warning: the incredible blog makes free use of anglo-saxon words, often considered crude and coarse since the invasion of England by the Normans. You’ll recognize these words because they mostly have four letters. I am also fairly free in criticizing whatever I want, so if you think you’re in here and you’re going to be bothered by what i say, then stop right here. Thanks for reading.
ATLAS 5 Year Anniversary Party
Thank you to everyone who came down to celebrate the five year anniversary of Atlas at Holocene. Thanks to all of your support Atlas is by far the longest-running party at Holocene. It felt great that 500 of you cared enough to come down and dance and wish us well. It was a wonderful anniversary: all that we could have asked for and more. We will be taking December off, and E3 will bring Atlas back January 11th, while Anjali and I are still in India. We will return to Atlas on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, 2009. How sweet. Thanks for a great five years. Here’s to another five!
IK
Need Help With Indian English?
Lonely Planet has published a guide to Indian English. While many jokes in America have to do with Indian call center operators trying to sound American, it will only be a matter of time until Texans are learning how to pronounce English in an Indian manner, so they can work in American call centers to answer questions from customers in India. In case you didn’t know, there are more English speakers in South Asian than anywhere else in the world. As this area rises in political and economic influence, Indian English will become the international standard of the 21st century. People like me, who have a great deal of difficulty understanding Indian English, are fortunate to finally have a guidebook to help them through the transition to the world’s new dominant strain of English.
IK
Excited About India?
It has been nearly five years since Anjali and I have been to India. We’ve wanted to return for several years now, and just weren’t able to make it happen until this year. We hate to leave our Portland supporters without a party for several months, but surely anyone who understands what we do can appreciate our need to spend a chunk of time in India every so often. Ideally we would go for a much longer period of time to immerse ourselves in language, dance, music and cultural studies, but fortunately for those of you who crave a regular fix of our parties, we don’t have any solid plans to do that at this point. However, if the American empire finally arrives at the proper moment to utterly collapse, don’t be surprised if we up and move to India for good.
Without fail, the question I get asked whenever people hear about our trip is: “Are you excited?” In a word: No. Based on my prior two-month trip I would say my emotions are closer to anxiety and apprehension. When I first traveled to India four and a half years ago, I had people warn me about the overwhelming nature of the poverty, and the sheer mass of humanity, but I thought I could handle it. I’d traveled for months in Guatemala and Belize, and I had seen desperation and poverty. Hell, I lived in Cairo, Egypt for two years and there was more than enough humanity and poverty to go around. Having been generally relaxed and adventurous in my previous travels, I was completely unprepared for how stressed out I would be on a moment-by-moment basis in my travels in India.
As a foreigner in India, I simply could not be anonymous and unmolested, as I am accustomed to in Portland. I realized that in the minds of many of the millions of people living in poverty in the urban areas in which I traveled, I only mattered to them to the extent that they could get some money from me. I’m not saying all poor people in India are like this, but those are the only ones I met, since they aggressively followed me in search of a handout. And I couldn’t really fault them for their efforts, since truly, what would be a few dollars for me, would mean a whole lot more to them. Over and over and over I would be approached by people that seemed friendly and desirous of interaction, but sooner or later, I would realize that they wanted something from me, and it served to make me much more suspicious and distrustful when people approached me later in the trip. I got so used to people wanting something from me, and only feigning an interest in interaction, that I walked around walled-off, hostile, and resistant to the people around me.
Our friend Ken was traveling in India at the same time as us, and when we met up with him, he seemed so open and relaxed to the people and experiences in India, that I felt guilty for how distrustful and closed-off I was to the people with whom I came in contact. Ironically, later in his trip, Ken was interacting with a friendly group of young men on a train, who proceeded to steal his bags, throw him from the train, and leave him for dead. Fortunately he lived, escaping with no major injuries, but having lost a lot of money. Hearing about his experience made me question my feelings of guilt about my approach to India. Maybe it wasn’t so bad for me to be so suspicious and paranoid about random people attempting to befriend me in public. Maybe it had saved my life.
And that is the funny thing, no matter how paranoid and cautious I thought I was, it was no where near the level of paranoid and cautious that Anjali’s family in India thought we should be. They said we should never ride a rickshaw at night, and we did this all the time. They said we should never leave a train station until dawn; we left train stations at night in search of lodgings all the time. We would rent private cars with sketchy drivers for trips lasting many hours into the middle of nowhere, and even I thought that it would probably be pretty easy to take us off somewhere and kill us. Clearly we could afford to rent a private car, so clearly we had a lot more money on us where that came from. Anjali’s family would have been horrified that we would take such a risk. You have to wonder about that: what does it mean when the locals are more fearful of India than you are? Is my ignorance and naivete the only thing keeping me from sharing their fears?
One great source of stress on our trip was how hard it was for me to deal with the fact that I could never be left alone in public. After many months I resorted to paying the five rupee fee to enter parks for the rich, where I could experience a few hours of being left alone. In India, privacy costs. Only the well-off can afford solitude. I couldn’t just be in public and be left alone, as I am very accustomed to in Portland. In Bombay I would look at a bench on the waterfront and say, “I’d like to sit on that bench, and just relax.” Of course the second Anjali and I would attempt something of the sort, we would be mobbed by people begging for money. I don’t resent their poverty and desperation, I am just not very psychologically well-equipped to deal with the constant barrage of need. Driving down the street, our car surrounded by young children attempting to forcibly squeeze their limbs through the windows, begging for money at every major intersection, traumatized me multiple times a day. How can I care for all these people? I may as well attempt to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. Whether I gave money or not, I knew I could do little to change the overwhelming sadness of the lives of these many desperate millions. It was very instructive to see how the middle class locals handled the poor, as they are surrounded by this poverty their entire lives. I witnessed a range of responses, from handing money to beggars, to chasing them off in a flurry of aggressive gestures and yelling.
Even being in a hotel room was no relief from demanding humans, as in each hotel in which we stayed we experienced the hotel staff finding any excuse to bother us every few minutes, to the point where I felt under siege. I felt obligated to tip for every visit, which no doubt served to encourage their visits, and I jealously hoarded small bills, as I lived in fear of a hotel worker arriving at my room expecting a tip when all I had was 500 rupee notes. If I ordered bottled water, towels, parantha and some curds, you better believe every item was brought separately, including the silverware, and the napkins, and I would feel obligated to tip every time, having no idea what proper etiquette was, and not wanting to be some unappreciative asshole foreigner who didn’t tip.
This was a constant problem for me, not knowing what the local customs were, and what was expected of me. It’s not like I didn’t try to learn. I asked lots of questions of friends and family in India, I read culture and travel tips in my guides, but I still wasn’t confident about when to tip, when not to, and how much. If someone acted like they were waiting for a tip, they got one. Maybe I gave way too much. Maybe I got taken for a ride. I just didn’t want to come off as ungrateful.
Another area in which the difference between Indian etiquette and politeness and American etiquette and politeness caused me a great deal of stress had to do with relations between friends. In America I was taught to say “Thank you,” but to our Indian hosts this was very offensive and distasteful. Rude. Saying “thank you,” was far too formal, and meant that I doubted the sincerity and genuineness of their actions. The different communication styles between Indians and Americans had me constantly confused as to what our hosts really wanted, because they would never say what they really felt, I was just supposed to divine this through subtle cultural cues that I didn’t understand or even know how to look for. Did they really want us to stay another week, or were they just saying that to be polite, with the full expectation that we would shortly go to our room to pack our bags? No one seemed willing to directly communicate what they wanted. If they offered something, maybe I was supposed to refuse it. If they said something was OK, maybe it really wasn’t. I felt very awkward and uncomfortable often, because I couldn’t tell what my hosts really wanted me to do. Although they clearly knew what they wanted me to do, they would just never tell me directly, and I couldn’t decipher the cultural cues. It was often only after I guessed wrongly about what the desired response was from me was in a particular situation, that I could sense the disappointment, and realize that I failed to take the correct course of action to please my hosts.
I also have trouble understanding Indian English. Many people may not realize this, but South Asia has more English speakers than anywhere else in the world, and before long, their English will be the Standard English. This is a big problem for me personally, as I have a very hard time understanding it. Not the pronunciation, necessarily, but the way sentences and questions are formed (in the same grammatical manner as Hindi) often has me playing a back and forth game with someone trying to get a simple question answered in a way that I can understand. No matter how many times they reply, I still don’t have an answer I understand. I would have ten-minute phone conversations with hotel front desk staff trying to determine if a room was “awailable” or “unawailable.” Back and forth, back and forth.
“So a room is awailable?”
“A room is -mumble-wailable, Sir.”
“Awailable or unawailable?”
“-mumble-wailable, Sir.”
Aaaaarrggh.
Fortunately Lonely Planet has recently published a guide to Indian English, for the perplexed such as myself.
Once a waiter came up to our table and asked me a question. I didn’t understand what he was asking, thought he was talking in Hindi, and turned to Anjali for a translation. Apparently he had not been talking to me in Hindi, but asked if I wanted my water cold or room temperature, in English, and I thought he speaking to me in a foreign language.
All our traveling on our last trip was done between Pune and Chandigarh, with time spent in Madhya Pradesh, so I only know what that part of India was like to travel in. This time we hope to spend a month in the South, which everyone says is much more mellow, so maybe all of my negative experiences have to do with traveling in Central and North India, and I will realize that not all of India is like that. If I survive, I’ll be sure to let you know.
IK
Thank you for your support
9/30/08
Thank you to everyone who pledged their support during our KBOO show last Sunday. Your support sends a clear message to the station about the type of programming you value, and it also lets us know you are listening, and you care. Thanks. It is because of people like you that KBOO is the longest-running noncommercial community radio station in America.
IK
Do not miss Balkan Beat Box in Portland : Friday, September 12th
Balkan Beat Box will be playing in Portland at Dante’s on Friday, September 12th. The last time they were scheduled to play Portland they had to cancel, as they were held up by immigration issues at the Canadian border. We won’t have to worry about that happening this time, as they are coming up through California, and won’t be crossing any international borders right before their Portland show this time. Anjali and I had the chance to meet Ori Kaplan when we played Mehanata with Joro-Boro last year, but we haven’t seen the band live yet, so we are glad to see they rescheduled a Portland show after their last unfortunate cancellation.
Anjali has some things to say
Click here to read DJ Anjali’s online interview with the Willamette Week. She’s not afraid of Anglo-Saxon words either.
Do Not Miss Maraca in Portland : Thursday, September 25th
Go see Maraca! Years ago I went to a Portland State University Summer concert event in the South Park blocks featuring the band Maraca from Cuba. Lead flautist Orlando “Maraca” Valle’s group blew my mind. I have not seen a better Latin band since. I was so impressed I paid an exorbitant amount to see them play again that evening, at the old Holiday Inn on NE Broadway to a miniscule crowd of a few dozen. I don’t think the evening show received much of any publicity at all. The band were still great, but seemingly deflated by the lack of an audience. While they played in the sun earlier in the day, numerous dancers twirled away under the trees, and that vibe far surpassed the empty American blandness of the Holiday Inn conference room. Their upcoming show may be at the Roseland Theater, and not an outdoor venue, but it is being highly promoted, and I expect their will be a large crowd of motivated dancers. I highly recommend this show to any fan of Latin music. You can buy your tickets here.
Enjoy,
IK
Saturday. August 9th 2008 Part I : PLayground Fixtures
Saturday, August 9th, 2008 was a busy day. Anjali, E3 and I were a part of the all-day Playground Fixtures DJ event put on by the Fix and Upper Playground in Irving Park. We had an hour and fifteen minute set to split in the middle of the day. It was quite cloudy, but the rain stayed away, at least while we were in the park. The boys at the Fix are entirely vinyl-centric, so I knew there would be no CD players at this event. Since most of the music in the world has never been pressed on vinyl –only the middle and upper classes could ever afford that luxury– and most countries in the world stopped pressing vinyl entirely in the late eighties, Anjali, E3 and I, by necessity, play a lot of CDs, in order to feature the latest music being produced outside of the United States. Since most DJs who champion vinyl only play American, Western European, and possibly Jamaican music, they have no concept of how xenophobic and classist it is to argue the all-vinyl position. After bemoaning the fact that none of us would be able to play the latest, hottest music we are most excited about, due to the fact that it is not available on vinyl, we started focusing on what we could do with our sizable record collections — which is to play oldies.
Rather than try to unsuccessfully replicate an Atlas set that is only really possible on CD, I started thinking creatively about what I might want to do with my twenty-five minutes on stage. I really wanted to play the Fastbacks’ “In the Summer,” my favorite Summer anthem, and I considered playing a lot of fifteen year-old Portland indie rock as well, as my tribute to old Portland. After I found out a bunch of Desis were planning on attending, I considered doing an all Bollywood oldies set. I spent one feverish night dreaming different versions of the show, awaking at multiple times, obsessed with the upcoming gig, and in the middle of the night I had the revelation to play Charles Mingus’ “II BS” and “Get It On” by Ebony Rhythm Funk Campaign.
For a twenty-five minute slot I picked out two boxes of 7″ records and 120 records or so. Several hundred records too many. I left the 7″s at home, pared down to about 40 records, and managed to leave the house with only ten times as much music as I was going to need for the event. Not bad.
When Anjali and I arrived at the park Saucebox resident Mr. Mumu was performing a great set of Latin electronica, including some cumbia, and the new Buraka Som Sistema 12″, along with a bunch of other Latin tracks that sounded hot, and I will admit to wishing I knew what they were. The man definitely has records. Most Latin music is not pressed on vinyl, but Mumu buys the club tracks with a Latin feel released for the Western European and American DJ market .
I was the first Atlas DJ to take the stage in front of a small crowd of people sitting on chairs and blankets in a semi-circle around the covered DJ setup. Mr. Mumu was kind enough to warn me that the right cue on the mixer was funky, and sure enough, I could barely hear the tracks on the right turntable in my headphones. It was like a whisper, and very difficult to hear what I was doing. I began with “II BS,”(which earned me an instantaneous compliment from DJ Suppoz for playing what is possibly his favorite Charles Mingus song), went into “Get It On,” (Which earned me a compliment from DJ Beyonda for playing funk. She herself had brought two gorgeous vintage 7″ record cases, filled with what I could only assume were fabulous, and fabulously rare funk and soul 7″s), I played Panjabi MC’s “Boliyan” on 12″ vinyl, and then exited the stage to the epic “Pag Ghunghroo Baandh” from the Namak Halal soundtrack. Since the song is ten minutes or so, and I couldn’t wait to leave the stage, and Anjali was standing on stage throughout the duration of the song, many people assumed it was her first song, when it was actually my last. E3 complimented me on that monster, so I guess I pleased some DJs with my set, and DJs were certainly a large part of the crowd, so I apparently I did some things right.
As I wandered into the gathering crowd lounging on blankets in the grass, I discovered that a bunch of our friends had arrived at the park during my set, including a noticeable contingent of Desis, some of whom were happily singing and dancing to “Pag Ghunghroo Baandh.” I made some people happy. I love doing that.
Thank you to everyone who came down to support us during our sets. It made the event infinitely more pleasant to have all your smiling faces there.
After my extra-long final song finished, Anjali began with a Madlib Bollywood-sampling Beat Konducta 7″. She almost brought her own vintage 7″ case as well, but at the last minute decided to bring mostly 12″ records, with some 7″s thrown in. She then played Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting.” (I will go out on a limb and suggest that I was the only person who knew that Anjali was playing the song because it is a composition by Biddu, who is responsible for some of the biggest Bollywood and Indi-pop songs of all time. Most people are totally unaware of the connection.) She then mixed into Nazia Hassan’s “Boom Boom” (One of Biddu’s huge soundtrack hits), Alisha’s Hindi “Like a Virgin” cover (While Biddu is responsible for some of Alisha’s biggest albums, this is actually produced by Anu Malik.) and Cornershop’s “Hotrocks.” Unfortunately as “Hotrocks” was playing, the sound totally died. Anjali could hear the record in her headphones, but no sound was coming out of the speakers. E3 was about to take over from Anjali and they both tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Anjali slapped a record on the other turntable that had been working, and it ended up being Ges-E + Social Security ‘Zubeida’ which was not how she had envisioned ending her set. She wanted to play Timbaland & Magoo ‘Cop That Ish (Mentor Remix Feat Juggy D)’ but that song was spinning with no sound coming out on the right turntable. The soundman then appeared to say that the mixer was running too hot, and the soundboard should have been turned up, but this is little consolation to a DJ who has had the sound die on them, since DJs rarely, and in this case certainly didn’t, have access to the soundboard.
E3 switched to the second of two turntable setups, thinking that he could avoid the sound issues that had sabotaged the end of Anjali’s set. Little did he know the awful fate that lay in store for him. The left set of turntables were inclined just enough, due to the slightly sloping hill the DJ booth was set up on, that the counterweights on the tonearms actually slid around on the tonearms, causing Ezra’s records to skip all throughout his set. Since no one in the crowd could have had any idea how badly the equipment was malfunctioning, they might have wrongly assumed that E3 brought a bunch of really scratchy, skipping records to the event. No, he didn’t, and it is a shame that his set was so impacted by the faulty setup. E3 mostly stuck to a Jamaican vibe, but he did slip some vintage French hip-hop into the end of his set.
Since Anjali and I had to leave during Matt Nelkin’s set (he was playing a bunch of dancehall, and dancehall remixes while we were there), I don’t know if any of the other DJs suffered from technical issues during the rest of the event. Matt Nelkin wisely chose to go back to the turntable set up on the right at E3’s advice, rather than risk the sliding counterweights of the left turntable setup.
I had spent the week so obsessed by my twenty-five minute set at Playground Fixtures, that it wasn’t until I got home with a few hours before we were due at Atlas that I was confronted with the result of what I already knew in the back of my head was an ass-backward way to go about things. What should a DJ prepare for more, his regular night that involves playing for two hours in front of hundreds of people dancing, or a twenty-five minute set for a small group of people sitting in a park? Hmmmmm. I found myself with little time to go over my many New York purchases from our last visit, and my music was in such a state of disarray, that I found myself bringing an obscene amount of music, because it takes far less time to throw everything in a bag, than to carefully go through all the music and pare down my selections. In my rushed preparation, I ended up bringing 150 records, three 200+ CD binders, and a suitcase filled with CDs. For an hour and fifty minutes worth of performing time. Talk about overkill. Since one of my standard Atlas complaints is that I take way too much music, and I drown in the selection, stymied at playing with a clear direction, I knew I was really setting myself up for a confused evening. As it was, getting home from one gig to prepare for another, we got to Holocene later than we ever have to set up . . .
Oh Yeah, and we opened for the Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar in NYC
8/8/08
I couldn’t find my journal with notes on our New York trip when I was writing the last blog post and I wondered what I was forgetting to put in my account. How about the fact that we opened for the world’s greatest Serbian brass band? Funny I would forget to mention that. Joro-Boro was kind enough to think of us when he got the gig to DJ the after-party for the Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar at Drom, and he invited us to DJ the proceedings as well. The initial plan was that the Orkestar would play from 9pm-11pm, and then we three would take turns DJing for the rest of the night. We were eating at Kenka on St. Mark’s Place before the gig when Joro informed us that the Orkestar was held up in Toronto where they had played a gig, and that we should arrive at Drom at 8:30pm to play until the Orkestar would arrive, which they were hoping would be around 10:30pm.
Great news! I was paranoid about playing for a hardcore Balkan crowd, which I don’t have a lot of experience with, and despite my numerous Balkan and gypsy albums, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to give them exactly what they wanted. I don’t have turbo-folk, or chalga, or other hard to find Balkan musics, and I didn’t want to piss the crowd off. Since we were scheduled to play AFTER the Orkestar, I was afraid I would not be able to entice the crowd into staying after the headliner was done, and I figured the club would be none too pleased with that, and I was trying to make a good impression, as Drom seemed like a good place for Anjali and I to play in NYC in the future. Now that we had to OPEN instead of play the after-party I was greatly relieved, as I figured: a) There wouldn’t be that many people early on, so I probably wouldn’t have to play to a dance floor, or a large demanding crowd. b) I wouldn’t have to worry about clearing the crowd, because no one was going to leave as they waited for the Orkestar.
When we got to the club, I volunteered to play the first set after Joro had warmed up the system with a few tracks, including a Funk Carioca remix of a Balkan Beat Box track. Since the night was a Balkan one, and the club is Turkish, I planned to stick to those themes almost entirely, although I made sure to play a few appropriate Telugu soundtrack songs that are really floating my boat these days. There was hardly anyone there the whole time I played, which was just fine with me. No pressure and no stress. Just call me the performer who doesn’t like to perform.
Anjali and I agreed that Joro-Boro should play the best slot to the most people, since it was his gig that he was kind enough to have us join him for, and no one is better equipped to deal with a hardcore Balkan crowd than Joro. While Anjali played her second song, “Reggada” by Outlandish, a waitress came up and told her that the crowd was asking for gypsy brass music. This really frustrated her, as she felt like she was going to leave those sounds for the expert, and she was going to do something different for her set. There was hardly anyone at the club, and it was a lounge-y and not dance-y vibe, and she felt free to do her own thing regardless, which ended up being a mostly Panjabi set.
I learned from Joro that most of the 160 ticket holders to the event were asking for refunds of the $25 fee, since they didn’t want to wait around for the Orkestar to finally arrive. I also learned that it was a torrential downpour outside the club, and that wasn’t exactly encouraging any patrons either. Joro went on after Anjali, and he played a brilliant set, despite having to deal with numrous requests to play Boban Markovic songs, which he explained to the clueless requesters he would not do, as the Orkestar themselves would shortly be arriving to play those songs. Later he said he felt pressured by the crowd to play it straight, as they only wanted gypsy brass music, but I felt like his set was typically inspired. I only recognized a few tracks, and he played songs that sounded like Balkan reggaeton, and Balkan drum’n'bass that had me highly curious.
The Orkestar didn’t arrive at the club until after midnight, and didn’t go on until around 12:45am. A far cry from the scheduled 9pm start time, but a miracle nonetheless, as we feared they would get held up in customs and immigration. The Orkestar was ten strong, eight brass players, a drummer, and a percussionist. They had an incredibly loud sound. As I listened to their CDs getting ready for the gig, I knew their live energy would put their recordinss to shame, but I couldn’t imagine the order of magnitude of difference. They were electric. They performed by far the best version of Hava Nagila I have ever heard, with an insanely fast and funky rhythm change-up. Boban dropped the horn after a few numbers, and mainly sang, in an incredibly full and powerful voice, for the rest of the night. Despite how many people had asked for refunds, there were still enough people at Drom to mostly fill the dance floor, and with all the singing and dancing and yelling and carrying-on, a great time was had by all. I was incredibly impressed, and glad that we did not have to go on after them, because they are not an act to follow. Highly recommended.
Many thanks to Joro-Boro for inviting us to be a part of this incredible evening of music.
IK