THE GUESTLIST NETWORK | SEPTEMBER 2010 AKALA
Osh: Hey, how’s it going? Akala: Yeah I’m really good, looking forward to carnival actually. It’s inter- esting because people forget why it even started. Just for the record it did start because of the immense ra- cial violence in that area. They killed a gentleman then claimed it wasn’t the first gentleman they had killed just because he was black and he was walking by. So when the con- flict ensued after he was murdered, Claudio Jones and all those guys came on board and they decided to start a positive festival to promote a positive image of the area, and that’s what created Notting Hill Carnival. So a lot of youths go to the Notting Hill Carnival, and the irony now of the in-fighting amongst young boys in England, particularly at carnival, is quite interesting considering why carnival started.
O: So people need to recogn- ise the history. A: Yeah, people need to recognise that carnival is here because of rac- ism, because of the racial oppres- sion that our grandparents suffered when they came here. Carnival is one of the manifestations of that and it’s turned into the second big- gest street festival in the world. It’s starting to be colonised, it’s start-
HIPHOP//RNB 37
Akala has just finished a tour with Nas and Damien Marley and is now on the road with Dead Prez. This talented British musician has lots to say aswell as being very talented with his word play.
ing to become something that isn’t about Caribbean culture anymore which is interesting because if we have a festival for Asian culture for example, which would be a beautiful thing, I don’t know how much there should be heavy metal floats or this or that. It’s not about saying it’s in any culture, it’s about saying that if this is for Caribbean culture then let it be for Caribbean culture. Let’s not start trying to internationalise it and co-opt it like is always done with so- called black culture.
O: Yeah, they were always try- ing to take things away from carnival, putting on big events elsewhere on the same day. A: Yeah, putting on big events the same day in South London and in Hyde Park. It’s uncomfortable for people for immigrants to have such a big presence in this country, a lot of people just don’t like it.
O: For real, but there are lot of people from the ends who do remember what it was like a long time ago. A: Yeah I love to see the floats and the sound-systems and get my ras- taman dance on - that’s carnival for me! O: Yeah some places never
TRUE DJ HERO
Instead we are entertained by the one and only trick in his book for bringing in the next tune. So for the next 5 hours we had to en- dure some ol’: in with the tune, tune fade out, iwi-iwi-iwi-in with the next tune, tune fade out, iwi-iwi-iwi-in with the next tune, tune fade out, iwi-iwi-iwi-in with the next tune, accompanied with the occasional “whheeeelandcomagen”. Now the fact that some of the highest paid Djs in the country can’t even mix proves that not being able to mix doesn’t stop you from being a successful dj.
Well, over here at least. However, myself and an entire nation of party people who know, will always regard a rhythmless dj as wack. We now live in an age of super technol- ogy and now, aspiring djs have never had it so good. Now you all don’t have to just rely on your ears or a clever marker on the vinyl so there is no excuse.
This week we giving you top tips on how to mix using sorato. Beat Matching In Sorato
Have all your music bpm’d so all track tempos will display in the
BPM tapper windows.
Switch to Rela- tive mode In the virtual deck display you will find the beat tempo in real time also, the increments/dec- rement scales
change. So, there are a lot of people out there generally just talking shit on the mic, and as far as I’m concerned you’ve been keeping it real for a long time, but there’s a lot of suc- cess in the UK right now. A: Define success.
O: There’s people on the road to potential success, there’s a lot of urban artists out there in the top 10, and people doing number ones - there’s things happening all the time for UK artists on an international level. Do you think that some of the smoke might clear and there might an opportunity for some more real artists to come through in a while because of this hype. A: Well we have look at what’s hap- pening, this isn’t the first time this has happened and I think we’ve got a short memory. If we look back to 10 years ago with So Solid, Pay As You Go, Heartless Crew, Genius Crew - 10, 15, maybe 20 garage acts got signed, Urban music was the shit for a minute.
O: What happened? A: The problem is we’re not doing something with a foundation like
jazz music, reggae music, real hip hop music - the only reason com- mercial, cheesy hip hop can ex- ist now is because of what Public Enemy and Wu Tang and KRS1 have all done for the last 40 years, because of the credibility that hip hop is built on, the cheesy shit can exist. But we’re forgetting that you can’t go backwards, you can’t start off cheesy and go back to credibility. Rock music has a credibility, so you can have cheesy bands like Busted because you’ve got Radiohead, and it doesn’t affect the whole genre. In the UK I think we’ve never quite understood that with Urban culture which is why none of our cultures have had the permanence that African-American or African-West Indian cultures have had because we’ve tried to build a culture off cheese and charts. It’s cool, I’m not knocking them, good for them - get your money, do your thing. But do I think in 40 years people are still go- ing to be buying the records the way they’re buying Bob Marley records? I think the artists themselves would tell you themselves that isn’t the case. Until we build a culture based on a genuine movement represent- ing who we are, a genuine voice with a message, we’ll never have some- thing that has any lasting success.
“What is a DJ if they can’t mix?”- So I was at a party a few weeks back and everything seemed to be a.o.k except for the fact that DJ nut-beater hasn’t mixed in one f#!?ing tune all evening.
applied from the pitch control on the real decks.
The Main Waveform Display window is where you will find the sound waves created from the songs as they are play- ing and the basic idea is to get the wave form peaks of the songs moving parallel.
Snare peaks usually form the larg- est waves so it would be good to use these wave peaks to align with. Use this feature together with the Beat Matching Display for aligning the markers to assist with beat matching the two tracks.
Now if you use the additional Tempo Match Display feature at the very top of the Main Waveform Display window this gives an even clearer view for matching the peaks to align the tempo of the two tracks.
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Authors: Gnostik and DJ Ku-ku
www.truedjhero.com http://twitter.com/nikgnostik
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