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March 16, 2015  

SO! Amplifies: Mega Ran and Sammus, The Rappers With Arm Cannons Tour

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Document3SO! Amplifies. . .a highly-curated, rolling mini-post series by which we editors hip you to cultural makers and organizations doing work we really really dig.  You’re welcome!

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Throughout the month of March, nerdcore MCs Mega Ran (Raheem Jarbo) and Sammus (Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo) will be embarking on the “Rappers with Arm Cannons” Tour. Both artists independently based their monikers on two of the most notable video game characters to possess arm cannons, (Mega Man and Samus respectively), but they have since collaborated on several songs and a SoundScan charting Castlevania project, as well as sharing the stage at numerous concert venues and conventions, and releasing individual albums and videos that have received international attention and critical acclaim. Now three years later the two teachers-turned-rappers have decided to take their show on the road alongside rapper and sound engineer Storyville (Matthew Weisse), who has recently joined forces with Mega Ran to release their February 2015 album “Soul Veggies.”

Final_Poster Tour Dates.

While at first glance the name of the tour appears a bit tongue-in-cheek, it calls necessary attention to the growing presence of Black nerdcore artists like Mega Ran and Sammus who cast their experiences as people of color against the backdrop of nerd and geek culture. In Mega Ran’s case, this has meant writing verses about his struggle to make sense of his Black nerd identity while growing up amongst a very rough crowd in Philadelphia. For Sammus, being a rapper with an arm cannon has largely meant reconciling her ideas about the lack of diverse representations of Black women in notable movies, games, and cartoons among other media forms.

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Click to “pay what you want” to download the new Sammus X Mega Ran track “Gone” in support of “The Rappers With Arm Cannons” Tour: https://sammusmusic.bandcamp.com/track/gone

Both Mega Ran and Sammus began making beats on the Playstation game MTV Music Generator. Since that time Sammus has brought together the production styles of Kanye West, Daft Punk, Björk and various video game composers to produce beats that are rich with video game synths and uniquely chopped samples. Mega Ran has similarly drawn on his love of hip hop artists, such as Redman, Nas, and Busta Rhymes as well as music from video games such as Mega Man, Final Fantasy VII, and River City Ransom.

On Tuesday, March 10th, the tour stopped at Cornell University’s Just About Music center where SO! Editors J. Stoever And Aaron Trammell sat down with the trio for a very frank and open discussion on how to survive and thrive as independent artists in the new music economy. Here’s a choice sample of that conversation:

The tour began on March 5th in NYC and will continue through March 19th with final stops in Austin, TX at this year’s South-by-South-West (SXSW). For full details on tall of the dates visit http://sammusmusic.com/shows-tour-dates/

Mega Ran on Twitter, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Facebook, and Megaranmusic.com

Sammus on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Facebook, and sammusmusic.com.

Storyville on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and Facebook.

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Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo is a PhD student in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. Since completing a senior thesis on digital music software, tacit knowledge, and gender under the guidance of Trevor Pinch, she has become interested in pursuing research in the emergent field of sound studies. She hopes to combine her passion for music with her academic interests in technological systems, bodies, politics and practices that construct and are constructed by sound. More specifically she would like to examine the politics surrounding low-income community studios, as well as the uses of sound in (or as) electronic games.  In her free time she produces hip hop beats and raps under the moniker Sammus (based on the video game character, Samus Aran, from the popular Metroid franchise).

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tape reelREWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig:

Making Music at Studio X: The Identity Politics of Community Studios-Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo

SO! Amplifies: Regina Bradley’s Outkasted Conversations-Regina Bradley

Love and Hip Hop: (Re)Gendering The Debate Over Hip Hop Studies— Travis Gosa

 

 

January 29, 2015  

Sounding Out! Podcast #38: Radio Frequencies, Radio Forms LIVE

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Today’s podcast is an archival recording of “Radio Frequencies, Radio Forms LIVE,” a special program on WHRW, Binghamton University’s free-format radio station, broadcast on December 15, 2014 from 6:00-7:30.  Part original radio art broadcast and part “Behind the Artists’ Studio” conversation, “Radio Frequencies” represents the culmination of a semester-long experimental collaboration between Professor Jennifer Stoever (BU English) and Filmmaker, Sound Artist and Professor Monteith McCollum (BU Cinema) and the students of their advanced transdisciplinary seminar “Resonant Frequencies: Exploring Radio Forms.”

Over the course of the Fall 2014 semester, students learned the fundamentals of recording and editing while discussing radio history, sound production, sound art history, and theories of sound and listening to copious (and diverse) radio pieces ranging from Aimee Temple McPherson sermons to Norman Corwin’s We Hold These Truths, the Suspense episode “Sorry, Wrong Number” to Delia Derbyshire’s “The Dreams.”  McCollum and Stoever’s students were creative, interested, driven and exceptionally talented; two from the course, Tara Jackson and Aleks Rikterman, went on to have some of their semester’s work featured in the 2014 Mix for Wavefarm’s annual 60 X 60 competition, the only two students alongside seasoned arts professionals, professors, radio producers, and Prix Italia Winners.

The WHRW broadcast features well-crafted recordings of the course’s capstone project—4 collaboratively developed original 8-10 minute radio pieces—alongside fascinating live discussions between Monteith, Jennifer, and their students about radio as medium, broadcast vs. performance aesthetics, the process of  recording, manipulating, and editing sounds, the students’ radio influences, the role of the listener, the value of radio’s past and their forecasts about its future. This podcast is a must listen for anyone interested in radio production and history, creative pedagogy, conversations about sound art, or just interesting and unexpected listening!

Credits:

  • “Amarilli,” a suspenseful radio drama scripted, performed, recorded, edited, and mixed by Maggie Leung, Hyucksang Sun, and Daniel Hong.
  • “The Parlor City,” interwoven radio-verite stories about Binghamton, NY conceived, recorded, edited, and mixed by Yang Gao, Daniel Santos, and Ashley Verbert.
  • “Untranslatable” an artistic sono-montage piece about language conceived, recorded, performed, edited, and mixed by Tara Jackson, Anna Li, and Michael Ederer.
  • “Pura Vida: Solo Travel” a documentary interview montage conceived, recorded, scored, edited, and mixed by Aleksandr Rikterman and Garrett Bean.

Hosts and Executive Producers: Monteith McCollum and Jennifer Stoever
Opening Interview: Daniel Santos
WHRW Engineer: Tara Jackson
WHRW Program Manager: Daniel Kadyrov

McCollum and Stoever’s course was made possible by a generous transdisciplinary team-teaching grant from the Provost’s Office at Binghamton University, with thanks to Provost Don Neiman and Don Loewen, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education

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Monteith McCollum, Assistant Professor of Cinema at Binghamton University, is an inter-media artist working in film, sound, and sculpture. His films have screened at Festivals and Museums including The Museum of Modern Art, Hirshhorn, Wexner Center for the Arts and Festivals including SXSW, Slamdance, Hot Docs, Amsterdam & Osnabruck European Media Arts Festival. His films have garnered dozens of festival awards including an IFP Truer than Fiction Spirit Award. You can learn more about his work at monteithmcollum.com.

Jennifer Stoever is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sounding Out! She is also Associate Professor of English at Binghamton University and a recipient of the 2014 SUNY Chancellor’s Award in Teaching.

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tape reelREWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:

SO! Reads: Susan Schmidt Horning’s Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording From Edison to the LP – Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo

Sounding Out! Podcast #34: Sonia Li’s “Whale” – Sonia Li 

Sounding Out! Podcast #10: Interview with Theremin Master Eric Ross – Aaron Trammell

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