Music is a Human Right: Haroon Bacha @ Littlefield – 12/10/09 – Brooklyn

Dec 12, 2009 Reviews

Words and Photos by Quoc Pham

The freedom to express ourselves, our identity and our culture through artistic expression is a right that is often taken for granted in our complacent society. Last Wednesday was the 61st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and for the occasion, we attended “Music is a Human Right”, a musical event at Littlefield in Brooklyn. The event was organized by Austin Dacey, a human rights activist whom we had the chance to interview earlier that week (Read the interview here).

The event featured Haroon Bacha, a traditional Pashto singer who fled his native Pakistan under the pressure of the Taliban regime. Haroon comes from the north western part of Pakistan, a mountainous region which is home to the Pashtuns, a pacific muslim ethnic group. Like many other Pashto musicians, he has been the prime target of the Taliban’s tragic campaign against popular culture and musical expression considered un-islamic. Even though he is a star in his home country, Haroon Bacha was forced to escape persecution and find asylum in New York City where he now resides. The performance was a tribute to Anwar Gul, another notorious pashto musician who was murdered by a Taliban militia a year earlier.

The evening started out with a reception followed by a brief introduction of the performance. Haroon Bacha then took the stage accompanied by his musicians – masters of the tabla and rubab – and proceeded to play an extensive set of traditional pashto music in a typical formation.   Haroon’s sweet high baritone voice combined with intricate polyrhythms and melodies led the audience into a dancing frenzy. Halfway through his set, he paused and took the opportunity to speak about Pashto culture, peace and tolerance. The evening ended with a set from DJ Rehka of Basement Banghra fame. Overall, it was a very inspiring event and a evening of magnificent music which – as organizer Austin Dacey would say – should not be silenced!

Tags: brooklyn, Concert Review, Human rights, Littlefield

Interview with Planet Rump at Booty Crisis, 11/14/09 – Brooklyn

Nov 19, 2009 Interview, Reviews

Interview and words by Linh Truong, Photos by Quoc Pham

Before the co-sponsored Sound Liberation Front event Booty Crisis at Public Assembly last Saturday, I got a chance to talk backstage with Planet Rump – the monthly party’s founders and resident booty shaker – about the Casio, breaking boxes (the metaphorical kind), and just getting down with your funky ass self.

SLF: How did Planet Rump come about?

Nasty Ness: We landed here on Earth.
Miss Strawberry: Crashed our spaceship.
DJ Tantric: It was an accident.
M: We’re from the Planet Rump, and we were going on a funky space odyssey, and then we ended up here. We were, like, what are we gonna do, we really gotta get back to Rump – it’s like the funkiest planet in the universe.
D: Then we saw there was a need for us.
M: We saw a lot of funky people, a lot more lame people, so we decided to bring the funk of the universe, channel it through our bodies…
N: Earth isn’t ready.
D: And it’s not about materialism, it’s not about something you need to have to bring the funk. It’s about harnessing the funk within you. You could be wearing some Tevas, you could be wearing some Keds, you could be wearing some Fruit of the Loom. It doesn’t matter because anyone can get funky with anything you want, and that’s how our music works.

SLF: Why Brooklyn?

N: Because this is where the trends begin.
M: And Brooklyn needs it the most. We got a lot of shoegazers here, a lot of too-cool-for-schoolers.
N: A lot of conformists.
D: A lot of people who just want to buy something to make them cool, but they don’t want to be cool on the inside.
M: But we know that this is the media platform of the world, and we just want to be at the center of it all. Get the message out there that love, peace, and funk are the only things you need.

SLF: Why use the Casio as your main instrument?

D: The Casio embodies pretty much the principle of you don’t need anything to be funky.
N: Keep it simple.
D: We play little baby toys from thirty years ago, and we can blow people’s minds away harder than someone with the most updated products of blah, blah, blah production. I mean, you don’t need to buy something to be funky.
N: You can be yourself.
D: And we’ve done a lot with those little toys.
M: That shit BOOMS!
(laughter)
D: And we work with some sound generation tools that don’t actually play notes. Like, we don’t even need notes. We don’t even need a scale or melody or whatever. Yeah, we do that a little bit, but creating bass tones generated out of some sort of nonsense…we’re playing in between the notes, and the sounds are cool. That’s what works with us.

SLF: How do you get the ideas behind your songs? What’s the creative process?

N: We take our real-life experiences from going out and being ourselves every day and just enjoying life. We take real-life scenarios, and we make it something tangible.
D: We don’t really stick to any genre or anything. We’re just playing music. And we can embody anything about anything by just playing music. You don’t have to pigeonhole yourself into a certain box. We try to play across all boundaries, and some of our songs embody a lot of different elements of other types of music.
N: Like, why be negative? Why not just make something positive out of everything? Just put it on display and build your self-esteem.

SLF: Is that the whole idea behind Booty Crisis?

N: Hell yeah!
M: Definitely.
D: Booty Crisis is, like, the boundless booty party where you can have anything, and we’re sort of exposing people to things that they were sleepin’ on. Whether it’s Chico Mann or Hiro Tha Jap or DJ A-Ko from upstate New York. There’s a bunch of people out there right now dancing to a DJ from upstate New York, and they don’t know it.

Tayisha Busay

SLF: What’s the process of choosing the acts in the lineup?

N: If we don’t like them, then they don’t play.
D: It’s group knowledge, but we’re all specialists in different ways. So, we get to combine our strengths – sort of like a big net – and bring in people. If we can agree on it, see what the benefit is, and how we can draw people together with our own scene, then that’s what we do.
N: And that’s the most important thing.
M: It’s gotta be fun. It’s gotta be positive. It’s gotta be boomin’. It’s gotta be danceable. Electronic is what’s hot right now, and we love that.
D: Enough with the diva entitlement thing. We just bring people who wanna bring the funk.
N: If I can’t rock out to it, then I’m not gonna book ‘em. That’s it.

SLF: What’s the act tonight that you’re the most excited for?

Planet Rump: (in unison) All of them!
M: They’re all amazing.
N: I’ve been to all of their parties, and they all blew my mind.
D: And if we’re lucky, they’re all gonna be friends at the end of the night. We got Latin- Cuban-Afrobeat music. We got Japanese dance music. We got Israeli, Brooklyn-based dance music. We got us. And everyone’s gonna love each other.

Chico Mann

SLF: So, it’s gonna be one big group hug afterwards?

N: Of course, it’s already one big group hug. Everyone here is a friend. There are no enemies here. It’s all love.

SLF: What are your plans for Planet Rump in the future?

N: Planet Rump is more than just a group – we’re an entity.
D: It’s a movement. So, we’re booking acts and getting momentum with that. We’re cutting an album right now. One of our guests Chico Mann is a good sounding board because he doesn’t live in anyone’s world or anyone’s box. He’s a good person to talk about a lot of things like that. We’re gonna keep moving in a different direction. Use some different elements of different music, and see where it takes us.
N: As long as we keep having fun.
D: Nothing less than sexy.
N: If we’re not having fun, how could anyone watching us be having fun?

Tags: Afrobeat, Booty Crisis, brooklyn, Chico Mann, Concert Review, Interview, Linh Truong, Planet Rump, Public Assembly, Quoc Pham, Williamsburg