Category Archives: archive

Pussy Riot: more professional

This blog has been quiet for a long time due to lack of time, but we are going to make it up to you. Today I saw a new video of the female Russian punk band Pussy Riot. Wow, what a difference with the anarchist-low-budget clips of the beginning. No more colored balaclavas, no more shouting, no more crappy guitars and bad camerawork. Their newest video ‘Chaika’ is well produced, directed by Andrey Fenochka and Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova. The music is super mellow, hip hop-like, made by the American musician and producer Dave Sitek. The cause for the clip is the documentary of the Russian political activist Alexei Navalny. He unraveled the ties between Russia’s prosecutor general, Yuri Chaika, and the country’s mafia (source: The Rolling Stone)

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Unilever, clean up your mess!

To complain about gum and skin allergies is not very sexy. How clever of campaigning organization Jhatkaa to ask rapper Sofia Ashraf to help out. A video directly addressed to consumer goods giant Unilever for exposing residents of Kodaikanal, India, to toxic mercury contamination, went viral. Not only because of the music, it is based on the pop-hit Anaconda, but also because of the lyrics.

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Bulletproof Stockings: female empowerment

The other day I was reading about the alternative rock band Bulletproof Stocking. The band based in New York, consists of Hasidic women. This caught me by surprise, because I reckoned that there is a taboo on female chant in this ultra-orthodox Jewish community. In an article (NRC. Next, August 27, 2014) founder, singer and keyboard player Perl Wolfe explains that men aren’t allowed to listen to female chant, because it may seduce them. However, that commandment is true merely for men. The solution is that Bulletproof Stockings plays for an only-female audience. Of course this evokes some juicy headlines.

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A call for artistic solidarity with L7a9ed

For the third time in three years artist and human rights activist Mouad Belghouat, alias El Haqed (The Indignant) or L7a9ed, got arrested on Sunday 18 May 2014. “El Haqed has been targeted for his political views and his participation in Morocco’s February 20th movement: On 20 February 2011, what began as a group of Moroccans expressing their frustration with the status quo grew to a nationwide movement that demanded change in Morocco.” (Free L7a9ed – Music is not a crime). Filmmaker, photographer and activist Nadir Bouhmouch put a video on his You Tube channel to call for artistic solidarity with L7a9ed.

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