Samantha Coppen — 7 months ago
Hi Maximilian,
I wanted to send you this as an email but couldn't find a contact address. So i'm putting it here - hope that's okay!
I really enjoyed watching your video to Roi's "Sour Chutney" and then was really happy to see you'd also made ones for "westindia" & "deep obeah" - my 2 favourite tracks from Y42K. However until now can't seem to play the last 2 without them seriously stopping, jolting, etc. The images you use are great and really reflect the feel of the pieces.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I'm one half of the two musicians that recorded, produced, composed and played most of the music that you hear on Y42K (excepting the drumming of course.) Like yourself, Pk and I had great respect for Roi's writing, politics and talents as a drummer. It was a pleasure for us to work with him and we were shocked & saddened to hear that he had died. Seeing your videos, brought back happy memories from that time.
What I also wanted to ask was that you give us a credit for the music where the blogs are posted as the copyright to the music from the pieces you chose belongs to us.
Many thanks & best wishes,
Sam Coppen
Max Forte — 11 months ago
The late Dr. Roi Kwabena's musical spoken poem, Sour Chutney, from his Y42K album. The material has been animated using photos and documentary footage of East Indian life in Trinidad and Tobago, most of it dating to the early part of the first half of the 20th century. Roi Kwabena was a Trinidadian musician, poet, and cultural anthropologist. This story ties together the large scale forces of world capitalism with the geography of diasporic India and the personal biographies of a fictitious family of Indian, formerly indentured, labourers in Trinidad. It relates men's violence exerted to control women to the history of indenture when women were few, competition between men for women was extreme, and women had to be forcibly abducted or lured by false promises to venture to Trinidad. In the process, Roi Kwabena produces a short, ethno-poetic tale that shows the deep imprint left by capitalist exploitation and mass migration on the historical consciousness of Trinidadians.
Comments
Hi Maximilian, I wanted to send you this as an email but couldn't find a contact address. So i'm putting it here - hope that's okay! I really enjoyed watching your video to Roi's "Sour Chutney" and then was really happy to see you'd also made ones for "westindia" & "deep obeah" - my 2 favourite tracks from Y42K. However until now can't seem to play the last 2 without them seriously stopping, jolting, etc. The images you use are great and really reflect the feel of the pieces. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I'm one half of the two musicians that recorded, produced, composed and played most of the music that you hear on Y42K (excepting the drumming of course.) Like yourself, Pk and I had great respect for Roi's writing, politics and talents as a drummer. It was a pleasure for us to work with him and we were shocked & saddened to hear that he had died. Seeing your videos, brought back happy memories from that time. What I also wanted to ask was that you give us a credit for the music where the blogs are posted as the copyright to the music from the pieces you chose belongs to us. Many thanks & best wishes, Sam Coppen
The late Dr. Roi Kwabena's musical spoken poem, Sour Chutney, from his Y42K album. The material has been animated using photos and documentary footage of East Indian life in Trinidad and Tobago, most of it dating to the early part of the first half of the 20th century. Roi Kwabena was a Trinidadian musician, poet, and cultural anthropologist. This story ties together the large scale forces of world capitalism with the geography of diasporic India and the personal biographies of a fictitious family of Indian, formerly indentured, labourers in Trinidad. It relates men's violence exerted to control women to the history of indenture when women were few, competition between men for women was extreme, and women had to be forcibly abducted or lured by false promises to venture to Trinidad. In the process, Roi Kwabena produces a short, ethno-poetic tale that shows the deep imprint left by capitalist exploitation and mass migration on the historical consciousness of Trinidadians.