M.I.A.
I spend part of my work week crafting thematic playlists -- artist overviews, label profiles, irreverent flights of fancy -- many of which turn up here on the blog. (You can see all of them on my page at Playlist Central.) Usually the topic is up to me, but occasionally I'm given an assignment like last week's, which asked editors across all genres (mine is electronic music) to come up with a decade-specific list.
Obviously, that poses a challenge for a genre already so closely identified with just a couple of decades. Electronic music wasn't born yesterday, to be sure: the Theremin was invented nearly a century ago, and synthesizers and tape-splicing were in use by the 1950s, leading to an explosion of activity, from Stockhausen to sci-fi soundtracks (to the Chipmunks). By the '70s, disco, electro-funk and hip-hop were all recasting popular music in a purely electronic form, paving the way for the synth-pop, industrial and house music of the '80s. And I don't think I really need to remind anyone of the way all manner of electronic music exploded in the '90s.
By this point, '80s and '90s recaps are bound to cover familiar terrain (although I must say that I am eager to see a reappraisal of the minimalist and ambient electronica of the early '90s -- Seefeel, Sun Electric and the like -- as more of it becomes available online). I thought it might be more interesting to focus on an aspect of the present decade -- and a development, moreover, that's really only emerged since the turn of the '80s. From where I'm sitting -- in Berlin, to be specific, after years-long stints in Barcelona and San Francisco -- the obvious candidate is electronic music's growing global consciousness.
Electronic dance music has always been an especially mobile form, thanks in part to the diminished role that vocals (and hence languages) play. But as house, techno, hip-hop and other electronic forms have continued to spread worldwide, they've sprouted up in new, unusual forms just about everywhere they've touched down. It's only fitting that a music whose roots dig into the soil of at least three continents should produce further mutations in Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and Angola, to name just a few points on an increasingly crowded map.
M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" was just the tip of the iceberg (or perhaps that should read, "nose of the jetliner"?). Her international smash shares DNA with kuduro, kwaito, cumbia, funk carioca and every other proudly mongrel style that has come from local kids getting their hands on samplers and rewriting the rules to suit their own purposes.
My decade playlist, "Global Beats for the '00s," salutes those circuit-benders and margin-walkers -- along with their allies from America and Europe -- helping to spread the global gospel. It includes 29 tracks from the likes of Buraka Som Sistema, Ghislain Poirier, DJ Mujava, Radioclit, DJ Rupture, Filastine, Mexican Institute of Sound and more, with detours via Cesaria Evora (as remixed by Carl Craig), Juana Molina and everyone's favorite Chilean-German DJ, Ricardo Villalobos. Click here to eavesdrop on these beatmakers' global game of "telephone."
I've been out of the blog game for a while now but have been drawn out of my shell by all the scruffy, bearded kids who are walking barefoot on my lawn. Whatever happened to earning your beard in a shipwreck or a mining disaster? 
- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC.
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