NPR's The Impossible Music Sessions: "The Music You Are Not Supposed To Hear"
Everyday I have an hour's drive to Death Valley, California from Pahrump, Nevada and back. As it's a decent drive, I usually listen to my iPod, but today I listened to NPR on my way home and I am most definitely happy I did yesterday.
About five weeks ago I did a story called Nobody Knows About Persian Cats; Reveals Underground Iranian Rock Culture, which you can read on Technorati here. The piece was about a film, with the aforementioned title, that detailed the struggles and difficulty Iranian youth endure to practice, perform and record rock 'n roll music in a country where it is forbidden.
The piece I heard on NPR's All Things Considered talked about a semi-regular rock concert dubbed 'The Impossible Music Sessions." The 'sessions' take place at the Littlefield Performance Space in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York. Through Internet phone calls, email, YouTube and other various forms of digital communication, bands like Tehran's "Plastic Wave" can release their music to the American masses in a live setting. Something they cannot do from Iran. Why? Because it's illegal and they could go to jail, not to mention all sorts of other nasty draconian punishments. So how do they get their music out?
American musicians and bands who are part of the Impossible Music Sessions, take pieces of music they find from all over the world — from bands/artists who cannot openly play or express their music for fear of persecution — then translate the pieces into English and play concerts. The creators of the music watch via web cam.
For instance, Plastic Wave (who you can see here on YouTube) or the Baloberos Crew, a hip-hop group from Guinea-Bissau, who are in a similar situation, will give their music over to the musicians here in the U.S. and as stated above, play their music in Park Slope. It is illegal for Plastic Wave to sell their music in any way and to quote the piece on NPR "the Plastic Wave's appearance in Impossible Music Sessions allowed them to momentarily defeat the Iranian censors," a victory for the artists and freedom as well.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati