April in Prague

14th April: 10pm - 4am : Palac Akropolis - w. Ross The Boss + live drummers http://www.palacakropolis.cz

15th April: 9pm - 2am : Hushcafe - w. Ross The Boss
http://www.hushcafe.cz

16th April: 5pm - 7pm : radio wave- friday ripple /w. Craig Duncan
http://www.rozhlas.cz/radiowave/friday_ripple

16th April: 10pm - 4am : Confessions Club - w. Ross The Boss
http://www.confessions.cz/frames/bar/indexbar.html

thursday night Palac Akropolis:




(no photos from Hush Cafe.)
unscheduled appearance at Confessions Club on friday night. of COURSE i started with a 5 song block of Confessions Riddim!!!


Radio Wave:

vibrant global music scene in this city. more than Berlin i think. thanks to DJ Ross the Boss, Craig Duncan, and Keith Jones. Radio Wave set will be available soon.

Ayobaness!

finally finished this package and sent off to printer... praying to Allah that there were no mistakes!!! the 20 page booklet was a small nightmare, but at least it was a project i believe in.

first of its kind in Europe/America, available in shops and itunes April/May:

Another Word for Drums

besides Ngoma is Tambou!

For those of you who enjoyed the Tumbélé! compilation from Soundway records compiled by Hugo Mendez (one of the best re-issues of last year and a personal favorite - wow i can just listen to this stuff all day everyday...), my friend Crofton has put together a mix of classic and heavy grooves from Martinique and Guadeloupe. it is available at his excellent Musik Line blog, which takes an anthropological approach to soundsystem culture from Africa to Jamaica and the Caribbean, with in depth notes on the social and historical context of the music. and for those who missed it, here is the Hugo Mendez mix of material from Tumbélé!

NGOMA 4 - Generation Bass

Continuing where NGOMA 1 stopped, this is an excursion into non-western 100 BPM urban beats and voices.

Heavy on Kwaito from South Africa, both more contemporary as well as earlier examples of the genre are presented. Arthur Mafokate with his track Oyi Oyi from 1993, for example, who is often referred to as the King of Kwaito, is both an innovative artist as well as pioneering businessman, having started 999, one of the first non-white record labels in South Africa. There are also offshoots from Kwaito, such as a style known as Guz - as represented by the track of that name by TKZEE. Also want to mention, in the classic Kwaito style, the immense talent that was Mawillies (rest in peace), whose effortlessly powerful voice graces the track GaGu.

tunes from other parts of Africa are also sprinkled all over. the AshThomas project is based in the US, but consists of members from Nigeria and other places. The incredibly clever DJ Rams who does Kizomba and Kuduro (or Kuzomba, a combination of the hard hitting aggresive and emotively smooth) in Angola; Marvelous Benji coming with the refreshing energy from Nigeria; and of course, Emmanuel Jal, the former Sudanese child soldier.

always great to find that one Bhangra tune on too many an album of otherwise generic numbers, and i have to sometimes edit out the bullshit cameo from some US rapper. far as cumbia goes i am almost entirely classics, you won't find any hipster blog-cumbia with shitty digital distortion and cliche electronic sounds on my mixes. and reggaeton, oh how i wish they still made them like they did in Panama back in the early 90s and even before. that percussive groovy sound exemplified by this huge hit by El General.

stream and single file download

separate tracks version download:
mediafire or megaupload or rapidshare