Around the world in a column
Jul. 9th, 2009 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusMomus
Playground column, July 2009
Travels of a Chameleon
My beloved readers! How are you doing? What have you been up to? It's been too long -- almost three months! -- since last we met.
I'm not quite sure how it happened, this gap in communications. It's partly because I went traveling. I spent a month in New York with only an iPod Touch to keep in touch. I imagined I'd have something to tell you about the music scene in New York, something I could tap out on the iPod's tiny keyboard. But in the end I was so busy doing other things that I hardly saw any live music.
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The only new band I discovered this time in New York was Twi The Humble Feather, a trio who play acoustic guitars and sing in ways that remind me of the Animal Collective (though they're a bit tired of that comparison). In the video lounge at the back of Monkeytown in Brooklyn I saw the Twi trio play a refreshing, relaxing set accompanied by the quirky projected animations of Nobuko Hori, one half of the Matsuri-kei girlband Groopies.
When I got back to Berlin, a funny thing happened. Kyoka, the other half of Groopies, brought the touring guitarist from the metal band Korn round to my house. It turned into a real-world re-enactment of my last column, in which I attempted to scandalize my own internal "good taste Taliban" by listening to music I wouldn't normally tolerate.
Shane Gibson sat on my sofa and politely watched the Mower videos I cued up for him, before taking control of my bluetooth mouse and showing me songs by (ahem!) "progressive metal" bands Sikth and Meshuggah. I made polite noises, but my inner Taliban hated them.
Metal music out of context doesn't have to be a bad thing, though. I heard a nice example when I attended Dexter Sinister's "documents opera" True Mirror Microfiche at the ICA in London in late June. Hunched at overhead projectors or standing stiffly at podiums, actors and art world personalities performed press releases and read pages of text, interrupted occasionally by a guitarist and drummer who played very short, very loud phrases from a Napalm Death song. The dryly cerebral texts were beautifully counterbalanced by the aggressive spurts of grindcore; the dream collaboration of Apollo and Dionysus.
But the music that's touched me most over the last couple of months hasn't been Western, and hasn't been rock. I heard street musicians in the Athens district of Kerameikos playing the most beautiful Balkan mountain music on accordion and clarinet. I held a pajama party at my flat in which we played only Greek Orthodox church music and the music of the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey, and it was the most fun party I've ever had; we whirled till our skirts spun high!
Most of all, I was impressed by an American called Jonny Olsen, who's become a big star in Laos and Thailand singing his own version of the local folk music. As the No Age blog explains, Jonny was a skate kid in California who started working in a Thai vegan café and, through it, fell in love with Thai culture.
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Jonny Olsen moved to Thailand, mastered the language and several traditional instruments, and began making records. He's now a pop star there and in neighbouring Laos -- an incredible cultural chameleon, and an example to us all. With love and dedication, anything is possible!
Translated from the original Spanish by a robot chameleon. Tip of the hat to the Pulled Up blog for putting me onto Jonny Olsen.
Playground column, July 2009
Travels of a Chameleon
My beloved readers! How are you doing? What have you been up to? It's been too long -- almost three months! -- since last we met.
I'm not quite sure how it happened, this gap in communications. It's partly because I went traveling. I spent a month in New York with only an iPod Touch to keep in touch. I imagined I'd have something to tell you about the music scene in New York, something I could tap out on the iPod's tiny keyboard. But in the end I was so busy doing other things that I hardly saw any live music.
[Error: unknown template video]
The only new band I discovered this time in New York was Twi The Humble Feather, a trio who play acoustic guitars and sing in ways that remind me of the Animal Collective (though they're a bit tired of that comparison). In the video lounge at the back of Monkeytown in Brooklyn I saw the Twi trio play a refreshing, relaxing set accompanied by the quirky projected animations of Nobuko Hori, one half of the Matsuri-kei girlband Groopies.
When I got back to Berlin, a funny thing happened. Kyoka, the other half of Groopies, brought the touring guitarist from the metal band Korn round to my house. It turned into a real-world re-enactment of my last column, in which I attempted to scandalize my own internal "good taste Taliban" by listening to music I wouldn't normally tolerate.
Shane Gibson sat on my sofa and politely watched the Mower videos I cued up for him, before taking control of my bluetooth mouse and showing me songs by (ahem!) "progressive metal" bands Sikth and Meshuggah. I made polite noises, but my inner Taliban hated them.
Metal music out of context doesn't have to be a bad thing, though. I heard a nice example when I attended Dexter Sinister's "documents opera" True Mirror Microfiche at the ICA in London in late June. Hunched at overhead projectors or standing stiffly at podiums, actors and art world personalities performed press releases and read pages of text, interrupted occasionally by a guitarist and drummer who played very short, very loud phrases from a Napalm Death song. The dryly cerebral texts were beautifully counterbalanced by the aggressive spurts of grindcore; the dream collaboration of Apollo and Dionysus.
But the music that's touched me most over the last couple of months hasn't been Western, and hasn't been rock. I heard street musicians in the Athens district of Kerameikos playing the most beautiful Balkan mountain music on accordion and clarinet. I held a pajama party at my flat in which we played only Greek Orthodox church music and the music of the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey, and it was the most fun party I've ever had; we whirled till our skirts spun high!
Most of all, I was impressed by an American called Jonny Olsen, who's become a big star in Laos and Thailand singing his own version of the local folk music. As the No Age blog explains, Jonny was a skate kid in California who started working in a Thai vegan café and, through it, fell in love with Thai culture.
[Error: unknown template video]
Jonny Olsen moved to Thailand, mastered the language and several traditional instruments, and began making records. He's now a pop star there and in neighbouring Laos -- an incredible cultural chameleon, and an example to us all. With love and dedication, anything is possible!
Translated from the original Spanish by a robot chameleon. Tip of the hat to the Pulled Up blog for putting me onto Jonny Olsen.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-09 04:54 am (UTC)" I worked in a Thai restaurant and I am enamored by
your womenyer kullll-chur. "This THIS!! is the endgame of fetishizing Asian women. You are exposed for the culture-appropriating little sniveling swine that you are.
I hope this dude gets beat down by a gang of real Thai pop stars. Fall in love with that! Get your butt back in the kitchen!
Re: cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-09 05:51 am (UTC)just saying...
Re: cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-09 06:02 am (UTC)but I just wanted to add here...
that there will be no ENDGAME for this fetishizing Asian women... that you speak of... it will just keep going... growing and growing in your head, and everywhere... until... no. there is no until... it will just keep becoming more... this is just the start... asian women will slowly... (in a slight of hand trick 'they' often pull) will suddenly, out of what appears to be a fetishized coffin... will suddenly take over the world... and thats that. just you wait. you will by law, need to prove that you have, and activly are, fetizhizing asian women... in the future.
Re: cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-09 07:35 am (UTC)I have to say I find this odd. What are "real Thai pop stars"? Do they have to show their birth certificates, passports and blood groups? A little cranial measurement thrown in for good measure? Or how about some paperwork to show they've "paid their dues" on the Thai club scene?
The big message I get from Olsen isn't really about Thai women at all. It's that an American patiently and skillfully learned, adopted and disseminated someone else's culture rather than merely evangelising for his own. I think it's very praiseworthy, but he's being treated in some quarters like a cultural version of the American Taliban (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Walker_Lindh).
Re: cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-09 11:47 am (UTC)Re: cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-10 06:38 am (UTC)a curious thing that his "interest" in "Thai culture" (gleaned from hearing a few pop Thai tracks on loop and taking down a few orders of Tom Yum and Pad Thai - is that where culture is located?), manifests itself in no real desire to divest himself of his white privilege; he is an agent of Global Whiteness through and through. If Johnny Olsen (Johnny! gaw, who could be more white American!) is going to Thailand he is not going to try and hack it as a common everyman. No no he must be worshipped for being the Well-Meaning White that he is. Huzzah, the white man has deigned to learn our lowly language! Bravo, that he would be so kind as to do our dances and sing our songs! Even if Johnny would put his Boy Scout hand on his heart and swear this was not what he was doing, his mere presence reinscribes colonialism, reminding all that whatever spaces non-white people try to carve out for themselves, Johnny will be there to jump in front of the camera and do his half-hula and remind you who is truly king.
Re: cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-10 01:59 pm (UTC)You're also intervening in what seems to me like a fairly workable relationship between Jonny and the Thais, declaring a "contract" they both seem to be enjoying "a problem", and telling the Thais -- in a way that risks, itself, being patronising -- that they're being patronised.
Re: cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-10 03:15 pm (UTC)*
as for the "who are you to judge?" argument (which really seems to be a "who are you to judge negatively?" argument since you don't question the license of anyone who is giving Johnny a hearty pat on the back for his endeavours). to that i say:
i can judge all i want.
i am not even asking Johnny to police whatever desire he might have for Asiatic women or any others, for that is a dangerous (and horribly unsexy!) game, what i am asking of him to bury himself in the mundanity and strife as well as the joys and pleasures of Thai-ness (or Laotian-ness) in equal measure, and if he cannot do that (which, of course, he can't because he is white Johnny Olsen from some putrid American suburb), then perhaps he might think about going away.
*
as for the thais, i'm not saying they are babes in the woods here, but most of my vitriol is still reserved for Johnny.
Re: cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-10 03:22 pm (UTC)He should leave Thailand unless he can start having a bad time there?
Re: cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-10 03:24 pm (UTC)Re: cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-09 09:09 pm (UTC)this CD cover that i recently spied in the local thrift shop:
what he needs is a BEATDOWN by some real Spaniards, eh?!
Re: cultural CLOWN
Date: 2009-07-10 12:04 am (UTC)