Rap

I’m excited to offer the first of what I hope to be many guest mixes on D.I.A., and it comes from one of my oldest friends, Dan Thomas-Glass. I’ve known Dan since the 4th grade, so we share a long musical history with each other – through Vanilla Ice and Kriss Kross, playing Weezer and Smashing Pumpkins covers, making push-pause mixtapes, or messing around with two turntables and a mic, our musical trajectories have very much been the same.

Dan is also a great writer and a great poet. He just finished his dissertation on rap and poetry, and is also responsible for the D-I-Y poetry journal With + Stand. The following mix, Sometimes I Think I’m In Love With Painting, is about as eclectic as it gets – a reflection on music as art and time capsule. See his words below and enjoy.

Sometimes I Think I’m In Love With Painting
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Dan’s Words:

I love music like Frank O’Hara loved painting—like he wished he was a painter, maybe because he had so many friends that were painters. Music expresses things differently than poetry, though they are related—music happens spatially, a friend once said, while poetry moves through time. A song can reach more people in a week than a poem might ever reach, even in 400 years. I envy musicians for that. But all artists share that something that O’Hara is talking about when he says “it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not, and the only decision you can make is that you did it.” You did it—that’s what the art is, the doing.

Music for me is very much about friends—the possibility of connections, of knowing friends who know music, of hearing from them about music they’ve heard. So Afro Classics came my way from a friend with the subject line “best beat of the year.” Fever Ray came from Chicago, a best-of-the-year last year. Elvis Perkins came to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and a friend said “if you hear anything, hear this.” Crooked Still played a show at the Strawberry Music Festival and we took our daughter and watched with several generations, fascinated by the banjo player’s strut.

Music for me is also very much about places—especially places I haven’t been but would like to go. The Nigerian coast, with the Ikenga Super Stars of Africa. The Scottish North Sea, with Frightened Rabbit (and the unmistakable brogue of the singer, so different than the omnipresent British rock accent). Mexico’s rap scene with Nina Dioz.

And music is about moments—when Alan Lomax recorded Haitian folk songs; when Onra discovered old Chinese and Vietnamese vinyl; when Africa and France collided in Paris-based Bwa Bande to create something remarkably like our own Zydeco; when everyone (including the French band Phoenix) wanted to make 80s music in 2009 and 2010.

Also, this moment—nearing to done with a dissertation on rap and poetry, another “son who writes books,” as Serengeti and Polyphonic have it; nearing 30 years old, nearing the summertime, wanting to listen to Flying Lotus and Bon Iver before he was Bon Iver and Diplo turn Feist into M.I.A. and Dirty Projectors and their crazy harmonies. A mix to lay back on the floor with my daughter in the sunshine and think to.

Track List:

1. Onra — The Anthem
2. Frank O’Hara — Adieu to Norman, Bonjour to Joan and Jean Paul
3. Frightened Rabbit — Swim Until You Can’t See Land
4. Serengeti & Polyphonic —  My Patriotism
5. Fruit Bats — Revolution Blues/Union Blanket
6. Bwa Bandé — Ké Byen
7. Afro Classics — Rap Fanatic
8. Elvis Perkins — Shampoo
9. Dirty Projectors — No Intention
10. Feist — I Feel It All (Diplo Remix)
11. Francilia — Gede nibo, yo fè rayi mwen (recorded by Alan Lomax)
12. Flying Lotus — Auntie’s Lock/Infinitum (feat. Laura Darlington)
13. Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) — Hazelton
14. Crooked Still — Calvary
15. Phoenix — 1901
16. Nina Dioz — Cuando, Cuando
17. Mack Sigis Porter — Back Home
18. Fever Ray — Triangle Walks
19. Ikenga Super Stars Of Africa — Soffry Soffry Catch Monkey

Tagged as: African, Blue Grass, Ethnic, Folk, Mixes, Rap

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