La Danza Poetica #2 À Voix Basse
On Groovalizacion, La Danza Poetica #2 trips through the Paris underground, or underbelly. Á voix basse, the poetry and melody of Français, Occitan, and English, to the tune of recordings made on my many travels on the Métro last month. New spoken word from France, and some honoured ghosts.
Tracklist
Poetry: How Does It Feel? - Akua Naru
EPQ (Encore PLus Que La Lutte Des Classes Extrait) - Pieere Guyotat
Oasyx - The Ambient Society
Spring - Yas & The Lightmotiv
Des chapeaux dans des lapins - Odezenne
2,10, 100 - Odezenne
Sex storyz and windows bible update + Comme la vie est belle - Hurlantenova + Bissecta
Canzone Di Malavita - Akhenaton
Bravei Gent - Mauresca Fracas Dub
Ode À l'Intron - Gu_Rún Grænndóttir
Cittadini - La Talvera
La vida del carbonièr (La vie du mineur) [feat. Kréôl Konexion] - La Talvera & Kréôl Konexion
Pòble mon pòble (Peuple mon peuple) [feat. Massilia Sound System] - La Talvera & Massilia Sound System
Paire sant - Jordi Savall
French Wine feat MC Killo Killo (DJ Click General Remix) - Kosta Kostov
Son Corps Leger - Gherasim Luca
A Murmur - Aldona
Notes on the show
Akua Naru (US/Germany) Poetry: How Does It Feel? The title track from her 2011 EP. The album, The Journey Aflame, comes highly recommended. Soulful, sexy hip hop.
Pieere Guyotat - Encore PLus Que La Lutte Des Classes, extrait ... novelist and playwright, army deserter, activist for soldiers, immigrants, and prostitutes, author of obscenity, creator of language, challenger to the class struggle and rules of society, Guyotat's voice here was recorded in Paris, 1976.
The Ambient Society - brainchild of Netherlands composer and producer Mauritz Kop. Collaborations with vocalists from around the world, traversing orchestral, electronic, industrial, world ... storytelling as melody. Here, Oasyx features the voice of Clara Van Vilet, speaking the lyrics of Joachim Zemmour.
Yas & The Lightmotiv (Montreuil) released a new album in May this year - Chop Off The Head is a hot, fiery mixture of music and voice, electronics beats and Yas' voice mixed the way I wish more spoken word was - it's confident, clear, no bullshit, moments of intense beauty. Intelligent work.
Odezenne (Bordeux) from their album OVNI, Edition Louis XIV - which is one of my favourite releases of the past couple of years. I love the crew's style, effortless surrealistic sensibility and smooth production.
Here is their remix of Alice in Wonderland - Alice dans l'extase!
Bissecta (Magalona) - so prolific, Bissecta and Kinsâme make collaborations of voice and music that is also eclectic, mutable, changeable. I love that they are posting new sounds in Soundcloud almost daily, that they are in a constant state of experimentation.
Akhenaton (Marseilles) of the IAM collective, a big voice in hip hop in France - the track is Canzone Di Malavita from the album Soldats de Fortune (2006).
Mauresca Fracas Dub also from Marseilles, Bravei Gent from the 2001 album Francament. The Mauresca collective take their inspiration from the troubadors, the social struggle and the language of Occitan (last year I wrote a longer post about this culture and language) 2011's Cooperativa is worth checking out ... here is a clip, lovin' a bit of lo-fi green screen ..
La Talvera was founded in the early 1980s to finance on-the-ground ethnic musicology research, developing and promoting traditional occitan music. These days, they cross many boundaries working with ragga, world, and traditional sounds, as well as groups like the Massilia Sound System, Brazilian curureiros and other traditional occitan musicians. Two collaborations, with Kréôl Konexion and with Massilia Sound System. Concert and interview:
Time to get up and dance in the subway - French Wine is a new cut from Kosta Kostov, from a jam session in his Cologne studio with MC Killo Killo, to this fun DJ Click remix. Out this week!
The body is light. The soul is lighter. After French wine, the body and soul are lighter still!
Son Corps Leger - Gherashim Luca, Romanian jewish poet and surrealist of the 20th century. Born in Bucharest, Luca left Romania for Paris in 1938, but had to return to Bucharest after the outbreak of war. There, he founded a Romanian surrealist group, which produced among other things The Dialectic of Dialectic. Returning to Paris in the early 50s, Luca gained renown for both his writings and his performance readings, working with experimental recording group Domaine Poétique (including sound and concrete poets Emmett Williams, Brion Gysin, and Bernard Heidsieck). By 1994, he was reportedly living in some squalor in Paris, and, facing eviction, he jumped into the Seine at the age of 80. A true surrealist.
Our last stop on Groovalizacion line 002 - the gymnastic voice of Aldona Nowowiejska - Aldona - an actress and singer born in Poland, based in France. The track is Murmur from Aldona's recent album Sonnets (2011), a kind of 'collaboration' with long dead Slavonic and English poets as well as the very long dead William Shakespeare - posthumous maybe, but lively, and alive, as Shakespeare's language really still is.* Following is a video excerpt from the short film 'The Wordcutter' directed by Izu Troin,featuring a song by Aldona. The synopsis of this film? In a country where people literally feed on letters from words gathered in trees, reading is vital not to die of boredom. Touché.
*(I recently watched Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, by chance finding it screening on Italian TV on a lazy night by the fire. Gorgeous movie, still, particularly with the locations filmed in Umbria, Italy - where I happened to be - giving it its true sense of place. The language, gorgeous, still. I'd gotten a little bit cynical about Shakespeare, had forgotten how brilliant that play is, that play on language hope and love. In the spirit of ... love on the underground!... “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs ... We burn daylight.")
