Monday, August 28, 2006

What happened to Rap music?

Have you noticed? Rap music is not what it used to be. It's not real anymore. Cars, bitches and blingin' but no message. What happened to political Rap songs? The ones with a vision? A worthy cause?

Well they are back!!!

Facing the upcoming parliamentary elections Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the austrian anti-foreigner right-wing party FPÖ, has released a Rap song. In the song titled "Austria First" MC HC is demonstrating his mad skillz and his mind-blowing flow.

The lyrics are impressive aswell:
"If you don't want to be integrated,
I've got a travel destination for you:
Go back home, have a good flight,
we have enough unemployment here"

When things like this happen I am speechless. Seriously what the f*ck?! Can you be a serious adult polititian and sing phrases like: "HC! That's our man! HC! The one who can save us..."?
Everybody on your knees! Praise his almightiness! Vote for him for he will save us!

Dear austrians, we are with you. You need to be strong and understand that it is not your fault. There are idiots like this in every country. It's just bad luck that your copy released a song. It could happen everywhere.

And by the way I love his superhero outfit.
If you insist you can download the track from the site of the FPÖ...

posted by Yavor @ 8:28 PM
1 comments

TACCAGTATACA...

... doesn't make sense? Well it's a DNA sequence. Yesterday I saw "HUGO hat Töne" at club ONO in Bern. HUGO = Human Genome Organisation.
HUGO hat Töne is a musical project consisiting of Daniel Schümperli (molecular biologist, clarinet), Lukas Frey (geographer, contrabass), and Rudolf von Steiger (space physicist, computer). Those 3 men transpose DNA sequences into music. The DNA is beeing encoded into sounds and accompanied with improvisation on traditional musical instruments. It was really interesting and the sounds where right up my alley - bleeps, blops and abstract jazzy elements. The first track they played was called "X meets Y". It was about the relationship between men and women. They played a male and a female DNA sequence simultaneously. And like it is in relationships sometimes it turned out to be really harmonic and sometimes it was just a big mess.

However they didn't just play DNA. The last track for example was called "Biodiversity rocks". It was about endangered birds. The code for the length of the synthetic sounds was the rest quantity of birds from an endangered species. The volume on the other hand was a code for the level of endangerment. As you can imagine the track started with really long, quiet and mellow sounds but in the end it turned into something very loud with short alarming sounds.

Since the sounds that I make are often distorted and all bleepy and bloppy I often have discussions about what is music and what is just noise. "But there is no melody...", "but it sounds so random...", "I just can't listen to this noise..." and so on and so on. Bleeps and blops are creativity. End of.

posted by Yavor @ 3:27 PM
0 comments

Monday, August 14, 2006

Back in town

Copenhagen is a beautiful city. I had never been to a scandinavian country till now but the moment I arrived I already felt at home.
ScaLDS was an amzing conference and I am very happy that I had the chance to participate. I met lots of wonderful and inspiring people, learned a lot about myself, got useful knowledge and skills. I can't wait till we start our recruitment and the implementation of IBXP (Issue Based Experiences) in our LC.
It was great to see Sarah, Sigrid, Maria, Christian and Andes again. You surely remember them from our last KickOff conference. They where the best hosts that we could wish for. Thank you to all of the delegates, MCs and OC for the cool conference. I am very much looking forward to WeGrow to see you all again. And Caro was the best chair of course, but you all know that.

Unfortunately I lost my camera already on the second day in Copenhagen that's why all of the pictures I have are shot with my mobile phone. You can see them here.

A big thank you also to Anna (VPPD Geneva) and Luca (VPER Geneva) for letting me get to know them better (now that's some crappy weird english...).

If you would like to know how our team feeling was like here's a video shot again with my mobile phone. Luca performing 3 of his dances in the streets of Copenhagen. Witness the "distributing cards", "basketball" and "shooting fire".

posted by Yavor @ 12:18 PM
8 comments

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

What's wrong?

Since yesterday was 01.08. (national holiday in Switzerland) I had a day off. I read some papers about elites in post-comunist countries for university, chilled a bit with my girlfriend and gave her driving lessons afterwards. It was a nice and calm day. Ok I admit: everything was calm but the driving lesson. I'm just terrible at this. It's not her fault, she's doing fine. But giving driving lessons is really the only situation where I start to shout without wanting to. People who know me would describe me as calm I guess. But thats just because they have not experienced me when somebody else is driving.
In the evening we went to Vevey to see some friends. The lake is just beautiful. The water, the hills, the fireworx, the small houses, the little boats here and there, the summer air. It's almost not real. It's like somebody made it up so that it can be shot and sold as a post card. I'm so blessed by having the chance to live in this country.

However today I'm back at work and I'm feeling so dissatisfied. It's not because of my job. It's more general. I'm doing already a lot of things. And I'm getting a lot out of them. But I want more. I want to see it, do it, experience it all. But I have no more capacities. I am tired.
Am I doing the right things? Am I doing the things right? Maybe it's time for a new self-assesement and a new priority-setting?

On the other hand I know myself since a couple of years by now. Next week I'm in Denmark. I guess everything will look different after that.

posted by Yavor @ 9:33 AM
3 comments