Art Radio Call for Content

 Art Radio is a platform for sharing music and sound art. The station is managed by dj afifa. This is a general call for content from artist. musicians, producers and interested persons. 

A leap year and other stories

 

This is the first “album project” by dj afifa. It is a compilation of 5 nu-music tracks which are presented as “short stories”. The title of the compilation is inspired by a conversation with a “construction worker” about his birthday. “Pandemic News” and “Watching people die” are the stories of the last two
years as told by dj afifa. “Enter the Time Machine” is a work in progress sketch a soundscape about the history of Jamaica. “Where is the mouth of the Rio Cobre?” is a sound sample which sends you on a search for an answer to the question in the title.

Listen to a Leap Year and other stories here

 

What is Drone music

This is the first in a series of articles on "netlabel music" or music genres popular in the netlabel community. Our first genre is drone music.

Drone music, drone-based music, or simply drone, is a subgenre of minimal music that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tone clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece. La Monte Young, one of its 1960s originators, defined it in 2000 as "the sustained tone branch of minimalism". ^- wikipedia

 
Here is a list of articles we found which talk about drone music. 


http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/12/a-brief-history-of-drone

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/the-history-of-drone-music-culminates-in-now-thats-what-i-call-drone/260330/

https://www.textura.org/archives/articles/dronesarticle.htm

https://www.juliusdobos.com/the-philosophy-behind/ambient-vs-newage/


https://pitchfork.com/features/resonant-frequency/5879-resonant-frequency-17/

https://hyperallergic.com/154631/spending-an-evening-with-a-maestro-of-drone-music/

In part 2 we will look at ambient music.

Nothing Matters nu-music by dj afifa

Nothing matters is the latest nu-music release from dj afifa. Nothing matters is the name of a poem and a collection of haikus, poems and writings published by dj afifa earlier this year.

Nothing matters expresses the frustration with injustice in Jamaica and the coming to terms with the nature of life as a result of it. The nu-music track was produced by dj afifa and features her performance of the poem.

Nu-music is how she refers to experimental audio productions which gives insight into the daily realities of the artist. Nothing matters reflects a basic production style using Audacity for recording mixing and mastering the track. The track was produced in the Zanj Radio studios at the SO((U))L HQ in St.Andrew Jamaica.

The track is free to download and is released under the creative commons license; other artist are free to share, redistribute and remix the track.
There will be a limited number of physical copies released early in 2019 available for sale at the SO(U))L HQ and Di Institute for Social Leadership in Jamaica.

5 Questions with DJ Afifa

1. Many people find what you do  interesting but weird and sometimes confusing. Do you do this deliberately and why do you think this might be the case?

*Laughs* I can imagine....I think I understand why it might appear that way. It gets confusing because I didn’t go to art school and I have a PhD but I don’t present papers or work in a university.  I believe art is life and I bring my life, that consists of a range of different backgrounds and experiences, mix it up and present it as my art. I think maybe it would be easier to understand if it was okay to mix things up, but people tend to compartmentalize everything so it’s not really the case. I guess, then, you could say I am doing it deliberately but I don’t feel there is much of a choice for me to do it any other way. I just prefer to use what I really love to explore myself and the world, so I play around with ideas and concepts and try to create new things. Laughs. I take everything I learn personally so whatever I think about I try to practice. I don’t know if I’ve confused you even more, but that’s kinda how I think about it. I would like to find out more about how other people would explain my art because maybe it has nothing to do with what I think.

 

  

2. Where are you now in your art?

Hmmmm… I have been working through and thinking through a lot of things. It has been tough and fulfilling at the same time. At times I have had doubts and fears about how everything will all work out and had to dig deep to remind myself about how I got here and where I really see myself going. I use my show on Zanj Radio to practice and work through what it really means for me to be a dj and a sound artist. I use it to help me figure out who is dj Afifa essentially. This has been my main focus over the last 2 years, and today I  have a much better idea about what I want to do as a dj and sound artist. I am working on a project that I feel confident in developing.  I am excited about it actually. I am creating a distinctive area for my work where I bring together  discussions, sound and space. I think I am at the stage where I can see how they can all fit other and I am recommitting to continue making it work. 

 

3. So who is dj Afifa now? 

Well she is a selecta who works on sound projects and she makes spaces inspired by music.... yea that's where dj Afifa is.focused right now.

 

 4. Tell us about something that you have been working on that you would like people to listen to? 

Well.... The body of a nine year old girl is a sound art project that I would like people to listen to and talk about. It is a very basic track that I created recently. One day I was listening to the local news on youtube. And I heard a story about a nine year old girl who was found dead in bushes. I heard the story first on TVJnews then again on CVM TV. Both stories started the same way and after looking it up in the newspaper and reading twice, the reality sank in. Why was something like this happening in Jamaica? What is going to happen to the children? I heard some parts of the story play back in my mind. The body... of a nine year old girl. I decided to put the two tracks together and recreate the feeling of being in a room listening to it. I want to know what people think about it. What Jamaican people think and what other people think.

I am really interested in what we listen to and how we are and perceive reality? Like when you hear the first sentence in the newscast does it make you listen more or walk away? I think it’s interesting because this is the news every day in Jamaica. Graphic descriptions of homicides are common place. You can hear it a lot and you can see it. If you want you can listen to the track ‘The body of a nine year old girl’ on my soundcloud. So yea...check it out.

5. Where do you see yourself in 2030?

Yea...2030. I see myself making more spaces inspired by music all over the place....building my catalogue of tracks, developing my soundscaping techniques, and just working on this dj Afifa thing. 

Well, all the best and we look forward to talking to you some more in the future.

Can we use recordings to reflect on who we are?

This track is a recent release by dj afifa. She combines two news items to make a track which she describes as a "sonic mirror". Can we still hear ourselves? and can what we hear show us who we are?

Nu Jazz meets Jamaican djing and dub poetry

This track is a dj afifa remix of the I-I chant written and performed as a dub poem by Jamaican dub poet Iyunda. This version revisits the Jamaican djing and dub poetry chanting styles. In Jamaican music tradition, the dj chants lyrics over a riddim while the dub poet chants poetry to a reggae or dub riddim. Count Matchuki, King Stitt and U-Roy are highlighted as the early pioneers of the dj style in Jamaican music. Dj afifa’s production of the I-I chant is inspired by U-Roy’s Natty Rebel album released in 1976 under Virgin Records.
The I-I Chant fuses the djing and dub poetry chanting styles in Jamaican music with a jazz hip-hop riddim or Nu jazz track produced by Japanese dj, composer and arranger Uyama Hirato. The instrumental track Autumn is taken from the Freedom of the son album released 2014.
bless and love.

New ways to hear Nu-Music?

Where would you go to find nu-music?

Who is listening to nu-music?

We think anyone will listen to nu-music. It depends on what the listener wants to hear.

What is Nu-Music

Nu-Music is not music. It is something that you listen to.