Wednesday, August 9, 2017

A Musical Journey from Dilla to Bacharach

J Dilla by Jed Cablao (Deviant Art)

I happened to be on Soundcloud the other day just randomly checking for music, and I came across one of DJ Jazzy Jeff's sets. I'm more familiar with his work as an actor on "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air", but the originator of the Transformer scratch is an actual practising DJ. The set he was playing was a tribute to J Dilla; I believe "Dilla" or "Dillalude" was my original search parameter. The Dillalude was actually my introduction to musician Robert Glasper - accomplished pianist and J Dilla fanboy - who does an interesting interpretation of Common's "TheLonious" (another track produced by J. Dilla). I'm always searching for new interpretations of the Dillalude, in which Glasper manages to sneak in multiple of Dilla's productions.

Anyway, back to DJ Jazzy Jeff's "Dilla Tribute" set. It was touted as containing both his well known, lesser known and even unreleased tracks. Around the quarter mark, DJ Jazzy Jeff starts playing an obviously older track that had a haunting Oboe intro that segued into this rapid keyboard rhythm accompanied by light rapid fire drums. This gave way to the graceful female singer who sings a difficult quick tempo part; shortly after, the rest of the band joins in the singing of the chorus, adding great shades of harmony to the whole effort. And then, it happens: Jeff starts to fade out the track, and appears to be modulating the track as another male voice starts to drop the intro to a rap song. Then the heavy bassline drops and the rap song continues buoyed by the looped modulated chorus motif from the previous band.

With a bit of an assist from the Shazam app, I was able to swiftly pin down both tracks. "Knowing when to Leave" (from The Burt Bacharach Medley) by the Carpenters and "Yum Yum" by Slum Village. Great work by Dilla on the sampling job, but the final product seemed a bit raw because the bass guitar he added to the mix seems a tad overpowering. Also, the vocals seem a bit washed out (probably a recording issue). The Carpenters on the other hand are a whole other story. Karen's vocals are unmatched, and coincidentally she also plays the drums on the track. Richard is light, swift and enchanting on the keys. However, while Dilla samples their track, the Carpenters are actually covering someone else's music. Yep, Burt Bacharach & Hal David to be exact. When they originally made this track, they had frequent collaborator Dionne Warwick doing the singing.

From reading up on some of the comments about the Carpenters' video on Youtube, I found out that President Obama had a night of music at the White House which honoured Burt Bacharach (& Hal David posthumously) with the 2012 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Conveniently, the whole performance was on Youtube and was a star-studded affair in which various musicians (Stevie Wonder, Diana Krall, Arturo Sandoval, Sheryl Crow, Mike Meyers? et al) took turns in singing Bacharach/David hits. You have to witness how much virtuosity one person can plug into playing the harmonica when you get to experience Stevie Wonder's extended solo on "Alfie". However, my highlight from the whole event was Sheléa and Arturo Sandoval on "Anyone Who Had a Heart"

I'm surprised I'd never heard of this ballad before because it has done quite the rounds. Originally performed by frequent Bacharach/David alum Dionne Warwick, it has been covered by many an artist, with each artist making the song their own. No proof of this is more evident than in Luther Vandross' rendition of the ballad. To her credit, Sheléa also make this song her own. Her vocals stamp their authority on her beautiful piano playing; starting out as a mere whisper, her singing reaches a crescendo that has her sounding part Whitney Houston, part Tamia. She conveys the full range of emotion from pining to hurt to desperation, and she'll leave you engrossed. A sprinkling of Mr. Sandoval's horn brings the full melancholy into this song. The Bacharach/David team certainly deserved to be feted for just this gem alone.

It certainly proved to be quite the musical marathon in one short evening. It has definitely opened up a wide range of artists and genres for me to explore. Thankfully though, between Youtube and the rest of the net, I think I'll be up to the task.

As you embark on your musical journeys, may God speed you well.  

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

ELECTION DAY


Considering how much ambivalence I've encountered among my fellow Kenyans when I ask them about voting, I'm still pretty psyched. This happens to the first time I've actually been able to vote out of the 4 times that I've been eligible. Don't count it as a dereliction of civic duty on my part; I've just never been around for the previous elections. So I definitely didn't want to miss my chance. I even got my voter's card way before the deadline hit (a surprise for a typical procrastinator like myself). Wasn't too happy at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission's (IEBC) decision to ask people to report back to their voting stations for verification (as if I didn't provide all the necessary details first time around), but they saved face by making the verification an SMS/Online affair. Thanks to this, I even knew beforehand which line I would be in during the voting exercise: No. 11 at the PCEA Enchorro Emuny Primary School in Ngong!

So all I had to do was bide my time and prepare for the day at hand. So today I was up by 4.30 am, done with preparations and out of the house by 5.45 am. Fearing for the worst with regards to my car, I made arrangements to park it within a family friend's compound, which was a convenient 3 minute walk from the voting station. As I drove, it was quite the sight to behold: cars parked along the roadside in droves, and an amorphous massing of people at the school gate. The IEBC had assured people that it would really be an easy process whereby we would just walk in and we'd be shown into which lines we were supposed to queue, so I thought the process would be easy. I was wrong!

So, I walked into the school compound, under the cover of darkness, and just run into total pandemonium. Lines of people as far as the eye can see, and very little indication as to where I was supposed to go. Started to look for an official, but they were few and far-in-between. I had saved a PDF of my voter details, so I had it on my phone screen for easy reference. By the time I did find an official, he just pointed me off to some far off corner and went on his merry way. So, Plan B: walk up to people in lines and find out what specific line they were in. For reference, the IEBC chose the first letter of the first name appearing in your ID as the signifier for the line that you would queue in.

Casting my gaze further afield, I could just barely make out some numbers on classroom doors; so, I just had to look for the door labelled 11. Trust you me, this had already taken all of 15 minutes. But, it wasn't the end. Lines 11 - 13 were actually located on the upper level of the school building, with, up until that point, no obvious observable staircase leading to the polling stations. After asking around, finally settled into one line that I believed was a combination 11/12/13 line; I was relieved of this notion when one Administration Police Officer (AP) walked by, and told us that Line 11 was actually separate from 12/13, which saw me move ahead.

Once I was sure I was in the right line (knock on wood), I was sure that the only thing I'd have to endure was an appreciable wait....but there was more than that. First off, the upper level of that school building was the things that'd make an Emergency Preparedness Coordinator cringe: only one stairwell packed to the brim by the two lines of individuals ascending; a few stragglers milling through the middle, some genuinely geriatric, invalid or with child, and others lost or trying to skip the queue; and to cap it off, this was also the only exit for people who had cast their votes.

The permutations for all the things that could have gone disastrously wrong within that scenario are baffling. Having just completed some Life Support Training courses, I tried to imagine how that understaffed voting station would have dealt with someone suffering a fainting spell, heart attack, etc. My biggest gripe is with the building design specifically. Even on an ordinary school day, if a fire breaks out or a panic arises because of an "explosion", students will basically be trampled in a stampede through that one narrow stairwell. Sometimes we only ever survive because of God's grace because we fail to plan for the simplest eventualities; and as one of my Surgical Consultants (Dr. Oigara) always used to say,

Failing to plan is planning to fail      

Of course when you've been in a line for a prolonged period of time, the shady Kenyan characters start to crop up. I'm talking blatant line-cutters, ladies using the ruse of carrying the same child so that they can basically rock up to the line ahead of everyone else; and then they're those irritating characters in the back of the line who act like those ahead of them are slowing down the line, as if we ever had any possibility of influencing the events ahead of us. (these are probably the same impatient individuals who cause a fuss during traffic jams).

So it basically took me 3 hours and 50 minutes to complete this simple task. Mind you, many people tell me that conditions were better this time around. If I'm led to believe that the IEBC has actually learned from its mistakes and performed better this time around, then it would be something of a quantum leap to expect them to have a trouble free election anytime soon. I recognize that they have had some unique challenges this time around (being reconstituted afresh, having their IT Manager murdered, constant court challenges), but some logistical issues are not hard to solve.

First off, they've got to view the voters as mere monkeys, Sheep, or Children, if you please. We are basically showing up to an alien environment, and we are definitely bound to be confused. Their main function is to:

  1. get us in line
  2. get us into the voting booth to cast our votes
  3. get us out so we can go on our merry way without making a nuisance of ourselves
And for Heaven's sake, they need to have a dry-run before the election day so that they can test the system out. Hoping for things to fall into place without any practice when 1000+ sheeple rock up to the spot is impossible. Barring any technical difficulties from their biometric system, they could probably shave off at least one hour from everyone's wait time.

Anyway, the day's done and nothing unbecoming has happened. I'm hoping to just be able to sit things out at home, and hope all things turn out peacefully. At the end of the day, come what may, peace and a normal semblance of life is what we crave for. We can sort out the other political stuff later.

God Bless.