Okay Player

I love music, especially when it's free.  I was so excited to find this interesting website today called Okay Player, which has a free streaming player.  Total score!
I love the music I've heard on this site so far.  Really cool jazzy, funk-soul stuff.  Bilal's "All Matter" is perfect.   

Marvin Gaye Sings the National Anthem

I don't really think of myself as a Marvin Gaye fan, but I got to say, this is the best national anthem I've ever heard, mostly because it doesn't sound like the actual national anthem at all.

Keep Your Head Up

My friend Sam showed me this video.  The song is fun, though it seriously sounds like so many other songs I will probably get it confused with other ones. 
What I really like in this video is all the cute clothes the girls are wearing.  I would totally wear these outfits.  I especially like the girl with the orange highlights and the pink mini coat that the girl with pigtails is wearing.
And Dwight!  Gotta love Dwight.  He would totally show up in a music video.   

War's "The World is a Ghetto"

What caught me about this song was the title.  You don't hear those kinds of pronouncements, especially ones that use words like ghetto, that has connotations of Otherness and oppression.  As I was listening to the song, the political was obvious: "Don't you know, that it's true, for me and for you, the world is a ghetto?" 
I was reading a book today that dealt with critical race theory, and one of the comments was that those of African descent didn't really have a homeland.  This song is obviously related to that sentiment.
I love good political music.  I wish more people listened to stuff overtly political.   

Text Bombing

I spent the evening with Erin and Nori.  Erin recently moved into this new place, so I was unfamiliar with everything.  Earlier in the evening John and Liz had stopped by.  Liz wanted to go to Pinball Pete's, which I had never been to.
One of the few regrets I have about college is that I didn't do as many social things as I wish I had.  I spent a lot of my Saturday's working on homework, which is really sad.  It panned out, I guess, in that I had excellent marks, but now that I have nothing better to do, I find myself wanting to make up for lost time.
Liz said they'd be back soon, so the three of us waited around for her to call us back.  I find myself wanting to go out to the bar and try new drinks and have some nice conversation.
Erin decided she was going to start text bombing people.  What this apparently involves several people texting someone else a nonsense phrase.  Erin first decided to try Matt (which I wished she wouldn't, because I still have to talk to him and have tentative plans to hang out with him in a few days), and then focused her energy on Jonathan, her roommate.
"Where is John?" I asked.
"Luda," Nori said.
What?  "Luda?"

"Ludacris."
Oh, man, I really must be getting old.  I had no idea that Ludacris went by Luda now.
Matt texted back, asking what this was all about.  Then Jonathan, who doesn't even know my number, texted me back some choice phrases.
Then Erin and Nori started telling me stories about their hometown.  I've heard so much about it at this point that I suspect I could talk about it like I lived there.  (Though I think of this as a good thing.)  They started on Hannah Bethel, who I though was a fictional person until they showed me this:

It's not a bad song, per se, but it's not really impressive either.  It just seems to be a rehashing of a bunch of tropes common in country music.  Also, the backroads thing just makes me thing of inappropriate things.
"She's not that good," Nori said.  I agree, but mostly because my favorite music is the stuff that is different from other things I've already seen.
Erin and Nori and I played mop baseball, which is this game we made up where you take a mop and try to hit a bouncy ball.
Then we went up the stairs to Erin and John's room.  It was a mess in a way that reminds me of every picture I've ever seen of Kurt Cobain's homes.  The only nice thing was this beautiful mural on the wall and ceiling of a tree.  Whoever did that did a really nice job.  It looked great.
As we were talking, I was spouting off hilarious zingers after another.  I don't know why but sometimes I get into this mood where everything that comes out of my mouth is funny and strange.  "You don't have to act like you're in a sitcom," Erin commented.  Okay, I guess that's my cue to tone it down a little.
Nori was playing all this cool music.  Nori herself is a musician, and a very talented one.  I love listening to her stuff.  "I wish I was twenty-one," she said.  "So that I could go out dancing."
I feel the exact same way.  I always want to go out and dance. 

Embarrassed and Frustrated

Today has been way more frustrating than I planned on it being.
One of the many things that managed to grate on me was about this charity dinner my Mom wanted us to go to.  A girl my sister knows from high school was diagnosed with cancer a few years back, and they occasionally hold events to raise money to take care of her.
I really didn't want to go, but I decided to play nice about it.  The reason I don't want to go was that I really hated my high school.  Not even everyone, but a large portion of people.  I'm really glad that whole part of my life is over.  Despite my Mom always encouraging me to go back and talk to people, I generally don't want to.  There are a few people who I don't talk to anymore that I wouldn't mind running into or hanging out with, and a small group I still text or have fun with, but I'm generally separated from those people.  And glad to be.  I didn't want to go to this dinner because I would inevitably run into a least one person I couldn't stand and would rather not see.
I'm especially sensitive right now because I feel like, despite working so hard in college, I have nothing to show for it.  I have no employment as of right now.  I could make excuses about the economy and about my family situation, but they're just excuses.  And in any case, I'm sick of people's judgment on the subject.
But I was still planning on going.  So, I started picking out my outfit.  I was planning on wearing a nice purple blouse with my black professional pants.  And then I couldn't find the pants.
I searched all over the house.  Nothing.  This is one of the many reasons I hate living here.  I don't want to use the washing machine because my Mom has flooded the house with it no less than six times.  The ones at school are far more reliable and no one would blame me if it exploded.  So my Dad does the laundry and then clothes go missing because, despite labeling my clothes, he puts them elsewhere, in other closets, in the living room, hoarding them in the laudry room, and as I discovered today, storing them in the basement.  I wore those pants about a month ago at the Honors College event for graduates, so I know they have to be somewhere.
I'm increasingly worried that I left them at school.  As I mentioned yesterday, I have only recently started going through certain boxes, but I'm starting to wonder if a box got misplaces.  I am missing part of my beloved music collection (including Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below), two anthologies of feminist theory I was working on, God's War, and now these pants.  In the rush to get out of Lansing, I can't remember if these items were all in the same box or not, but I'm getting worried. 
If I lost that stuff, I'll be heartbroken.  The pants can be replaced, eventually, though the way my body is, it'll be hard to find a pair of pants that looked that good on me.  But I don't even remember all of the music I had in there (though it was probably around 20 CDs).  Sometimes I have CDs that are rare/signed by artists, and I'll probably never be able to recoup that loss.  And those books were expensive; two of them were around 800 pages. 
So I'm really upset right now.  I decided that I wouldn't go if I couldn't find those pants, because in addition to being judged by the appearance that I haven't done anything in the last five years, I really couldn't stand people looking at me and thinking about how ugly and/or unkempt I am.  I'm further embarrassed and frustrated by my concern for a) my appearance and b) what people think of me.  These people were almost all assholes, if not incredibly dense, so just finding them thinking at all would be impressive. 

Take Only What You Need

Tonight was one of my favorite kinds of night; one where I see a lot of the people I love. I really love the night life. There's something perfect about having quiet conversations in rooms, down hallways, in the street, on couches, on balconies, in doorways, on the floor. There's something nice about wandering around in the night, knowing that, despite the drama, there's always this quiet.

I went, among other things, to a party tonight for Erin's birthday. It was tons of fun. At one point, they were playing MGMT's "Kids." My friend Elena and I danced to it, and there was something beautiful in that moment. I find that one of the places I am closest to God is when I'm dancing to the perfect song at the moment. This was definitely one of those times where I could feel God inside and out, moving through and all around me. Life is not perfect, not ever, but it can have perfect moments, and this is one of them.
Now, as I sit here and think about my time here, I know I'll miss these nights. I feel like this is happiness: knowing that you have a home and that there's a family there who loves you. Whether or not they leave the light on hoping you knock.

The Highlife

Today, in my African history class, we did something really cool: we learned about music. Specifically, we concentrated on Highlife music, which can still be found today in Ghana and other parts of West Africa.
Highlife music grew because of a growing population in West Africa's cities, where multiple rural music styles and Ghanaian dance music mixed with Western, European music. During the second World War, U.S. servicemen (mostly African American), brought jazz, which was also incorporated into this kind of music. Mostly, they're sung in the local lingua franca, the same language that is used for conducting business affairs. A lot of this music was popular in clubs, which were expensive to get into.
There are two types of early Highlife music. One is the "lower class" version, called Palm Wine music or Guitarband Highlife. It's main instrument in the guitar, and usually performed in smaller place. It's lyrics tend to be more political, which is why I would be interested in learning more about it. After Ghana gained independence in 1957, Highlife music went out of style, only to reemerge in the 1970s, and since then it's evolved and changed.
After hearing this in class, of course, I knew I needed to go look for this sort of thing. YouTube and Google and whatnot haven't yielded much, at least not based on the musicians and bands that I noted in class. I found some E.T.Mensah, who is suppose to be the ultimate Highlife musician, but the stuff I found online wasn't as good as to whatever it was that the teacher played in class.
Luckily, I found this, which is delightful, but it's unclear to me who created this or what the songs are.

Also, I found these songs online, and I'm liking these too.


In my search, I came across World Passport, a blog that posts podcasts of this and other non-Western music. I haven't listen to any of them yet, but I think I'm going to have to.
One of the connections my teacher mentioned was Latin Jazz. She said that a lot of African music went over with slaves to the Caribbean and influenced music there, then returned in its new form to Africa to influence Highlife. Somehow, that seems perfectly right. And, I have to say, the music did remind me a little of that sort of thing, and made me think of Watermelon Man, which I'm enamored of.
I'm in love with labels like Putumayo, if only because they make it easier for me to access music like this, which I think is really fascinating to learn about.My friend Owen told me that he once took a class on world music, and I have to say, that sounds like something I would like, even though I don't really know much about music in terms of theory. I just like music in a quantitative sense: when I hear something, I know if I like it or not.