Ariel
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Glam Rock, Post-Punk, Electroclash
Recommended for fans of: T. Rex, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Libertines
Source: francophil.ca
Noisy, sassy and glamourous, Ariel is one of the most exciting rock bands on the Canadian scene today - and one that graphically illustrates Canada's linguistic problem when it comes to arts and culture. One of the freshest young rock acts in the country today, Ariel is virtually unknown in Canada outside La Belle Province in spite of a growing following in Paris and Brussels. Founded in 2007, this Montreal-based quintet is made up of members from across the province (including Baie-Comeau, Saguenay, Sherbrooke and Quebec City) and centred on a fetching, multitalented Richey Edwards lookalike named Ariel Coulombe.
Since the release of their 2010 debut album Après le crime, the grungy, synth-heavy glam punk of Coulombe and his gang have gained considerable critical acclaim for both their music and their outlandish music videos, including best emerging artist at the 2010 Osheaga festival and a Juno nomination for the video for "Chargez!" (see below). Their latest lineup for their brand new 2014 release Fauve features an unorthodox twin bass configuration and a darker sound overall, according to Coulombe in a recent interview. Having already established themselves as one of Montreal's most exciting young bands, the next obvious step would be a western Canadian tour.
Which, I should mention, I've already bugged them about on Facebook. So if you see these kids in a western Canadian city near you in the next little while, I say "de rien" in advance.
2. Jimmy Hunt
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Folk Rock, Alt-Rock, Shoegaze
Recommended for fans of: Wilco, Bright Eyes, Mojave 3, Robert Charlebois
Source: jimmyhunt.bandcamp.com
Montreal is a busker's paradise, as anybody who has spent anytime there in the summer months will attest to. And indeed it has been this street music scene that has launched the careers of many a Quebecois singer-songwriter, including that of newcomer Jimmy Hunt, who in spite of his Anglo-sounding name is a thoroughly Francophone singer-songwriter very much out of the tradition of Robert Charlebois, Gilles Vigneault and other iconic Quebecois song crafters. After about 12 years as a guitar and harmonica-toting street busker, Hunt made his recording debut in the mid-2000s with the briefly successful alt-rock combo Chocolat before going solo with his distinctive blend of Dylanesque folk rock, twangy alt-country and synth-laden pop evoking everything from late-seventies Bowie to the early 1990s British shoegaze scene.
Like so many Quebec artists, Hunt's acclaim, while widespread in his own province, has largely ground to a halt at the provincial borders, forcing to look across the pond for touring opportunities. Which is a real pity given that his poetry remains firmly rooted in the scenery and vibes of the city of Montreal, particularly in his critically acclaimed latest album Maladie d'amour, which beautifully merges his many and varied musical influences. If anybody truly captures Montreal's inimitable street vibe, it's this guy. And Montreal, last time I checked, was still in Canada. So it would be worth the rest of Canada's time to give this Jimmy Hunt guy a chance.
3. Forêt
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Dreampop, Trip Hop
Recommended for fans of: Cocteau Twins, Mazzy Star, Lamb, St. Vincent, Portishead
Source: journalmetrocom.files.wordpress.com
Montreal's rich musical legacy has generally come in two flavours: French and English, with the city's Francophone artists usually taking their cues from Paris and their Anglo counterparts from London and New York. But while the political divide between French and English Canada has never been more pronounced, there are signs that the artistic (or at least the musical) divide is starting to narrow. Case in point is the highly acclaimed new group Forêt, a group that's been lauded by numerous Quebec music critics as a breath of fresh air in the province's music scene. Unlike the electropop of groups like Le Couleur that hearken to Daft Punk, Stereolab and other continental artistes, vocalist Émilie Laforest and her group combine French-language lyrics with a very British sound evocative of Cocteau Twins' hypnotic dream pop and the melancholy trip hop of Portishead - one of the band's oft-stated seminal influences.
With Laforest's haunting, Liz Fraser-esque vocals and Joseph Marchard's shoegazey guitar work, Forêt is most definitely a departure from the music typically associated with La Belle Province. And as a brand new act (only a couple of years old), these trippy Montrealers make great candidates for some serious music bridge-building with the rest of Canada - if the rest of Canada can get over its phobia of French-language lyrics. But in the shoegaze/dream pop genre, the lyrics really don't matter much, do they? After all, is there a single Cocteau Twins or Slowdive song where the lyrics were actually intelligible?
4. Lisa LeBlanc
Origin: Rosaireville, NB
Style: Alt-Country, Blues Rock
Recommended for fans of: Dixie Chicks, Riff Cohen, Bonnie Raitt, Karen Zoid
Source: newslestudio1.files.wordpress.com
It should be noted at this point that La Belle Province is not the only provincial player in Canada's Francophone music scene. New Brunswick's 200,000-strong Acadian population (roughly a third of the province's population) has long had an outsized artistic presence, fired up by a turbulent history and a gnawing aggravation from having been forgotten about by both Quebec and English Canada in equal measure. While Acadian music remains, for most Canadians, synonymous with cheesemeister Roch Voisine, the Acadians' long tradition of great poetry has made Francophone New Brunswick a treasure trove of great singer-songwriters, including the late Angèle Arsenault, legendary hillbilly-hippy country star Réginald "Cayouche" Gagnon and the multitalented singer-poet-actor Marie-Jo Thério.
The latest addition to the ongoing Acadian musical love-in is the young and sassy Lisa LeBlanc and her unique brand of twangy, raunchy 'trash rock' delivered in the characteristic 'Chiac' dialect of northern New Brunswick - a blend of French, English and lumberjack drawl. At 23, LeBlanc is getting a great deal of exposure in the Francophone media, and her star is clearly rising. At any rate she should made a refreshing departure from Roch Voisine's suburban fromage.
5. Syncop
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Worldbeat, Reggae
Recommended for fans of: Abdel Ali Slimani, Michael Franti, Riff Cohen, Asian Dub Foundation
Source: festivalnuitsdafrique.com
For a province that gets more than its share of flak from English Canada for its supposed isolationism and ethnocentrism, Quebec is a pretty diverse place. Roughly ten per cent of Quebec's population belongs to a visible minority, putting it smack dab in the middle of the provincial pack and only a tiny bit below the national average of 11 per cent. That said, Quebec's "ethnics" (to quote Jacques Parizeau) are disproportionately concentrated in the Montreal region (and to a lesser degree in Quebec City), with the 'Pure Laine' rural ridings, with their outsized electoral sway, ensuring that the xenophobes in the Parti Québécois have plenty of ethnocentric outrage to tap into. But even this is slowly weakening, as the latest provincial election results would suggest.
It's worth noting, particularly amid the recent anti-religious accoutrement hysteria in Quebec, that the province's third most widely spoken language (after French and English) is Arabic, a fact due primarily to immigration from the former French colonies in North Africa, as well as from former French Middle Eastern mandates Syria and Lebanon. Arab cultural influence is particularly evident in the city of Montreal, and is starting to find its way into the local scene thanks to worldbeat artists like Karim Benzaïd, the Algerian-born frontman of the popular Afro/Arab/reggae crossover project Syncop. Founded in 1998, Syncop mixes Berber-style raï and chaoui music together with reggae, hip hop and Afrobeat, with lyrics centred on the immigrant experience in Montreal. Their party vibe coupled with punny titles like Scirocco d'érable and Cabane à souk have made them festival favourites.
6. Ponctuation
Origin: Quebec City, QC
Style: Garage Rock, Punk
Recommended for fans of: The Who, The Cramps, Ramones, The White Stripes
Source: nightlife.ca
Thus far with the exception of Lisa LeBlanc this list has focussed solely on the city of Montreal, but with half of Quebec's population living outside the Montreal region, it's only fair that the rest of the province be given its due attention. Further up the St. Lawrence River in the province's eponymous capital city, a smaller but nonetheless energetic music scene has long churned out great artists, including iconic poet-musician-activists Félix Leclerc and Gilles Vigneault, legendary theatre artist Robert Lepage and, of course, Q-pop starlet-turned-media personality Mitsou. Having long been overshadowed by Montreal on the global music scene, Quebec City has, out of necessity, grown a scene all its own, but thanks to a thriving club scene and steady tourism revenue, the town continues to do well artistically.
One of Quebec City's most interesting current band is the gnarly garage rock duo Ponctuation, made up of brothers Guillaume and Maxime Chiasson. With Guillaume on guitar and vocals and Maxime on drums, Ponctuation's gritty analogue recordings and stripped down garage punk sound makes them one of the most refreshing rock acts to come out of anywhere in Canada in recent years - let alone poor, neglected Quebec City. Established in 2011, Ponctuation are definitely a band to watch - and yet another candidate for some welcome language divide-bridging.
7. Dubmatique
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Hip Hop, Acid Jazz
Recommended for fans of: Gang Starr, Mos Def, MC Solaar
Source: lametropole.com
While French-language music in Quebec has generally taken its cues from across the Atlantic in France, one notable area of musical divergence between the two French-speaking "nations" in the domain of hip hop. Since its first appearance in the banlieues of Paris in the early 1980s, rap music has been embraced by the French (particularly within its Afro-Caribbean immigrant community) like few other countries, and today France is the world's second largest hip hop market after the US, with French rappers like MC Solaar, Doc Gynéco and La Fouine achieving international success. Quebec, on the other hand, has been much slower to embrace hip hop music and culture, perhaps out of a knee-jerk resistance to perceived Americanization. (Indeed MC Solaar among others have criticized their country's scene for being overly derivative of American hip hop.)
But while Montreal still miles behind Toronto as a hip hop city, beats and rhymes are on the rise in this increasingly cosmopolitan metropolis, thanks in large part to increased immigration from the same cultural influences that brought the genre to France. Among the scenes most notable pioneers are the duo Dubmatique, featuring the duo of Cameroonian-born Jérôme-Philippe "Disoul" Bélinga and Senegalese-born Ousmane "OT MC" Traoré. Founded in 1992, the group's acid jazz-infused freestyle and Solaar-esque word craft made them Canada's first commercially successful Francophone hip hop act. Today Disoul and OT remain Quebec's hip hop "elder statesmen" and are frequently called upon to speak about the state of the current Montreal scene.
8. Le Couleur
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Synth Pop, Disco
Recommended for fans of: Dragonette, Daft Punk, M83, Depeche Mode, Serge Gainsbourg
Source: 3.bp.blogspot.com
Both Montreal and Buenos Aires vie for the title 'Paris of the western hemisphere'. Generally speaking Montreal hits closer to the mark - both in terms of language and pop culture proclivities. Quebec's largest city has long taken many of its cultural cues from Paris, and nowhere more so than in the former's long love for schmaltzy synth pop music. It was Montreal that gave the world synth pop icons Men Without Hats in the 1980s as well as bubblegum pop princess Mitsou, and the genre has continued to thrive in the city, inspired by the likes of Daft Punk, Air and M83 across the pond. The genre also spans the city's linguistic divide, featuring notable Anglo-Quebec artists like Chromeo and Vancouver-born Claire "Grimes" Boucher (just goes to show Francophone names can be deceptive - just ask Jimmy Hunt) as well as numerous Francophone standouts in the genre.
Newcomers Le Couleur are the latest exponents of a genre synonymous with Canada's sexiest metropolis. Bilingual, kitschy, sexy and unapologetically hipsterish, Le Couleur hearkens to late-1970s, early-1980s Eurotrash disco pop along the lines of Giorgio Moroder and Gainsbourg's Love on the Beat era, an influence further emphasized by vocalist Laurence Giroux-Do's lighter-than-air Jane Birkin-esque vocals. Established in 2008, this combo has a well established fan base in La Belle Province and has toured extensively in Europe, and this year have made inroads into the English-speaking world, albeit in the UK courtesy of Liverpool's Sound City Festival. Western Canada next? We can only hope.
9. Akitsa
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Black Metal
Recommended for fans of: Gorgoroth, Bathory, Burzum, Rudra
Source: metal-archives.com
I have to be honest here - I really can't tell the difference between all the myriad different sub-genres of extreme metal out there. While many of my best friends are metalheads and I certainly have an abiding respect for a music style that perhaps more than any other has managed to implant itself in virtually every part of the world, the evolutionary family tree of metal has become so dizzyingly complex (perhaps a reflection of its global ubiquitousness) that I really can't begin to tell the difference between so-called 'black metal' and other subgenres like 'doom metal', 'technical death metal', 'goregrind', 'deathgrind', 'mathcore', 'war metal', 'blackened death metal', 'seared and pan-fried trout metal in a white wine sauce' et cetera. So if you're one of my metalhead readers - and I know you guys are sensitive about people getting this taxonomy wrong - I would love a tutorial on how to navigate my way through this terminological labyrinth.
All I know for sure about the Montreal-based group Akitsa is that they are officially categorized as 'black metal', putting them in the same genre as the infamous Scandinavian noise merchants Gorgoroth, Bathory and Burzum that more or less defined the idiom. Other than that, all I could really ascertain about these guys is that they were founded in 1999 and are still apparently active (but with no locatable website), they have two permanent members (OT and Néant) who play 'all instruments', and that they 'sing' in French. C'est tout! The one interview I could find with the band, by some Finnish guy back in 2001, raises more questions than it answers. Anyone know more about these guys? I'm intrigued.
10. Samian
Origin: Abitibi-Témiscamingue, QC
Style: Hip Hop
Recommended for fans of: Rezofficial, Eekwol, Eminem
Source: hebdosregionaux.ca
Quebec's Aboriginal population may only be two per cent of the province's total (Alberta's is over five per cent), but the province's ten First Nations and 13 Inuit settlements have long punched above their weight politically thanks to their vastness of their traditional lands, which represent over half of Quebec's total territory. Quebec's Aboriginal leaders have historically never been afraid to assert themselves in the face of provincial governments indifferent to their cultural and economic needs and desires (including an ongoing threat to 'separate' from Quebec in the case of a vote to withdraw from Confederation), up to and including armed standoffs with the provincial police. That said, the post-Oka story of Aboriginal relations in La Belle Province has been relatively serene, and while many of the province's more isolated indigenous communities remain mired in poverty and social ills, many other communities have enjoyed steady economic growth and improving quality of life indicators.
While Aboriginal artists' impact on Quebec's music scene has generally been limited, the most notable exception in recent decades has been the acclaimed Innu folk rock duo Kashtin, whose trilingual (French, English and Innu) songs gained brief international fame thanks to Robbie Robertson's 1994 album Music for the Native Americans and cameos in the soundtracks for shows like Northern Exposure and Due South and the Bruce McDonald rez drama Dance Me Outside. Currently the province's fastest rising Aboriginal star is young rapper Samuel Tremblay better known by the stage name Samian. A member of the Abitibiwinni First Nation north of Val-d'Or in western Quebec, Samian raps in French and Algonquin and achieved a critical breakthrough in 2010 thanks to an appearance at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. With two albums and concert appearances in Europe and China under his belt, this Franco-Algonquin hip hop star is definitely worth following.
My post from last August entitled "10 Asian Bands You Should Know" was one of my most popular - popular enough that I felt compelled to write a follow-up post on the same subject. For one, the research that went into writing it unearthed far more than ten candidates, requiring some culling, and since then I've stumbled over countless others, making the original ten seem like a paltry representation of the musical cream of a continent that's home to over half of humanity. So here we go with Part 2.
Notice the slight change of title. I opted to open things up to include solo artists, as the term 'band' is unnecessarily limiting. I've also done my utmost to cover countries that weren't included in last year's list. Here we go again!
1. Faiza Mujahid
Origin: Lahore, Pakistan
Style: Pop-Rock
Recommended for fans of: Karen Zoid, Lily Allen, Cyndi Lauper, Sarah McLachlan
Source: tribune.com.pk
The emergence of preteen human rights heroine Malala Yousafzai as a global household name following her near-death at the hands of local religious extremists has done much to shed light on the deplorable state of women's rights in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. While Pakistan was among the earliest countries to elect a woman leader and women have held notable positions of political power, the country ranks near the bottom of virtually every study on the global status of women. Bride murders, acid attacks, child marriage, honour killings and domestic violence remain epidemic in much of the country, but thanks in large part to Malala's remarkable activism, there appears to be slow but tangible progress in pushing back the country's barbaric Hudood Ordinances and combating misogynistic tribal notions of 'justice'.
Paralleling Malala Yousafzai's emergence as a global figure in the fight for women's rights has been the emergence of Pakistan's new leading lady of rock music, Faiza Mujahid. Born and raised in the musical hothouse of Lahore, home to icons such as the late Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Sufi rock legends Junoon (a band often referred to as the U2 of Pakistan), the young star has quickly become a fixture on Pakistani TV and radio thanks to her catchy pop-rock anthems and her promotion of women's rights through her music. Her latest single 'Uth Oye' ("Wake up") was accompanied by a critically acclaimed video by Pakistani filmmaker Fatima Shah, which features literacy crusader Farah Deeba, acid attack victim Sabira Sultana and the members of Pakistan's national women's field hockey team in one of the most triumphant feminist music videos in recent memory.
2. Chthonic
Origin: Taipei, Taiwan
Style: Thrash Metal
Recommended for fans of: Sepultura, Slayer, Lamb of God
Source: 3.bp.blogspot.com
The past few decades have seen the island "nation" of Taiwan emerge as arguably Asia's most vibrant and energetic civil society and liberal democracy. In spite of the country's perpetual geopolitical conundrum vis-à-vis mainland China and ugly political factionalism (or perhaps because of it), the Little Island That Could enjoys, in addition to one of the region's highest standards of living, Asia's highest press freedom rating, a thriving media culture and some of the region's most progressive social attitudes. (Taiwan is set to become the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage.)
As I noted in my original Asian band post last summer, Taiwan's complicated and often traumatic history and its present-day crisis of identity have helped engender a diverse and vibrant modern music scene. Of the island's musical exports, none have achieved the notoriety of Taipei's premier thrash-metal hellraisers Chthonic. Founded in 1995, Chthonic combines heavy metal theatrics with lyrics in Mandarin, Japanese and a handful of Aboriginal Taiwanese languages and incendiary political messages and have courted their share of controversy over the years. (Their antics have included burning the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) flag in commemoration of the 2/28 Massacre of 1947.) Outspoken in their advocacy of Taiwanese independence from China, land rights for Taiwan's Aboriginal tribes, Tibetan and Uyghur liberation, feminism (bassist Doris Yeh is a noted women's rights activist) and animal rights, Chthonic have been banned from mainland China on multiple occasions, while their popularity - in China and elsewhere - continues to rise.
Heavy metal may not be able to bridge one of Asia's most protracted geopolitical impasses, but at least it's worth a try. And given this band's uncanny ability to broach topics that have long been taboo in the region, Chthonic might just be the ones to lead the way.
3. Miila and the Geeks
Origin: Tokyo, Japan
Style: Punk, No-Wave, Riot Grrrl
Recommended for fans of: Bikini Kill, X-Ray Spex, PJ Harvey, Cibo Matto
Source: nohopesofun.blogspot.com
Japan may still be very much a man's world, but when it comes to the country's indie rock scene, it's anything but. In the early nineties as the Riot Grrrl scene was flourishing in the northwestern US, a parallel female-driven rock scene was brewing in basement clubs in places like Shibuya (Tokyo) and Shinsaibashi (Osaka), from which internationally successful girl bands like Cibo Matto, Buffalo Daughter, Shonen Knife and Red Bacteria Vacuum were born. Not that Japan's Riot Grrrl scene was born of a vacuum. Japan is home to a long and under-recognized tradition of female musical experimenters from postwar big band jazz innovator Toshiko Akiyoshi and the future Mrs. Lennon (a lynchpin of the 1960s Fluxus movement) to DNA drummer Ikue Mori and electronic music pioneer Sachiko M. Certainly a far cry from the "good wife, wise mother" stereotype.
The girl-punk scene in Tokyo and Osaka still appears to have plenty of life to it. Among its latest exponents are Shibuya kids Miila and the Geeks, who consist of vocalist-guitarist Moe Wadaka, drummer Kaoru Ajima and saxophonist Ryota Komori. Sound-wise they're an amalgam of Stooges-era garage rock, late-seventies No Wave punk in the spirit of DNA and Teenage Jesus, the Olympia, Washington scene of the early nineties that gave the world Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Sleater-Kinney and the rest and a dose of Shibuya-kei glam. Komori's sax gives the band a sound akin to vintage X-Ray Spex, while Wadaka's sexy vocals are reminiscent of a young PJ Harvey. A relatively new addition to the Tokyo music scene, Miila and the Geeks have cultivated a strong following in Japan but have yet to branch out overseas. Time will tell if they can follow in Cibo Matto's footsteps.
4. MastaMic
Origin: Hong Kong, China
Style: Hip Hop
Recommended for fans of: Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Kanye West, Eminem
Source: timeout.com.hk
In my previous post on great Asian music acts, there were two notable omissions: hip hop music and the city of Hong Kong. Both have something of a reputation problem within the context of this topic area. Hong Kong, in spite of its outsized presence in the global economy, has long been an underachiever in the arts (with the notable exception of its film industry), owing to a lack of public investment, a dearth of performance venues and, until 1997 at least, political isolation, which until made it difficult for Hong Kong artists to tour in mainland China. Likewise, hip hop music, in spite of its remarkable ubiquitousness across the globe (arguably only heavy metal can match hip hop's track record for travelling well) has long been a hard sell in Asia. While foreign rap artists have long enjoyed popularity in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul and elsewhere, homegrown rappers in these countries have had an uphill battle gaining respectability. And in spite of Psy's recent transpacific success, the notion of Asian rap still elicits snickers in the west.
Tong Sung-ching, aka MastaMic, is a one-man machine dedicated to raising the bar for Cantonese language hip hop and gaining respectability for the Hong Kong scene. Active since 2005, the 28-year-old MC has already been dubbed Hong Kong's "Freestyle King" and is currently the city's best known rapper. In addition to his prodigious rapping talent, MastaMic has also earned recognition for his scene-building activities, namely the establishment of the 'Justice League' - a motley assortment of musicians, break dancers and graffiti artists - and Hong Kong's first hip hop news community at www.urbanation.hk. While rap in Asian languages may not yet have earned respectability outside the region, Cantonese rap is certainly no longer considered a joke in Asia's World City. And much credit is due to this guy for fighting on its behalf.
5. Avial
Origin: Thiruvananthapuram, India
Style: Alt-Rock, Jam Rock
Recommended for fans of: The Police, Phish, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Asian Dub Foundation
Source: Cochinsquare.com
Cosmopolitan, laid-back and socially progressive, the tiny, densely populated southwestern Indian state of Kerala has long punched above its weight in cultural and artistic terms. Thanks to a long history of cultural cross-pollination, a large diaspora population in the Middle East, East Asia and elsewhere and high levels of literacy and media penetration, Kerala has emerged as something of a powerhouse in literature, film and music, combining a rich tradition of Malayalam-language poetry and Carnatic music with modern influences from around the globe. Kerala's best-known musical export is legendary classical-pop crossover singer K.J. Yesudas, who has recorded over 50,000 songs in a phenomenal 17 different languages over the course of his 50-year career.
Rock music in India has long enjoyed an outsized following in the country's southern states, with prosperous southern cities like Bangalore and Chennai being home to sizeable indie rock scenes. Of Kerala's current crop of bands, the most celebrated has been the Thiruvananthapuram-based band Avial - a name taken from the state's signature spicy vegetable curry dish. Founded in 2003, the quartet of vocalist Tony John, guitarist Rex Vijayan, drummer Mithun Puthanveetil and bassist Binny Isaac stands out among south Indian rock bands for their almost exclusively Malayalam-language material and their infectious blend of traditional melodies, rich politically charged Malayali poetry and hooky jam rock. Their name perfectly captures their sound: rich, complex, sometimes fiery but always delicious.
6. Pesawat
Origin: Ampang, Malaysia
Style: Alt-Rock, Post-Punk
Recommended for fans of: We Are Scientists, The Killers, Deadmau5, Manic Street Preachers
Source: juiceonline.com
Malaysia, like Hong Kong, is something of an underachiever on the international music scene, although for somewhat different reasons. While the country has all the ingredients for a great music scene - cultural diversity, a rich indigenous musical tradition and a growing middle class, social conservatism, authoritarian governance and creeping Islamism have long conspired to make life difficult for homegrown and visiting international artists alike. International stars ranging from Madonna to Linkin Park have felt the sting of Malaysia's censorship laws, and more recently Erykah Badu was banned from performing in Kuala Lumpur because of a tattoo featuring the word 'Allah'. While the current prime minister has called for a retrenchment of the country's censorship regime and recent concert dates by Katy Perry and Adam Lambert have gone ahead in the face of Islamist ire, Malaysians still have a long way to go before they can enjoy the sort of artistic freedom their counterparts in Taipei and Tokyo take for granted.
Censorship notwithstanding, Malaysians are still a musical bunch and there are plenty of bands around, especially in cosmopolitan Kuala Lumpur. Among the most celebrated bands at present is the KL quartet Pesawat ('Airplane'), whose punchy, bilingual (Malay and English) indie rock anthems have gained them a substantial following both at home and in neighbouring Indonesia, and earned them a spot at the 2010 Music Matters festival in Hong Kong alongside Jason Mraz and other international headliners. The band's love of all things aviation-related is a tad awkward in the wake of their country's worst ever air disaster, but their musical chops are undeniable. It will be interesting to see, though, if they lose the aviation fixation in light of the MH370 tragedy.
7. Sliten6ix
Origin: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Style: Hardcore Punk, Deathcore
Recommended for fans of: Slipknot, Murderdolls, Napalm Death
Source: khtrends.wordpress.com
The demise of Phnom Penh's once vibrant rock 'n' roll scene is one of the most tragic chapters in modern Asian music history. While Cambodia under the rule of King Sihanouk in the 1960s was mostly characterized by poverty, corruption and mismanagement, the country's worldly capital city burgeoned with artistic energy, including what was once Asia's most fertile rock music scenes, a scene that persisted into the early 1970s amid military coups and carpet bombing. Then in 1975 it was completely silenced, obliterated by the Khmer Rouge forces. The vast majority of the country's musicians were physically eliminated by the new regime, either executed or worked to death in rural 're-education' camps. Some pre-revolutionary rock stars amazingly survived the Khmer Rouge nightmare, including 1960s Cambodian rock legend Touch Seang Tana, who succeeded in passing himself off as a peasant in a tale recounted in the recent documentary film Cambodia's Lost Rock 'n' Roll.
While Pol Pot has been dead for a decade and a half now and the Khmer Rouge are long gone, the colossal blow to Cambodia's cultural life that they dealt is one the country is still struggling to bounce back from. Cambodia remains an extremely poor country, and even in Phnom Penh musicians struggle to make ends meet. That said, there are signs of a musical renaissance in the country, particularly within the capital city's hardcore punk scene, with a new crop of fierce young bands like No Forever, the Anti-Fate and Sliten6ix giving voice to some of the country's pent-up anger. Of these, deathcore band Sliten6ix has garnered the most attention for their extreme sounds and confrontational lyrics. If there's any band active in Cambodia today that truly encapsulates this traumatized country's lingering pain and anguish, it's these guys.
8. Rudra
Origin: Singapore
Style: Death Metal, Black/Pagan Metal
Recommended for fans of: Children of Bodom, Burzum, Dimmu Borgir, Tengger Cavalry
Source: citynomads.com
The city-state of Singapore broke away from the Union of Malaysia in 1963 (actually was pushed out - it's a complicated story) but inherited much of the latter's authoritarian governing style and socially conservative temperament, giving the city the unfortunate nickname "Fine City" thanks to its penchant for issuing fines for trivial offences ranging from gum-chewing to not flushing the toilet. Fortunately, southeast Asia's Garden City has loosened up a great deal in recent years, a move that has coincided with a veritable music boom. Things started to get interesting in Singapore in the early 1990s with the birth of the Lion City Hardcore (LCHC) scene, a homegrown hardcore punk scene inspired by the New York Hardcore scene, and one that brought the likes of NOFX, Fugazi and The Oppressed to a town still struggling to overcome its 'No Fun City' reputation.
More recently, Lion City has seen the rise of a small but significant heavy metal scene, spawning a . Singapore's metal community stands out not only for its energy but also for its ethnic diversity, and appears to have an outsized following among the youth in the city's Malay and South Asian minorities. Of Singapore's recent metal exports, the two most electrifying acts are the terrifying grindcore ensemble Wormrot, who have gained substantial international exposure thanks to a recording contract with the British label Earache (of Napalm Death and Carcass fame) and the hypnotic 'Vedic Metal' group Rudra. Originally formed back in the days of LCHC in 1992, the Indo-Singaporean band is the South Asian answer to the Viking Metal of Scandinavia, combining Indian classical sounds with Sanskrit Vedic literature with brutal death metal riffs.
Singapore may be a world away from Oslo or Reykjavik, but the spirit captured by Rudra is much the same as that of their Nordic counterparts. It's as though there's a direct correlation between orderly, law-abiding societies and thriving death metal scenes.
9. Yat-Kha
Origin: Moscow, Russia
Style: Space Rock, Post-Rock
Recommended for fans of: Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Magma, Mogwai
Source: bbc.co.uk
In 1922, in the wake of Russia's post revolutionary civil war, the People's Republic of Tannu Tuva broke away from Russia to form an independent socialist republic in central Siberia that was recognized by nobody except for the USSR and Mongolia. The country was a total disaster, ruled by a mentally unstable Kremlin stooge named Salchak Toka - a man primarily concerned with suppressing nomadic cattle husbandry and Buddhism (Tuvan society's two most defining pillars), and in 1944 the country was reabsorbed by the Soviet Union. But the Tuvan region's fierce sense of national autonomy never wavered, and in the post-Soviet era this remote corner of the Siberian steppes with longstanding cultural ties to Mongolia and Tibet has experienced a cultural renaissance, all the while avoiding the sort of separatist strife that has plagued Chechnya and other wayward backwaters of the Russian Empire.
In the early 1990s the Tuvan Republic's iconic kargyraa throat singing enjoyed a period of world music cachet thanks to albums by Philip Glass, Kronos Quartet and others. In the meantime, exiled Tuvan folk rocker Albert Kuvezin joined forced with renowned Russian electronic composer Ivan Sokolovsky to form the band Yat-Kha (named after a distinctive Tuvan-style zither), a unit that remains one of the Russian Federation's most innovative rock bands. Combining throat singing with synth and guitar-driven space rock reminiscent of vintage Hawkwind, Yat-Kha has over the past few decades featured a rotating cast of premier musicians from the Tuvan region and elsewhere and earned plaudits from the likes of Brian Eno and Russian music journalist Artemy Troitsky, who famously lauded Kuvezin as one of "two unique voices on earth" together with Luciano Pavarotti.
Unlike Pavarotti, Kuvezin is still around, as is Yat-Kha - still channelling Tuva's ancient traditions into the 21st century.
10. Side Effect
Origin: Yangon, Myanmar
Style: Alt-Rock, Pop Punk
Recommended for fans of: Green Day, Blink 182, Foo Fighters....aw hell, anyone likes to see rock 'n' roll triumph over totalitarianism!
Source: pri.org
Myanmar? Burma? I don't really know which name to use. Burmese pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi says 'Burma' but atlases say 'Myanmar'. Regardless which name you go with, until very recently this country was about the last place you'd expect to find a thriving rock scene, being home to the most despotic regime in Asia not named North Korea. Yet even through the darkest years of repressive military rule, music had a way of squeezing through the cracks. A curious industry emerged in the Burmese capital during during the junta years known as "copy tracks" wherein 'professional plagiarists' would deliver bang-on renditions of everyone from Metallica to Lady Gaga to cheering throngs. Illegal? Definitely. Necessary for a beleaguered nation's sanity? Almost certainly. And so far Lars Ulrich hasn't kicked up a fuss.
It may well be that a decade of Metallica, Motley Crue and Coldplay knock-offs have paid off in grand style in Myanmar, as the country has seen a veritable explosion of homegrown rock music since its military rulers began loosening their grip in 2012. Myanmar's long deeply underground punk scene is now so prominent that a German film crew recently shot a documentary about the scene, entitled Yangon Calling. Of this new generation of angry young Burmese bands, the one that's garnered the most international attention thus far has been Side Effect, a Yangon-based pop-punk unit who have successfully crowdfunded their way to the 2014 SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas - a triumphant first for a Burmese band. Based on their sound, one can only imagine they've paid their dues in Yangon bars doing Blink 182 and Green Day covers, but their exuberance is that of a country taking its first tentative steps into democracy. Chee kyu ba de, boys - you've made it!
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