Music reviews and reservations: Beats Antique, Le Serpent Rouge and Tribal Beats for the Urban Streets

I am slow to buy new music, I think because I am so sad when a CD disappoints me. I did decide to splurge during one Border's trip, and picked up the Beats Antique CD "Tribal Derivations". It's not quite what I expected from the name Beats Antique, which was more of an Old World, modern age meets the music of the common people kind of stuff. Instead it would fit fairly well into the trip hop genre of the mid 1990s, which (for me) means it's nice to listen to but I don't want to dance to much of it. One that that does annoy me is in my own head, that is, I can see EXACTLY how this music is going to be used by fusions dancers everywhere. I hope I do get to see some fabulous dancing to this music so I can relax and shut the hell up. My favorite track? The hidden one. Seriously!

Since I wasn't all that crazy about the Beats Antique I passed it on to my troupemate, and she bought me the "Le Serpent Rouge" disc, which is music from The Indigo's show of the same title. This is a little more my style, especially (my favorite) accordians! I like the mix of music, though again the more eletronic stuff just isn't what I want to hear. In case anyone is wondering, no the Pentaphone is not too weird for me. I've listened to some rather difficult music in my life, so if I wanted to hear it I'd just trot over to my CD collection and pull it out. I'd like to hear more of Pentaphobe's newer stuff, but I'll wait until someone I know has it and I can give it a listen.

Along these lines, I find the review of Tribal Beats for the Urban Streets over at The Gilded Serpent to be highly amusing and at times right on target. Something I find interesting about the CD is the inclusion of a Muslimgauze track. I've been listening to him since 1994/95, and though I own and enjoy a handful of Muslimgauze CDs, I've always had internal conflict about supporting him because of his politics. I do believe he was addressing subjects in his music that most people shy away from, which is important. What bothers me even more is that I hope dancers look into the work of this artist and make informed decisions as to whether or not they want to use it for performance, instead of just jumping on a "it's on a tribal belly dance music CD so let's go with it!" wagon. Check out Donna Mejia's video for great dancing to a Muslimgauze song. I particularly like the attitude and strength she projects.