If anyone asked me what I see myself as? I would say I'm a student of music. I started my education at home. My dad had/has an extensive collection of music and would play everything from Fela, Rex Lawson, Michael Jackson, Little Richard to the Beatles. He loved the Elvis Priestley films and during the holidays we would get a good dosage of Elvis songs and dance moves. At secondary school we used to circulate tapes. Basically if you were lucky enough, one of your older brothers or sisters bought a CD of an artist and we would secretly record it and pass it on to our mates. Sometimes you would end up with a recording of a recording and the ‘hiss’ was so bad that even the ‘Dolby’ switch on your auto reverse Memorex Walkman could not remedy. For me it was my sister, so I was educated well on 90s Rnb (Jodeci, SWV, BBD, Wreckx n Effect) and every now and again when I saw my older brother he would give me a tape with rap, ragga or electronic music on it (Shabba Ranks, MC Hammer, Salt N Pepper, Rakim and Bobby Brown). We basically copied the dance and fashion from music videos and the cult movie 'House Party'. When I got my first job I saved all my wages to buy a stereo system and started to buy CDs as the sounds sounded nicer without the now annoying 'hiss' and there was no need to keep pressing the rewind button. It was so funny to watch the cycle start all over as I noticed my CDs going missing from their cases over a period of time.
During sixth form college we got the student union radio up and running after it had been absolute for a number of years. I starting hanging out with people with different tastes and started listening to bands like Nirvana, Limp Biscuit, Pavement and Black Sabbath. During my university years I would spend hours in my halls playing Hip Hop especially from the early 2000s. I was a big fan of artists like Nas, JayZ, DMX, Common, Blackstar and basically would watch VHS video re runs of Yo! MTV raps and Lyracist Lounge. I then starting to really get into Hip Hop and that's when I truly began to understand where it started from and learn of the likes of Kool Herc, Afrika Bamabaataa, Grand Master Flash, Grand Wizard Theodore. I was excited by the culture that surrounded the art form. This was when I really started to appreciate the early to mid nineties movement and how much it had paved the way for the music I loved. It was so creative to me - you had artists sampling records and making beats, making beats from scratch and being expressive in different ways.
You had people like Rakim and KRS-1 who were intelligent and could rhyme anything, then you had ATCQ who had beats that were closely coming with a jazz flavour and there was De La Soul who was clever with word play, Gangstarr - where GURU would lace beats put together by Dj Premier, beats that were so banging by the end of the track your neck would ache, The Phacyde who had a comedic element almost, Slum Village propped up by Jay Dilla’s skill with an MPC and you have Wu Tang, where RZA created a ninja story to go with his amazing usage of sampling soul records and not to forget Scarface, Outkast and the rest of 'The South' pioneers. The list of artists that made an impact is endless.
If I ask my parents what their earliest memory of me was my mum would reply, ’dancing around our house in your nappies’. Nowadays I listen to music from any and everywhere and I love sounds that move internally or spiritually. I’m really honoured to have this opportunity to share what I believe is my interpretation of good music to the world and to be able to share this platform with some of my current heroes is truly overwhelming.
TTiksar
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2 comments:
Your relationship with music - great read! x
You are so cultured with no holding out on music. You can really only be yourself with the presence of music and so many people don't understand why you see people everywhere with earbuds in walking like zombies.
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