Indian composer AR Rahman has been shortlisted for an Oscar nomination for his Tamil song NaNa from the Hollywood film, Couples Retreat.
….

The composer is often called the Mozart of India.

Hear it here. He previously received two Oscars for his work on Slumdog Millionaire.

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Weird things you find wandering on-line: The Carl Sagan/Stephen Hawkings rap/techno/emo remix.

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“Turntables are in fact musical instruments,” Danish turntablist Martin Jakobsen explains at his Gemmayze flat the night before the start of a series of DJ workshops for Palestinian youth called: “Turntables in the Camps.”

“This is our first time in Lebanon, and Den Sorte Skole – the three-man DJ crew that I’m repping – we want to introduce the idea that there is this global DJ culture that Palestinian youth can take part in; a culture that doesn’t exclude them in the ways that they are excluded from Lebanese society, and that through turntablism, we can teach them to use sounds from their own lives to create music.”

Jakobsen told NOW Lebanon he was not sure what to expect out of the process, but he said, “I am realistic – I know that it’s not going to save anyone – but these workshops are a way of saying to them – ‘Hey, everyone can be a DJ – and, ‘You don’t need all this fancy shit’ – especially if we’re investing the equipment for them to come and experiment on from time to time.”

Jakobsen’s compatriot, Simon Dokkedal, the crew’s scratch specialist, waxes a little more street on the matter. “We training the next generation of sound pirates!” adding, “Hopefully we’ll plant the seeds here, and from this we can create a new generation of hip-hop DJ’s here in the camps.”

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Do you know what’s worth fighting for?
When it’s not worth dying for?
Does it take your breath away
And you feel yourself suffocating?

Does the pain weigh out the pride?
And you look for a place to hide?
Did someone break your heart inside?
You’re in ruins

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms, give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky, you and I

Music is part of our contemporary Ars Poetica.
And I think American public sentiment is turning against warfare….like perhaps in the sixties?
I wasn’t around.

I think this means Obama is probably not going to be sending many more bodies to the Graveyard of Empires.
Sorry, Buzz.

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Beyonce Knowles has sung about partying like a “naughty girl,” but Malaysians can expect her to be on her best behavior for a concert in this Muslim-majority country next month, the event’s organizer said Thursday.

The R&B superstar has attracted criticism in recent days from the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, the country’s largest opposition group, which wants authorities to scrap the Oct. 25 show because it would promote “Western sexy performances.”
….

Entertainment company Marctensia, the concert’s Malaysian organizer, said Knowles should be regarded as a “role model” and “embodiment of success” because of her heavy involvement in philanthropy work, including campaigns against poverty and domestic violence.

The company also allayed concerns that Knowles would wear inappropriate outfits, saying “all parties have come to an amicable understanding” about stage costumes at the stadium concert in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s largest city.

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Or are they? I noticed in this youtube video from the group HOST Alliance that the first line of this song is the first line of al-Fatihah (which is all I could recognize since I don’t speak Azerbaijani). Could a movement that mashes up Western protest music forms with elements of Islamic identity be forming where the Western reporter would recognize the former but be oblivious to the latter?

Anyway, here’s some more on HOST Alliance:

Of course, the authorities are also well aware of the potential for change that alternative music brings with it. Last month, for example, one Azeri newspaper reported that fans of another rap band, H.O.S.T Alliance, were being intimidated by national security service agents in the Azeri exclave of Nakhichevan. Fifteen youth were detained for eight hours by National Security Ministry operatives and instructed not to listen to the band’s music which they reportedly claimed was “subversive.”

The band too has not been spared from unwanted attention from the authorities. Although it released its first album in 2007, H.O.S.T Alliance has not been able to sell it openly in Azerbaijan. Instead, the music has been distributed freely from person to person. H.O.S.T Alliance too has also been detained and warned not to write any more “anti-State” songs while the police are known to demand fans they encounter delete the band’s music off their mobile phones.

More videos from HOST Alliance here, here, and in English, here.

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Adam Horowitz writes, “The video, like the song, is a powerful indictment of both the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people, and attempts to shield young American Jews from this reality through programs like Birthright.” Check it out.

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