Song is the literature of South Africa. | | | | Hugh Masekela at the Monterey Pop Festival, June 17, 1967.
(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Song is the literature of South Africa.”
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| | rantnrave:// Sad breaking news this morning: HUGH MASEKELA died today in JOHANNESBURG... I used to luuuvvvv the VILLAGE VOICE's PAZZ & JOP POLL, which for a long time was the closest thing there was to a critical consensus of the year in pop, an annual affirmation of the cultural import of records like STANKONIA or 3 FEET HIGH AND RISING or SIGN O' THE TIMES. You weren't going to find that at the GRAMMYS or in ROLLING STONE. Everyone who was anyone voted. Reading the curated list of pithy comments from the voters was like eating a never-ending pop music dessert, and their individual top-10 lists—some gave up multiple nights of sleep to get them just right—were endless sources of music discovery. Yes, I was/still am a music nerd who doesn't get enough sunlight. I am not unaware. But I get a little more sunlight now, and the world has created a thousand different ways to discover music and a million different ways to tabulate all that music at the end of each year. The Village Voice isn't what it used to be, and Pazz & Jop serves no particular purpose anymore. No one loses any sleep thinking about it and no one would be running out to ASTOR PLACE on Tuesday night to grab one of the first copies even if a print edition still existed. But it can still serve as a final marker, a final affirmation of KENDRICK LAMAR's DAMN and CARDI B's "BODAK YELLOW" (and plenty of other meaningful work by JASON ISBELL and JLIN and MOUNT EERIE and CHARLI XCX and FUTURE and and and). We'll use it to lower the final curtain on our running MusicSET "Best Music of 2017: The Year in Lists," which it now officially disappears into, the same way individual voters disappeared into the Pazz & Jop list back in the day... The Pazz & Jop cover essay by the poll's esteemed founder, ROBERT CHRISTGAU, weaves a compelling storyline through the year's top 100 albums, based entirely on how they do or don't—but even then they do—relate to the presidency of DONALD TRUMP. It would have been nice if the only other essay wasn't by another old-school male rockcrit. Could've used some pazz, that is. Or some jop. Where were the actual inhabitants of LIL UZI VERT's and CARLY RAE JEPSEN's worlds? (Here they are: NPR MUSIC's RODNEY CARMICHAEL on Uzi. MTV NEWS' ANNE T. DONAHUE on Carly Rae)... Metal, the adjective... Roadie school... DJ MUSTARD just says no to codeine.... Sending all the REDEF love in the world to NEIL DIAMOND... RIP DAVE HOLLAND, the drummer on JUDAS PRIEST's classic albums who fell from grace in later years. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The Ringer |
| Spotify beat back the scourge of streaming album exclusives, and now it’s ready to go public. Here’s what it says about how fans value artists and platforms. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| Kesha will perform ‘Praying’ specifically as a nod to #MeToo, the awards show’s producer confirms. Will other artists join her in taking a stand? | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| In 2018, the once-forgotten format feels closer to the mainstream than it has in decades. | | |
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 | Village Voice |
| Remember self-brander Amanda Palmer in the last days of 2016, blitzing journos in her safe Australian home? "Donald Trump is going to make punk rock great again," the pull quote went. "We're all going to crawl down staircases into basements and speakeasies and make amazing satirically political art." Er, well... | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The pioneer of South African jazz came to the forefront of the country’s music in the 1950s as a member of the Jazz Epistles, gaining international fame after moving to the United States in 1960. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| The singer performed at the Tiny Desk without a warmup or soundcheck, with just her acoustic guitar and un-amplified voice, letting the wordplay in her songs shine through. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| These days, Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven frontman David Lowery may be best known as a thorn in the side of music-technology companies like Spotify, which he sued in 2015 for copyright infringement related to unpaid mechanical royalties. | | |
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 | Complex |
| Expect to hear Meek Mill's "Dreams and Nightmares" early and often over the next two weeks. | | |
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| The Daily Beast |
| The Sundance documentary ‘Believer’ chronicles Mormon lead singer Dan Reynolds’ battle to pressure his church to rethink its hateful LGBTQ policies as suicide rates skyrocket. | | |
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 | Dazed Digital |
| The coffee chain released some unexpectedly credible music in its time. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| From Billy Joel's heavy-metal duo to Madonna's post-punk act and Neil Young's Motown outfit, these are the primordial groups that rock forgot. | | |
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 | David Perell |
| The future of music is a return to Mozart. In 1781, Mozart moved from Salzburg to Vienna, the cultural capital of Austria, to advance his music career. At the time, music was scarce. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Spotify's François Pachet on the future for AI-assisted music -- and why it's a great thing. | | |
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 | Reuters |
| China's censors have a new target in a widespread clamp-down on popular culture: the country's nascent hip-hop scene, which resonated with Chinese youth last year on hugely popular television show "Rap of China." | | |
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 | Tyler, the Creator |
| Jerrod Carmichael / Tyler Okonma | | |
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 | Medium |
| To any headphone jack, all audio is raw in the sense that it exists as a series of voltages that ultimately began as measurements by some tool, like a microphone or an electric guitar pickup or an EKG. There is no encryption or rights management, no special encoding or secret keys. | | |
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 | UPROXX |
| iHeartRadio’s first ever ALTer EGO concert in Los Angeles exposes some deep-seeded issues within the genre. | | |
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 | RealClearLife |
| Joe Russo's Almost Dead is 'almost' as good as seeing the real thing. | | |
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 | Global News |
| Your favourite band has just announced a concert date for your city in a venue that has a capacity of 20,000 people. You reasonably assume that when you go online to buy your tickets through Ticketmaster, 20,000 tickets will be available for sale. Well, no. | | |
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 | Real Life |
| How culture jamming was culture-jammed. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | Grammy-nominated for Best Dance Recording. (And Bonobo's "Migration" is up for Best Dance/Electronic Album.) |
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