People are always talking about golden ages – they imagine what it would have been like to live in the Chelsea Hotel at the time of Arthur Miller and Allen Ginsburg, or in the thick existentialist fug on the Left Bank in post-war Paris or meandering along the banks of the Nile in the time of Cleopatra. Personally, though, I was always more caught up with what life was like on Linden Boulevard in Queens, New York where back in the days Q-Tip and Phife Dawg used to kick mad routines.

Q-Tip and Phife Dawg went on to form A Tribe Called Quest – a group who for many symbolised the golden age of hip-hop. Approaching the artform in a way that few had dared try before, it’s only now, some twenty years later, that their impact can fully be appreciated. It’s a strange sensation to think the music you grew up with should, in time, come to be regarded as classic. But if you were in any doubt that ATCQ were the sort of group that only comes around once in a lifetime, confirmation lies in the new documentary Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest. 



This is actor Michael Rapaport’s paean to this smart, fun-loving, mickey-taking, and life-affirming group consisting of Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and sometimes Jarobi, who for a while in the late 1980s an early 1990s took hip-hop to a place where it would never be surpassed – ditching the generic stereotypes for something altogether more satisfying, lyrically, sonically, but still made to move a crowd. 


From the opening credits of Beats, Rhymes and Life, this documentary will have any hip-hop fan licking their chops. The hand-drawn stickmen of early Tribe records spring into life as the Lou Reed bass line from ‘Can I Kick It?’ slides in. In the credits, you note with building excitement that the Music Supervisor is none other than Peanut Butter Wolf, and the soundtrack has been composed by Madlib. So far so good.

But while the bulk of Beat, Rhymes and Life is devoted to the golden days of A Tribe Called Quest – from those formative adventures on Linden Boulevard right through to the peak of their fame, playing on Letterman, hobnobbing with A-list celebrities and selling out world tours – this documentary actually takes its cue from the 2008 ATCQ reunion at Rock the Bells, a decade after they finally decided to call it quits. 



You may be aware that this 2008 reunion was no happy occasion. Much of that tour, in fact, was mired in controversy. So in the opening scene of this film, you’ll find Q-Tip in a wood-panelled backstage changing room after the final tour date in George, WA. Asked by the camera if that’s the last ever Tribe show, he replies ‘Oh, hell yeah’, with no tinge of regret, but instead a none too carefully concealed bitterness. 

In fact this Michael Rapaport documentary was originally supposed to be called Beats, Rhymes and Fights for all the politicking and the high jinks that went on behind the scenes both during the filming and in the build up to its release.

The rift involved Tip and Phife, friends since they were in shorts but who, for one reason or another, have fallen out spectacularly. They’re different characters – Phife the five-foot, hyperactive rapper with low blood sugar issues and the moral high-ground (“he’s just jealous,” reads one YouTube comment on the trailer), and Tip, the Abstract Poetic, the creative powerhouse in the group, but with a reputation for being a cool operator.

You can understand why Q-Tip hasn’t given his full backing to this film. Nobody wants their dirty laundry aired in public, and all the arguing, the bad blood, definitely isn’t flattering to either party; but it does give the story an edifying lesson about the strain of friendships, the different paths they take, and makes you reassess some of those pointless fall-outs in your own life. Backstage during the 2008 Rock the Bells tour there is a lot of unstated resentment. Occasionally it bubbles over, and when Posdnuos of De La Soul is asked on camera if this will be the last ever Tribe show, he can only reply ‘I sincerely hope so’.

It would be unfair to dwell on the bad blood here because, if anything, the film probably devotes too much time to it. The story that everyone wants to hear is another story – about how Tip, Phife and Jarobi grew up in Queens; then how Tip goes to Murray Bergtraum High School for Business Careers in Manhattan where he meets Ali Shaheed and the Jungle Brothers who were also enrolled there. The story of Tribe is incomplete without the story of a movement, the Native Tongues, with De La Soul, Black Sheep, Monie Love, Queen Latifah and Leaders of the New School.



In keeping with that story, the number of talking heads and cameos in Beats, Rhymes and Life is crazy – from DJ Red Alert to the Beastie Boys, Bob Power to Ludacris, Mary J Blige to Pete Rock, Bobbito and Common, Busta and Mos, all helping to push the story along, but also all happy to weigh in on the Tribe legend, to give it more colour, more credence. There’s their manager Chris Lightly talking about how he literally had to physically remove the masters to Low End Theory from Q-Tip’s grasp because, being a perfectionist, he was never satisfied with the finished product; or Hot 97’s Angie Martinez talking about hearing Bonita Applebum and the swoon effect this most unconventional of love songs had on the female contingent of New York City.

Any Tribe fan will enjoy hearing how the group developed their magic, but their journey is as much about what they did sonically, bringing jazz samples to the table, raiding their parents’ record collections for Minnie Riperton and Sly Stone, Martin Denny and Eugene McDaniels, Weldon Irvine and Freddie Hubbard, blending them to make a sound that hadn’t been heard before. It was a lo-fi concoction, beats hard but gentle, with drum parts that still leave producers like Pete Rock and Prince Paul scratching their heads two decades later. 

With Tribe, the sample game reached a whole new plateau.

But then to hear everyone from Pharrell Williams to Questlove put it on record that, without a shadow of a doubt, if it weren’t for ATCQ there would be no Kanye West, no Neptunes, no Roots… well, it makes you think. And if Jay Dilla, who rolled with the Tribe from 1997, wasn’t up there in the clouds, he’d be up there on screen saying the same thing too.

We’ve been waiting a long time for this documentary and in truth, it would have been hard for it not to hit the right notes. It’s a film made by a fan who happens to be a trusted Hollywood actor, for A Tribe Called Quest fans around the world, of which there are no shortage.

To be taken back to Linden Boulevard where it all started will fulfil many of those viewers’ teenage fantasies, but despite the euphoria in seeing just how far the band came, there’s also a tinge of regret as you leave the auditorium. It’s not that there’ll probably never be that last Tribe album still owed on their recording contract with Jive; that never seemed too likely. Rather it’s the question of whether anything will ever come close to Tribe again… and the answer has to be – probably not.

Read on: the Village Voice’s list of Blue Note samples mined by ATCQ

Mike Figgis, the British film director who has created modern masterpieces like Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and Timecode (1999) has the luxury of being able to claim that he’s one of the few film directors who can also score the soundtrack to his movies.
“I was first and foremost a musician. My father was a huge classical jazz fan, I started trumpet when I was 12 then I realized that it doesn’t attract the girls so I switched to guitar, and then conned my way into music college by pretending I could read,” says Figgis, ahead of his week long residency at King’s Place where he’ll be exploring the power of the film score.
It was a sinuous route which took Figgis from a musicians to a filmmaker. Fresh out of college, Figgis played with Bryan Ferry before joining in the late 1960s a spontaneous experimental outfit called The People Band, which led to performance art and mixed-media events. When he applied for the National Film School some years later, he was rejected on the basis that he was from a performance background. “So I thought, fuck you, I’ll make films anyway.”
But his approach to filmmaking has never been exactly orthodox, neither in his stories or in his approach… Timecode, his satire on the LA film industry, was shot in four takes, which are shown simultaneously in a four-way spilt-screen. He also co-penned the soundtrack to this film, as well as Leaving Las Vegas and Cold Creek Manor, which employs a 12-tone score.
On Wednesday 15 September, Figgis will be remixing Timecode live, to show the emotive force of a soundtrack and how it can change the meaning of the image. “Different kinds of music psychologically alter your perception. I do a little demo with the slow movement of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Here’s a piece of music that will work with an scene in a film and immediately transform it into a great tragedy regardless of what is happening. A dog can be having a pee against a lamp post – it will become a tragic pee.” Two performances on Friday and Saturday will showcase Figgis’s compositions and playing, before the big finale on Saturday 18 September when the People Band will take over King’s Place, performing simultaneously not just in the two halls, but also the escalator and the lobby, employing 30 musicians and also video feeds. No script, just improvisation, a formula which has worked for Figgis in whatever medium he works in.
For more info and to book tickets, visit King’s Place website

Martyn – Great Length (by Ramón Gieling)

ramongieling.com

3024world.com

Thanks to on-point and Job De Wit.

Director Scott Sanders and Michael Jai White tell a story about a man vying to clean up the booze-soaked ghettos and rid orphanages of smack. Bigger and badder than The Mach, Shaft and Superfly combined his name is Black Dynamite. Yeah, that’s right: Dy-No-Mite, Dy-No-Mite.

Showing stateside but yet to secure a run east of the Atlantic, the flick is accompanied by two official soundtracks courtesy of Wax Poetics. One a breaks and organ-packed original score by Adrian Younge, the other a collection of the baadasssss-est cuts from library releases by Alan Hawkshaw, Alan Tew and Brian Bennett. Lie back with your lady to ‘High Diver’!

Further commentary with the film and music makers comes in Wax Poetics #38.

See more and hear the OSTs at blackdynamitemovie.com.

London screenings:

Brixton Ritzy

Greenwich Picturehouse

Odeon Panton Street

The Screen On The Green

Cineworld, Wood Green

Gate, Notting Hill

If you don’t know Coffy from Cleopatra Jones it might be worth watching Issac Julien’s BaadAsssss Cinema, or let Soul Jazz’s Stuart Baker fill you in here.

Full details:

Barbican Cinema

SAT 26 JUNE – 2 pm

FADO, STORY OF A SINGER (PG)

(Fado, História d’uma Cantadeira) UK Premiere

Portugal 1943 Dir. Perdigão Queiroga 110min

Amália Rodrigues, supreme diva of Fado, plays Ana Maria, a fadista who falls for a humble guitar player. Around Ana Mariaʼs ascension to fame congregate crowds of spellbound bohemians, fadistas and visiting industrialists. Júlio believes he his being betrayed and ponders running off to one of the African colonies. Ana Maria is torn between fear of mislaying her first love and the allure of wealth and fame. We are left wondering where the boundary between fiction and the re-enactment of Amáliaʼs own past is being sutured in this unique journey about the Lisbon of the 1940s.

SAT 26 JUNE – 4pm

MY VOICE (PG)

(Nha Fala) UK Premiere

Portugal/France/Luxembourg 2003 Dir. Flora Gomes 110min

A delightful musical comedy with music by the creator of Soul Makossa, Manu Dibango, unquestionably one of the great popular musicians of Africa. Musical flow and the lilt of language entwine in this musical comedy. Leaving Guinea Bissau for Paris, Vita makes the promise to her mother to never sing. Family legend has it that a curse will obliterate those women who dare to sing. In Paris, Vita meets Pierre, falls in love and sings for joy. Vita is horrified, but Pierre, beguiled by her talent, convinces her to walk into a studio. The record is an overnight success. Fearing her mother will learn of her broken promise, Vita decides to return home… To die!

SUN 27 JUNE – 6 pm

THE CANNIBALS (PG)

(Os Canibais) UK Premiere

Portugal 1988 Dir. Manoel de Oliveira 99min

Oliveiraʼs Os Canibais is a direct response to composer João Paesʼ challenge to create an opera-film; with Paesʼ score, in turn, binding together the pieces in this maverick feature where disruption and sarcasm are given Buñuelian primacy. Margarida (Oliveiraʼs eternal muse Leonor Silveira) suffers the rage of a neglected admirer. A reflection on desire and eroticism, this is Oliveiraʼs most abstract, piercing, and irreverently uproarious film. By means of a violinist-narrator who addresses the audience directly, Oliveira exposes the dilapidation of upper-class values, complete with the extreme theatricality of falling-off mechanical limbs, musical interludes and the cannibalism that the title promises.

SUN 27 JUNE – 8.45pm

PERPETUAL MOVEMENTS: A CINE-TRIBUTE TO CARLOS PAREDES (PG)

(Movimentos Perpétuos – Homenagem a Carlos Paredes)

Portugal 2006 Dir. Edgar Pêra 68 min

This is trademark Pêra, but pointed at late Portuguese guitar genius Carlos Paredesʼ career. It mixes archival film and sound with interviews, 8mm ʻunsteady-camʼ and optical mosaics to the extreme, to give us an iridescent portrayal of Paredesʼ genius. The montage is as relentless as the guitaristʼs finger-work, the footage as compelling as the music is poignant. Pêraʼs method is luxuriously baroque and the remarkable music and Paredesʼ unassuming demeanour burst through the hordes to give us a counterpoising gist. In the midst, we discover the notoriety Paredesʼ music brought to the Portuguese guitar, raising it to the rank of an autonomous instrument and transforming it into a symbol of Portuguese music.

Tickets and Booking and Barbican. Box Office: 020 7638 8891

Special Ticket Offer: Enter promotional code ʻ26271ʼ when booking online, or quote ʻFilmvilleʼ for telephone bookings, and receive a reduced ticket price of £5,50. Subject to availability.

Ritzy Cinema

THU 8 JULY – 6.30 pm

OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST (PG)

(Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto)

Portugal 2008 Dir. Miguel Gomes 147min

In the heart of Portugal, amid the mountains, the month of August is a buzz with people and activity. Emigrants return home, set off fireworks, fight fires, sing karaoke, hurl themselves from bridges, hunt wild boar, drink beer, make babies. If the director and film crew had got straight to it and resisted the temptation to join in the festivities the synopsis would come down to: Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto follows the affective relationship between a father and daughter, and the daughterʼs cousin, all musicians in a dance band. The film was the Portuguese submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in the 81st Academy Awards.

FRI 9 JULY – 6.30 pm

THE ART OF AMÁLIA (PG)

(A Arte de Amália) UK Premiere

Portugal 2000 Dir. Bruno de Almeida 90min

The lament and almost unbearable melancholy of Amália Rodriguesʼs music goes to a place in the soul that only music can stir. In her voice and magical presence, lies the exquisite sorrow of the Fado. The success of this beautifully and lovingly crafted documentary lies in the fact that the filmmaker resists the temptation to editorialise and simply allows us to share in the magnetism and elegant passion of this icon. There seems to be an inevitable emotional correlation between the Portuguese Fado and American Blues, documentary filmmaking at its best.

Tickets: Ritzy Box Office: 0871 704 2065

To share our excitement at the new issue we’re having a small party  in London.

SHOOK contributors will be playing records and a few films or documentaries mentioned in the mag will be projected.

Hope you can come and join us at The George Orwell, 382 Essex Road, N1 3PF. From 6pm until late-ish, Saturday 17th April.

www.thegeorgeorwell.com

MAP

Bring your good vibes and your friends and your friends’ friends…

]]> http://www.shook.fm/content/2010/04/shookparty/feed/ 0 http://www.shook.fm/content/2010/01/four-lions/ http://www.shook.fm/content/2010/01/four-lions/#comments Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:02:06 +0000 ben v http://www.shook.fm/content/?p=4728 Stills surfaced last Summer, now the first clip of Chris Morris’ new film, Four Lions. Watch at The Guardian

guardian.co.uk/film

Four Lions

Warp Films

]]> http://www.shook.fm/content/2010/01/four-lions/feed/ 0 http://www.shook.fm/content/2009/11/beat-this-dick-fontaine-brings-the-history/ http://www.shook.fm/content/2009/11/beat-this-dick-fontaine-brings-the-history/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:27:48 +0000 Naomi http://www.shook.fm/content/?p=3922 Cult documentary film director (and supporter of Penny Woolcock’s film, 1 Day) Dick Fontaine, comes to Manchester for an exclusive film screening event, at Cornerhouse, organised in conjunction with Urbis to celebrate their current exhibition HomeGrown:The Story of UK Hip Hop (continues to March 2010)

The evening will include an exclusive film screening of two of Fontaine’s films Beat This! A Hip Hop History and Bombin’ and will take place at Cornerhouse on Fri 13 November from 8.30 pm. The screening will be followed by a half hour Q&A session with Fontaine himself.

Beat This! A Hip Hop History was originally commissioned by the BBC in 1984, as part of the Arena series, this seminal documentary about Hip Hop culture, stars Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc and features authentic footage from Herc’s renowned bloc parties. The film is also featured as one of the exhibits within the HomeGrown exhibibiton at Urbis.

Bombin’ (1988) also a documentary film brings Bronx graffiti writer Brim Fuentes to meet with UK counterparts 3-D (the Wild Bunch) and Drum and Bass icon Goldie (above), then known as a prominent Graf artist.

Dick Fontaine’s latest film Handsworth Calling has just be shown to industry professionals at Sheffield’s DocFest. http://sheffdocfest.com – and is a montage of short films made by cast members of 1 Day – Penny Woolcock’s film billed as the UKs first Hip Hop musical. All the filmmakers worked under the supervision and direction of Dick Fontaine and the National Film and Television School. Four of the short films were shown on C4 as “3 Minute Wonders” two weeks ago, under the headline “1 Day in Handsworth”. The films are thought-provoking, humorous and human. Together they present an insight into a community in Birmingham through local eyes.

6 – 18, 20, 22 – 24 Aug 2009

In the early 90s a loose-knit group of outsiders, including Harmony Korine and Shepherd Fairey, met up around a little NYC gallery. Rooted in skateboarding, surf, punk, hip hop and graffiti, they made art that reflected their lives and, with almost no influence from the ‘establishment’ art world, they transformed pop culture. This documentary celebrates the spirit behind these artists.

On 6 August we have a Slam City Skates launch for the film at 8.30pm, with a Q&A and party.

Dir Joshua Leonard, Aaron Rose, US 2008, 90 mins

£8 / £7 concessions / £6 ICA members.
£5 for everyone all day Monday.

Tickets available here.

As palpable expectation grows around the final output from Will Holland’s latest collaborative project with his Combo Barbaro (name check…Alfredito Linares, Nidia Gongora, Freddy Colorado, Arthur Verocai, Joao Comanche Gomes and Malcolm Catto); the industrious crew at Mochilla follow on from their Timeless Series of concerts and the release of the Suite For Ma Dukes EP by announcing a new movie production with Sonido del Valle.

‘Tradition In Transition – A Postcard From Cali’ was shot in the Colombian locales of Cali and Buenaventura, documenting the sights, sounds and studio sessions of Quantic’s new album forthcoming on Tru Thoughts. Peep the trailer below…This is going to be huge!

Tradition In Transition – A Postcard From Cali (Trailer)

Tradition in Transition: A Postcard from Cali (TRAILER) from Quantic on Vimeo.

Quantic and his Combo Bárbaro

Mochilla