Tuesday, September 20, 2011

SOMALIA: Al-Shabab awards children with weapons and bombs [PHOTOS]

How is this story supposed to end? What kind of adults will these young people grow up to be ? Who gave these people the right to steal these children's innocence? It's criminal!

SOMALIA: Al-Shabab awards children with weapons and bombs [PHOTOS]

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Emancipator Music

I sure love me some music and music loves me. It tracks me down and sucks me in to discover its magical power to transform the brain and alter the way it functions. Like, for real. Another recent discovery and the reason why my productivity at work has climbed steeply is Emancipator. I have been playing his album Soon It Will Be Cold Enough all day every day for days and I love it! I discovered Emancipator on a blog with some incredibly refreshing mixes and mashups where I came upon a mind freezing blend by DJ De-Pho of an Emancipator beat with Trouble in the Water by De La Soul. I should say mind blowing but really that's not what happened. My mind didn't explode from the awesomeness I heard; it froze. There was something about that backtrack. Everything came to a standstill; everything fell away and all that remained was me. I found myself in a place of absolute peace, beauty, clarity and focus.

My dear Uncle Google led me to Emancipator's website where tracks like Soon It Will Be Cold Enough to Build Fires, Anthem, First Snow, Lionheart and Wolf Drawn just beamed me up out of the mire and drudgery of everyday life to the intersection of my mind with the path of infinite possibility. Friends, I was "in the zone" - banging on all cylinders, powering my way through the work I get paid to do and having time and energy left over to get things done on the personal development side that I had been procrastinating to do all year long.

Emancipator is a psychology graduate from Portland, Oregon, who is classically trained in music and is adept at violin, guitar, mandolin, drums, banjo and a whole lot of stringed instruments. He released Soon It Will Be Cold Enough in 2006 when he was 19 years old - feel like an underachiever much, Sandii? Then he released the album Safe in the Steep Cliffs in 2010 and this year he has done an album of Emancipator Remixes which I will be purchasing and adding to my music collection. His music is very strongly inspired by and reminiscent of nature. That's probably why I am spirited away to "the zone" when I listen to it. So apparently Emancipator music is classified as trip hop or electronica or downtempo hip hop or chill music or lounge music and there is a growing collective of highly talented similar artists making serious waves in this genre. Nujabes is one highly respected artist from Japan who unfortunately passed away.

I very much like the fact that DJs like DJ De-Pho (who actually isn't even a real turn table-type DJ) are taking these organic instrumentals and making super cool mashups of underground hip hop and classic rap songs from artists like Tu Pac, Jay-Z, Outkast, Mobb Deep and De La Soul. Below is an Emancipator blend of Kick, Push by Lupe Fiasco - clicking anywhere in the screen opens a new tab. De-Pho has taken an already excellent track and given it a new emotional energy. I love it!




















I urge you to check out and share the awesome and inspiring music from Emancipator on http://emancipator.bandcamp.com. Enjoy the free downloads and buy his albums. The man's got massive talent. I love Shook (Sigur ros vs Mobb Deep) which you can listen to below.  I also urge you to check out DJ De-Pho's myspace page where this incredibly talented dj has made his music free to download. Believe me, you want to listen to this guy's work, it's fantastic.