Prince Paul: New Orleans Bounce

'Where They At': New Orleans Rap and Bounce Archive Now Online...

Alison Fensterstock and Aubrey Edwards’ Where They At archive is now available online. It’s a pretty impressive archive of New Orleans bounce and rap music featuring photos, ephemera and excerpts of interviews with the likes of DJ Jimi, Mia X, Mannie Fresh and more (hopefully the full text will be available in some form in the future?) I haven’t gotten too too deep into the site yet, but I did notice this interesting point brought up by one time Young Money and Psychoward DJ Raj Smoov:

Even still now, I don’t think hip-hop and rap are too widely accepted as… I think it’s still looked down upon. Even within the city, jazz music and brass band music – and there is a lot of culture – New Orleans has its own hip-hop. It has its own history of it, but people don’t really look or pay too much attention to that because it’s not, I guess, traditional. Right now jazz is what everybody knows New Orleans for being for. But back in the day when jazz first started, it was looked down upon by its predecessors. We’re kind of going through that same cycle now. I think there eventually will be a point where all the people that grew up on hip-hop that are my age, once they start getting in positions of power – they are handing out the grants and they are doing the stories and memorials and they have the power to do different things – you’ll see a lot more happening with hip hop because that is our music. That will be the traditional music at some point.

Shake, Twerk, Wobble

Shake, Twerk, Wobble | c/o Mad Decent

I love New Orleans bounce music but its not something that I know enough about, I know the basics (Triggerman - yep) & a bit about the new school via Nolabounce but i'm no expert (i'll leave that to my boy, and Nolabounce contributor, Emynd).

So just to be able to get some fresh bounce jams once in a while is a big plus - & that's where the good guys from The Bounce Spot come in....

Back in Feb I got an email from Mr 604 announcing the new Shake Twerk & Wobble 2 comp along with 3 high quality tracks. Enthusiastically, I went and got the 'GO' to share them with you here too. Go cop the mix below from iTunes and get you right up to speed about what's hot in the "Dirty South's Party Capitol"!

NolaFunky A/V Lagniappe

NPR's "Galactic: The Funk Is Always Pushing Forward"

Home of the Groove's "Who Dats @ Da Mardi Gras. . . & Everywhere"

Groovescape'sThe OG Vol. 5: The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

NPR's "Mahalia Jackson: Voice Of The Civil Rights Movement"

NPR's "Galactic: Noodle Soups And New Orleans Bounce"

NPR's "New Orleans Marching On"

Where They At: A Multi-Media Archive of New Orleans Bounce Music at Abrons Art Center

New York City's Abrons Arts Center is proud to announce Where They At, an exhibition that portrays the founders, architects, and players in New Orleans hip-hop and the uniquely regional rap known as bounce music, a phenomenon that evolved from the communities based in the city's housing projects. Photographs, oral histories, and video footage compiled by photographer Aubrey Edwards and journalist Alison Fensterstock document the passing of seminal beats from New Orleans music traditions to a new generation in the late 1980's, and the creation of this new voice in Southern roots music.

This multi-media archive draws a line to the present-day diaspora, as Hurricane Katrina has scattered a once tight-knit bounce and hip-hop community whose music only existed at home — a home that has been redefined physically and culturally. Where They At will also be exhibited during SXSW in Austin, Texas and will launch during Jazz Fest in New Orleans at the Odgen Museum of Southern Art, where numerous events spanning several months have been planned.

New Orleans has midwifed every existing form of indigenous American music, including funk and the street music exemplified by 2nd Line bands and Mardi Gras Indians. Hip-hop is the newest manifestation of that Southern tradition. Mardi Gras Indian chants, brass band beats and call-and-response routines equally inform bounce music, which almost invariably samples the Showboys' "Drag Rap" (a.k.a. "Triggerman") and Derek B's "Rock the Beat" or Cameron Paul's "Brown Beats." Featuring lyrical patterns that focus mainly on sex, parties and dancing, it invites – even demands – audience participation by calling out dance steps or prompting replies.

This exhibition at the Abrons Arts Center features portraits culled from the larger archive of New Orleans hip-hop and bounce artists to focus on women and gay and transgendered men in early New Orleans hip-hop and bounce.
In the 90's heyday of New Orleans hip-hop, female rappers like Mia X, Ms Tee, Magnolia Shorty and Cheeky Blakk appeared in significant number with songs that were just as bawdy and aggressive as their male counterparts. Often, their tracks served as answer songs that challenged male MC's sexism in a way that created playfully ribald conversation, such as Silky Slimm's "Sista Sista" or Mia X's "Da Payback."

The prominence of queer members of the bounce community, such as such as Big Freedia, Sissy Nobby, and Vockah Redu, defies the myth of insurmountable homophobia within Hip-Hop, and speaks to a curious tradition in African-American entertainment in New Orleans, which has accepted and celebrated queer and cross-dressing entertainers for over half a century. Katey Red, a Sissy, was signed to the prominent bounce record label Take Fo'.

The full Where They At archive project will open at the Smithsonian-affiliated Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans in April 2010, on the eve of the first Jazz Fest weekend.

UPCOMING "WHERE THEY AT" EVENTS
February 11, 2010, 6-9 pm: Opening at the Abrons Art Center/ Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand Street (on the Lower East Side), New York, NY
212.598.0400
Trains: J/M/Z or F to Delancey/Essex; B/D to Grand St.