Cultural Conversations: Das Racist Speaks
A few days ago I wrote a Sans Terre article on music journalism. In the course of responding to the comments on that post I got all worked up and said some things that I was not supposed to, namely I mentioned Michel Foucault. As a recovering Foucauldian this is strictly off limits, but recovery is like love in that it comes in spurts. haha. Just kidding. Anyways, I stand by my statement that interviews are at best, coercive and worse, misleading. So seeing as though what is to follow is the second in Enough Cowbell’s Cultural Conversation interviews series, I gladly surrender (momentarily and only tenatively, as Foucault would have it) the floor to the Das Racist and their Summer Reading, Listening and Watching lists.
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HIMANSHU RAPS:
Reading:
I mostly read in intervals of 140 characters at a time. Though right now I’m reading In Hanuman’s Hands by Cheeni Rao. It’s about an Indian kid from Chicago that goes to college on some liberal arts shit and then does hella drugs and gets caught up in pitching weight and becomes a drug addict. It’s kind of on some “Junky”-type tip but also the Ramayana. Growing up, Hanuman was one of my favorite gods too. We have favorites. Did you know Barack Obama carries a small Hanuman emblem in his pocket for good luck because the monkey-god is very popular in South East Asia and dude’s dad would tell him stories about Hanuman as a child?
Listening:
I haven’t had a computer for hell of long but instead I copped this cheap record player that has an AM/FM joint on it and got some all-time favorite records like KMD, Paul’s Boutique, Stone Roses, Marquee Moon and a couple of other joints. A few weeks back I got a laptop and started getting other music again. I really like Neon Indian. Though even now, more than anything I listen to Hot 97 on the radio here in NY.
Watching:
I watch everything on tv, good and bad, and enjoy it very much.
KOOL AD:
Reading:
Maribel Alvarez: Food, Poetry, and Borderlands Materiality: Walter Benjamin at the taquería
When we were asked by Death and Taxes magazine why we rap about food all of the time, I gave this long ass explanation that got cut from the article for space:
In Maribel Alvarez’s essay “Food, Poetry and Borderlands Materiality: Walter Benjamin at the Taqueria” she refers to cultural critic Jennifer Gonzalez’s suggestion of the significance of “objects in relationship to Chicano/a identities, and vice versa.” Alvarez sums up Gonzalez’s description of the relationship as “a fraught enterprise of tactical considerations that ‘tethers’ certain acts of ‘persuasion,’ which are summoned and performed through very concrete material and artifactual arrangements, i.e. tangible representations such as the body, the house, the car, the hairdo, the bedroom altar, the kitchen, and the front yard.” She goes on to assert that “availing themselves of the “props” of Chicano everyday material culture (i.e. hair gel, candles, molcajetes, shock absorbers, or baby blankets), these performances of the self alternatively offer or deny opportunities to enact identities and subjectivities in public settings and private spaces.” She likens this idea to what German theologist Walter Benjamin called “anthropological materialism,” claiming a vast capacity of significance in “the realm of the routine and mundane,” and in fact suggesting that insights into the mechanics and poetics of emancipation and oppression are present in the smallest details of what’s commonly called “everyday life.” This is like, duh. Lauryn Hill once said, “Everything Is Everything.” That album sold over 10 million. That’s word. Walter Benjamin also said this of food: “It is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.” So yeah, aesthetic pleasure is social and social ritual is about compassion and compassion is about survival. Food and music are examples of this.
Watching:
This commercial is hella funny.
Listening:
When I heard this track: IMA DOG MIX it blew my shit off. I think it’s the best shit I’ve heard in years. Also I like how dude spells his name.
