Kutiman mixes YouTube

Of all the social media sites out there YouTube has got to win the populace vote when it comes to participation in remix culture. And in a time when out of touch record companies are demanding that YouTube pull down the music videos on their labels, it is refreshing to see that artists don't have to be attached to a label, nor in fact do they have to step out of their bedroom, to be part of a band appreciated by millions of fans. Kutiman I salute you.

Mar 13, 2009 by mejiann No Comments

TNSO (The No Smoking Band)

The No Smoking band (Zabranjeno Pusenje in their original Serbo-Croatian language) was born in Sarajevo in 1980 and soon became the most significant musical expression of "New Primitivism", a cultural resistance movement created in the transition years of post-Tito Yugoslavia. After two years of live performances in small Sarajevo concert halls, in 1984 the No Smoking (which musical critics have defined as a Gypsy techno-rock band) recorded their first album, "Das ist Walter". One of the songs in the album, "Zenica blues", was soon to hit the top charts in Yugoslavia with more than 100,000 copies sold. In the same period, the band appeared on a TV serial, "Surrealist Top List", a fake newscast that was actually a savage satire of Yugoslav politics. The trouble for the band started when its leader, Dr Nele Karajilic, made ironic remarks on Marshal Tito's death at a lively performance before a huge crowd of enthusiastic supporters...

Jun 29, 2008 by mejiann No Comments

Welcome to Peggy Gilbert’s Website

Performing on saxophones, clarinet, violin, vibes, plus singing, arranging, and booking and contracting for women musicians, Peggy Gilbert was a one-woman support network and staunch advocate for women since the 1920s. She performed publicly on the tenor saxophone more than 80 years, until 1996, and inspired and mentored several generations of musicians.

May 30, 2008 by mejiann No Comments

eurovision comradeship

The voting procedure of the contest has long been criticised for neighbour voting and the diasporas voting. Bjørn Erichsen, Director of Eurovision TV, responded to these allegations questioning the legitimacy of the voting of this year’s Contest, explaining, “If a viewer likes the song from a neighbouring country, they can vote for it, and if a Polish girl lives in Ireland she can vote for Poland. You cannot vote for your own country, from your own country. But the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and its partners do not - and should not have - any possibility of controlling the nationality, identity or preferences of the individual voter. If somebody were to seek to influence the voters to vote for a specific song, they would have to approach the 105 million audience to convince them. Ultimately, they would have to influence the entire potential 640 million audience in the EBU countries, as nobody knows who will switch on their TV that evening.”

A certain amount of neighbour voting between the Nordic countries, and between former Yugoslavian countries took place at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Statistics however show that did not bring Russia its first ever victory.

“This year, as in other years, Russia got good votes from their neighbours. In the past this was not enough to secure a win. The difference this year was that they received points from a total of 38 countries, thereby securing victory.” Erichsen explains.

The Eurovision TV Director also presented some calculations to underline the solidarity of Russia’s victory. “If we imagine an absurd scenario where only the participating countries from the 27 EU countries could vote, thus excluding most of the direct Russian neighbours, the winner would also have been Russia. If we imagine - even more absurd - that only the pre-enlargement EU old Western countries could vote, the winner would have been Armenia - not a Western country. Voting for your neighbour was not, and has never been the reason a song wins. The statistics prove that you can only win, if almost all countries vote for you.”

May 30, 2008 by admin No Comments