The world has obviously gone crazy and Portland has been successfully infiltrated by its denizens. So we’ve decided to make a TV show about it.
Oregon Music News presents: ¡Globo Loco!, a new web-based music TV program produced and directed by John-Henry Dale in conjunction with Cary Ray Video Production and The Zoppa Room recording studio.
The aim with ¡Globo Loco! is to highlight global, eclectic music in Portland from a range different styles, genres, and locales. Portland is often tagged as an “indie rock” town, but the reality is that there is a thriving global music culture here as well . We feel it’s time it got its due.
“DJ Anjali and the Incredible Kid have played a transformative role in the Portland, Oregon club scene for nearly a decade, presiding over two of Portland’s longest-running and most successful dance parties, as well as hosting a popular radio show on KBOO community radio. They are most known for incinerating dance floors with the South Asian sounds of Bhangra and Bollywood, but the duo scours the globe for any hard-hitting music that combines local musical traditions with window-rattling production.”
Their famed club night Andaz is moving to Rotture and has its new, East Side debut on Saturday June 26th.
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Thanks for having us.
IK
This want an interesting story! BTW, I would love to go see the Wailers! :)
Good job JH. Looks great!
Hey, I would love to go to this show. Sounds like an amazing night of music!
You guys rock!! Nice work!
Awesome!
Andaz is one of the best nights in any part of the world. Portland is lucky to have these great DJ’s
The 8 year anniversary of our ANDAZ party will be occurring at Rotture on Saturday, July 17th, 2010.
Great to see global music and you two featured, but I have to say the ending soured it for me, feels very polarizing, lumping people of so many backgrounds into one giant homogenous lump, calling it a lack of diversity. Just as people of color come from many places, many cultures, so do white people. And having lived in both Oakland and one of if not the most white town in California, Nevada City, I can say that people everywhere, no matter their ethnic background, have something unique to bring to the table.
Ok, off my soapbox :)
Firstly, John-Henry, thanks for your efforts trying to veer away from the predominant indie scene here! I’ve been living abroad the last two years, and your program is something new and interesting to come back to. I look forward to seeing future episodes.
This reply is in response to what Paul Smith wrote, not directed at Paul Smith, but to those who may share his sentiment that there’s a danger in lumping people of different backgrounds together by virtue of skin tone.
Coming from a “white” Latina mom and an Indian (from India) dad, I’ve seen my parents experience racism in very different ways. In my mother’s opinion, we need to transcend color and just recognize that when it comes down to it we all bleed red. While this may sound idyllic to many, I also know that my many people believe my mom to be “white” and therefore she “passes.” Also, this argument has traditionally been used to ignore cultural difference altogether in an effort to assimilate people of color into the dominant “white” culture. What does the dominant culture look like? Turn on any news program, radio show, or open any magazine. I’ve seen it staring me in the face my whole life. Why? Because I will never, as hard as I may try, BE that. I don’t want people to ignore who I am simply because we “bleed the same color.”
My father, unlike my mom, who is obviously a person of color and an immigrant from a culture radically different from this one, told me a few years ago that he’s never felt completely welcomed in this country. He will never wear a turban to work, although he wore one growing up, because he doesn’t want to attract negative attention from his coworkers. He gets security-checked at every airport he goes through, while my mom just goes straight through without problems. These are just mild instances of racism that he’s experienced. He doesn’t bring up a more severe past or complain, but he’s just accepted that that’s the way it is. Change is slow-going.
As a woman of color who’s lived in Portland since 2002, I couldn’t agree more with DJ Anjali that the number one complaint amongst people of color who move here from other places is the lack of ethnic diversity in Portland. This is a large reason as to why I left Portland two years ago. When I say lack of diversity, I don’t want to discount all the thriving cultures that DO live here, especially if you start venturing out into the suburbs. But walk around the city center on any given day. For a city of its size, Portland is not well-integrated.
I guess what I would like to see from the people of Portland is to stop ignoring this problem and first come to terms with their own privilege. Any movement is all the stronger with allies. I appeal to the people of Portland, to those who come from European ancestry, to recognize that we need to work on this together, and that this is deep and painful work. But I can’t do this for you. Even if your family recently immigrated here from outside and you don’t have any connection to the slave-owners of the Americas, realize that your skin color is your VIP card. It lets you through, without being questioned or stopped. It argues in your favor that you’re a good citizen, that you live lawfully, that you are nonviolent. What I can do is try to be compassionate and patient, to open dialogues like this one and start the process. Until we’re ready to be really honest with ourselves, Portland is going to remain the disjointed city it is. International music will continue to be labeled and tossed aside as “World music,” many of my white friends will continue to interact with other cultures on a superficial level and only if they need something, like food, Andaz and Atlas will still never catch the large amounts of indie listeners who won’t go out unless it’s “cool.” And while Bollywood and Bhangra have reached the ears of many in the last decade, in a huge part thanks to DJ Anjali and the Incredible Kid, it still remains a little bit too “different” to the ears of many Portlanders.
I think we all want the same thing; it’s just a matter of how we work towards it. As I said, this is deep work, and it’s not pretty, but it needs to be done.
I hear you Paul. I’m obviously white myself and and don’t like being lumped into a pat demographic. But the fact is almost all the media outlets in Portland focus on “indie” music and mainly neglect music from the rest of the globe. This is, indeed, for lack of a better term, “brown” music. Just trying to do my part to turn Portland into a globally-recognized “Music City” rather than just an “Indie Music City”.
Understood John-Henry, I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing, keep on showcasing what isn’t typically. I was referring to Anjali’s comments near the end however.
@Jeevan Thanks for the thoughtful reply and the further context. All valid points, and things for we as a society to work on. In person and in media, people of color or of foreign ancestry are often portrayed as the “bad guys,” not to be trusted. It’s a blank generalization that needs to be fixed.
And at the same time, the same way it would be great for your father to not be universally seen as a dangerous person, lumped in with others, people of European background shouldn’t be bunched together, to their advantage as you expressed, or as a large undifferentiated mass who don’t count as having “culture.” A Polish person isn’t the same as Swedish, Italian, someone born here in the South, or as you mentioned white Latina.