Kisumu Mixtape - fines tunes from Kenya (WN0039)

A mixtape of 17 underground classics from Kisumu, Kenya, ranging from traditional guitar to blunted ass reggae to innovative hip hop.

RawMusicINTL: Raw Music International

Another gem here from the Free Music Archive, this time a delicious selection of tracks from Kenya. No words from me needed, just turn this up loud and shake your thing...

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) License.

DJ Derek (WN0034)

DJ Derek pt. 1 from Grand Finale on Vimeo.

DJ Derek pt. 2 from Grand Finale on Vimeo.

Been meaning to give this fellow an airing for months now, having stumbled across him through a comment left by Idle Format earlier last year. Finally, the moment has come around...

Derek was born & raised in Bristol, & during the late 50's & early 60's fell in love with the music & culture of the West Indian immigrants moving to Britain. He picked up the lingo by hanging around in barber shops & listening, & picked up the groove by buying & selling reggae records around the country.

Now in his late 60's Derek tours the country armed only with a backpack full of killer tunes, his bus pass & an unquenchable thirst for real ale.

from original Vimeo page

It works for me on a number of levels. I've also long loved what's described above as 'West Indian' culture - the music, food, people and language of the Caribbean - as transported to Britain in the mid-20th Century. So, it seems, does the man in this documentary who has immersed himself in that culture.

The documentary takes conventions about culture, age, nationality and race, and turns them on their head. It's also a great example of how deep a part music can play in people's lives.

When I first came across Derek, I saw posters for him playing in Brighton. Didn't actually get to see him perform, but I was glad to see that he was getting to play what he loved and getting paid for it.

Dig.

Archive clip: Shelf Life - 'Stepping Razor'

I've been trying to upload a new video to my YouTube channel every two weeks this year, as a way of building audience, increasing the amount of personal output and keeping a hand in while my attention is held by the diploma I'm squeezing around the day job. So far, it's proved fairly manageable and has meant that I don't drop off the social radar of my own web networks for too long!

The latest video to go this weekend was another clip from the Shelf Life archive. This video was shot in 2005 and has the band performing a cover of Peter Tosh's signature tune 'Stepping Razor' as our show closer. As with most of these archive clips, the quality isn't great but it's enough to get a feeling.

I'd wanted to cover the song for many years, having first heard it in Brighton back in the mid-90s. Never quite had a band that would be willing or likely to take it on until Shelf Life. Keisuke, our guest guitarist for that show, does a pretty mean job on delivering some of the guitar anger of the original.

A fun song to sing too.