There are many ways to get know another culture. My favorite? The house party.
Even the seemingly most conservative of cultures transform into festive affairs of dance, drink, and drums when a house party is declared. There is something irresistibly human about throwing back a couple shots of fire water, turning up the stereo volume, and transforming the living room into a dance floor. After a couple hours, it tends to look like this:
I told you: irresistible.
With this in mind, at the last Global Voices Summit in Budapest I asked each of the participants to bring a bottle of fire water from their home country as well as a couple classic party songs. The idea was to burn 70 or so MP3 CD’s and hand them out so that we all had some festive global tunes to take back home with us.
Instead … we got kicked out about 15 minutes after the first bottle of Japanese plum wine was opened. (It creeps up on you.) Sami heard the voice of Karl Marx, Collins taught me how to dance to the soundtrack of Grease, and we all learned how to do the Benny Lava.
But I still have the MP3 files on my computer and I’ve been meaning to make a podcast for months now. Solana finally convinced me to throw it together. I hope you like it.
[podcast]http://el-oso.net/mp3/Global%20Voices%20House%20Party.mp3[/podcast]
Download AAC version (with embedded photos and links for iPods/iPhones)
Tracklist:
- Ana Elli 3layki Meshta’ by Joseph Sakr
- ????? by ??? and China Blue
- La Fete au Maroc by Jil Jilala
- Loi by Koffi Olomide
- Nezlen 3a el-Bestan by Kulna Sawa
- Dale Dale Dale by Meta Guacha
- Vuli Ndlela by Brenda Fassie
- Vasos Vacíos by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs
- Kalluri Vaanil (AKA “Benny Lava”) by Prabhu Deva Sundaram
- Lameck by Alan Namoko and Chimvu Jazz
With appearances by Georgia Popplewell, Kiruba Shankar, Lova Rakotomalala, Ndesanjo Macha, Eddie Ávila, Juliana Rotich, Hamid Tehrani, Ethan Zuckerman, and Solana Larsen.
Omg! How utterly fantastic! Now our debauchery is there for the internets to see!
Wonderful memories… very inspiring!
Wow. Good times. Thanks for this!!! Although now I have an earworm Benny Lava style. I´ll be jamming in the bus to work.
Thank you!
Excellent ! (Dancing at my desk while co-workers ponder whether to call 911..)
Oh god, I can’t wait to sing like that with Neha again. So much fun. What a crazy night!
Oh also – so pleased that one of my selections made the final cut!
WOW that’s great.. and embarrassing to some.. now that the Japanese plum wine has worn off..
downloading the track right now..
PS: I can’t believe that every one of the commenters is using Firefox, GVers rock!! (and by rock I mean geeky like me)
cheers
Thanks David! This is so lovely, I even forgive you for having scrubbed (censored?) the play list of my reggaeton selections 😉 Oh the memories.
Awesome David, thanks for putting this together 🙂
I am listening the melodies while I keep my typing. Thanks for sharing so valuable moments for those who couldn’t make it to Budapest. Great!!
Great selection and memories! Thanks for the collection. You have reminded me lots about that week in those rooms!
Wow, I feel like such a sucker for not using Firefox. But, hey, my browser is based on open source too. 🙂
Victor,
Was the track Lameck by Alan Namoko and Chimvu Jazz from you? I really love that last track, but had trouble finding information about it. Do you know anything more about them?
Wonderful! How forget it? 🙂
That it seems that it was a great party, I am glad a lot that your you have enjoyed those moments in very beautiful people’s company, for example, catirestrepo 🙂
many hugs!
Wow, someone throw my email on the mailing list for the next party. Looks like good times!
Cheers from Slovenia (just discovered you and the blog via yr profile on Goodreads)