<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><b>New podcast: MEMORABILIA. COLLECTING SOUNDS WITH... Brian Shimkovitz. Part I</b><br><br>Produced by Matías Rossi<br><br>The
tale of how a student of ethnomusicology from Brooklyn spent a year in
West Africa buying tapes off street markets... and how he managed to
turn that bizarre collection into one of the most revered record labels
in recent years. <br>
<br>Link: <a href="http://rwm.macba.cat/en/research/memorabilia_brian_shimkovitz/capsula" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">http://rwm.macba.cat/en/research/memorabilia_brian_shimkovitz/capsula</a><br>Playlist:</span><div>
<span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><a href="http://rwm.macba.cat/uploads/20130903/Memorabilia_Brian_Shimkovitz_eng.pdf" target="_blank">http://rwm.macba.cat/uploads/20130903/Memorabilia_Brian_Shimkovitz_eng.pdf</a></span></div>
<span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><br>When Brian Shimkovitz
went to Ghana on a Fulbright Scholarship for ethnomusicology in 2005, he
was confronted with a rich, bizarre, puzzling and extremely varied
array of music, mostly released on cassettes. 'I had never really
considered going to Africa,' he says, 'but I had this interest in
popular music in cities.' And the African music scene turned out to be
just the ideal fieldwork project for Shimkovitz. For a whole year he was
based in Accra, the capital city of Ghana, but occasionally traveled to
other locations in West Africa such as Mali, Togo and Burkina Faso. In
all of these places, street markets and stalls provided him with a
seemingly endless supply of out-of-the-way material. By the time he went
back to Brooklyn, having interviewed a substantial number of MCs, DJs
and producers, he had amassed an impressive collection of tapes, but had
no master plan for them. Starting a blog to channel his findings
('communicating it to people without dumbing it down completely', as he
recalls) seemed like a reasonable enough idea. The name of the blog was
pretty self-explanatory: Awesome Tapes from Africa. Steering away from
the stereotypical afro-exoticist formulation that had been associated to
the World Music market for decades, Brian made an effort to simply
share his own excitement for the sounds, the artwork and the richness of
his fragmented collection: 'a non-encyclopedic approach to this very,
very broad and deep array of music that's out there – that I'm certain
my 4,000 cassettes is only scratching the surface of 0.01% of music
that’s commercially available.' It was probably this straightforward
approach, combined with the viral potential of the web that made the
project grow beyond his wildest expectations. Some years later, what
began as a fairly underground resource for close friends, some
connoisseurs and digital crate-diggers, has turned into a full-fledged
record label. <br>
<br>Awesome Tapes From Africa reissues all sorts of African tape
rarities, from folkloric pop, to left-field dancefloor gems and hip-hop
bangers, shedding light on obscure and wonderful sounds from across the
continent. The label has received major acclaim from publications
worldwide for its reissues by re-discovered legends including Ethiopian
accordion and keyboard maestro Hailu Mergia, Somali funk and soul group
Dur-Dur Band and Malian chanteuse Nahawa Doumbia, underscoring the
broader mission of Awesome Tapes from Africa: contributing to building
the international market for African music and helping a few of his
favorite artists find new audiences through touring and reissues.<br>
<br>You can find the complete MEMORABILIA. Colllecting sound with... podcast series here: <a href="http://rwm.macba.cat/en/memorabilia_tag/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">http://rwm.macba.cat/en/memorabilia_tag/</a><br>
<br>
Enjoy!</span></div>