MusicTech Rewinder - Issue #63

Happy Friday,

here comes your weekly music tech digest with a few additional treasures of the internet upfront.

+) This week, I discovered the podcast The Midnight Miracle, hosted by Dave Chappelle and his two longtime friends Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey aka Mos Def. It's a new interpretation of oral storytelling based on the concept of griots, storytellers who are also poets, historians, genealogists, and musicians in West Africa who have passed on legendary tales for centuries. A deeply respected speaker, the griot is tasked with memorizing and retelling—sometimes with the addition of new details that relate to the lives of a modern audience—the histories of a tribe and the specific families within it. It’s a means to not only control the narrative but to share the wisdom of the past, in the hopes that it bears some fruit of understanding for the next generation. In many ways, the griot is an early version of the Black entertainers we know today, who at once exist as cultural ambassadors and traffic in the specificity of their lived experiences, using them as material for whatever commentary they choose to reach the masses.

+) Do you feel the urge to travel despite the pandemic? This project lets you pick a city, a method of transport (walk, car, train), a time of the day, and a radio station, and then virtually invites you to explore that place.

+) Back in the days when blogs were the main source to find new music, one of my favorite go-to places was "Passion of the Weiss". The blog has evolved over the years and here is a recently published excellent write-up about the universe of Aphex Twin.

+) Last but not least, if you are into classical music, I recommend checking out this new and interesting concept for discovering classical music. Concert Roulette. Simply click to start and you’ll be presented with a video of a concert.

I will take a break from this newsletter now for a few weeks but I will be back soon.

Enjoy reading and have a fantastic time until I am back from the holiday break.

Cheers,

Matt

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