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I like this.

Back in 2003, Black Eyed Peas released the Elephunk Theme on their Elephunk album . Of course, BEP has gone on to other things since then. But the Elephunk Theme -- ever wondered about it? The song samples liberally from a Tamil song -- Unakkum Enakkum Aanandham -- composed by Ilaiyaraaja for the movie Sri Raghavendra . Sample we're told. Listen to the original though, and you realize that it is more than a sample. They lifted the entire Elephunk Theme from the Tamil original. The Tamil original is below -- and you can find the BEP version on YouTube . It's amazing that they get the amount of credit they do for this song, when really, they hardly did anything musically to it, other than a western pop/rap cover. Now -- ever wonder about the female singer that lends her voice to both the Tamil original and the BEP version? Her name is S. Janaki . She's Indian -- Telugu by birth -- but sings in many languages, including Telugu, Tamil, Hindi -- and even Japanes...

Another group I discovered in that Cathay flight, was Tinariwen . Tinariwen is a band of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali. They've gained international prominence beyond the world music community, and have performed in music festivals in Europe and North America. The first song that made me take notice of the band, was Cler Achel . Below is a video of the band performing that song. I also liked other songs from their recent album, including Toumast, Imidiwan Winakalin, and Awa Didjen . To understand the band and their music, you need to understand a little about the Tuareg -- a nomadic people living in the Saharan interior of North Africa. (The name Tuareg comes from early European explorers of the region -- they instead refer to themselves by various other names.) Their nomadic way of life came at an end in the early 20th century due to bloody colonization by the French. When the French finally retreated, like so many post-colonial stories, ...

I discovered Youssou N'Dour when I was flying back from China in December. I decided that there were no movies I wanted to see on the Cathay flight back. Yes, I know. There were dozens of movies, and I had seen all the ones I had wanted to see -- and there are only a few movies that bears watching twice. I searched the Internet, looking for a specific song from him -- looking for videos. The first I found was N'Dour in concert with Peter Gabriel at Bercy, Paris, for Amnesty 1998 . In Your Eyes happens to be one of my favourite songs, so here it is, for no other reason than it features N'Dour and Gabriel. Enjoy. For those not familiar with N'Dour: he's a Senegalese singer and percussionist, famous for helping to develop the popular mbalax music in Senegal. He began performing at age 12 in Dakar, and eventually became one of the most celebrated African musicians. He's performed with numerous western artists, and is noted for having written and perfor...

You can find hope in the most unlikely of places -- and the unlikelier the place and story is, the more it gives me hope for the rest of us and the miseries we witness and inflict on each other. Staff Benda Bilili (Show What's Hidden) is a musical group of street kids from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The live around what passes for a zoo in Kinshasa, scraping out a living by performing with their home made instruments -- homemade guitars, single-stringed harp made of wire stretched over a tin can, and a drum which is a plastic chair beaten by flip-flops. The band members are all disabled, having suffered from polio as kids. Listen to them below. The band won the 2009 Artist Award at Womex and are now off on a European tour. How cool is that? For more, check out their MySpace page .

"I'm tired of the media, which spent years making fun of him, suddenly acting as if losing him is the greatest loss we've ever had to bear. And I'm so tired of the false sanctimony of those who will tell me that they are genuinely grieving." MJ is dead ... the only people who give a shit are those that will profit from his death, and those thinking up ways to profit from his death. Since I won't profit from his death, I don't give a shit. How about you?

Happy Canada Day! Song and video produced by, Julia Bentley & Andrew Gunadie.

I've no idea what I'm listening to right now, but it's pop, from south-east Asia -- maybe Tamil. My wife and I were in our favourite restaurant last week for our date night . This CD -- whatever it is -- was playing in the restaurant. The combination of the atmosphere of a familiar place, hip music -- that we didn't really understand -- good food, familiar staff that already know what we'll be drinking and just being in love, must have made the music sound really good. We remarked to the guy who was serving us that the music was good -- and I wanted to know what it was. I couldn't read the writing of course, so I asked if he could make me a copy. He said next time we were in, he'd have a copy for us. Tonight, we arrived for our usual supper. My wife had picked up a bouquet of flowers for the Ganesha altar they have at the entrance. We were seated, ordered the karahi chicken and fish masala , and the guy who was serving us (same as last time), came...

Let's all sing along now ... Auld Lang Syne .

My wife and I were at the local Second Cup this evening, imbibing and completing a crossword puzzle from the Toronto Star -- as is our ritual every Thursday -- our date night. One of the clues we encountered, referenced Eric Clapton's "___ the Sheriff." That one sent me into a spin. Clapton? I was confused. I didn't even know Clapton did the song. I know the song as being written by Bob Marley and performed by him (originally performed on The Wailers' Burnin' ). WTF? The crossword puzzle clearly inferred that the song was a Clapton song -- Clapton did a cover of the song in 1974, a year after it was released by the Wailers. What a pissant that wrote that clue -- stealing the credit from Marley and handing it to Clapton in one fell swoop. So here's to correcting the literary crime. Marley wrote the song. Don't mess with him. Bob is god.

Check out Radiohead's House of Cards video ... fully interactive, on Google.

I was introduced to the Vinyl Cafe a couple of years ago by Kevin, when we were both on the same team. Kevin is a mainframe programmer and a bit of a film and book buff. If I recall correctly, Kevin used to listen to Stuart McLean's Vinyl Cafe on CBC radio , and one Christmas, was looking for a particular Vinyl Cafe story to read over a Christmas gathering. I helped Kevin out by visiting Amazon.com and peering between the covers to gleam the story. I suspect Kevin's Christmas went a tad better than Dave's in the story -- I'm quite sure Kevin wasn't drunk and didn't take a turkey to a hotel. Stuart McLean has published many of his Vinyl Cafe stories collected in a few volumes over the years. What better way to enjoy the quirky Canadiana that it is his characters -- sort of Bob and Doug, but without the beer and hoser phenom. I had nearly forgotten about the Vinyl Cafe , until my wife and I happened to be in a strip mall in Gander, last fall. We were k...

What happens when a band comes out against their fans who pirated their music? They're hated to the core of their sold-out souls. What happens when that band contemplates an internet distribution model after years of sucking? They get creamed by music fans for being hypocrites. Who's the band? Metallica. Read more on Wired .

Love this song!

Australia's Herald Sun is carrying an interview with Trent Reznor, in which he harangues the music industry, music fans, himself and the illegal downloading of music. Here's an excerpt, in which Reznor is confronted on why his latest CD goes for $34.99 at the local HMV. Well, in Brisbane I end up meeting and greeting some record label people, who are pleasant enough, and one of them is a sales guy, so I say "Why is this the case?" He goes "Because your packaging is a lot more expensive". I know how much the packaging costs -- it costs me, not them, it costs me 83 cents more to have a CD with the colour-changing ink on it. I'm taking the hit on that, not them. So I said "Well, it doesn't cost $10 more". "Ah, well, you're right, it doesn't. Basically it's because we know you've got a core audience that's gonna buy whatever we put out, so we can charge more for that. It's the pop stuff we have to discount to get ...

What would happen if ... At 7:15AM, at a busy hub for workers heading off to cubicle hell ... "One of the finest classical musicians in the world" -- say ... Joshua Bell ... dressed incognito ... Pulled out a handcrafted violin, made by Antonio Stradivari in 1713, and worth over $3M ... And started "playing some of the most elegant music ever written" ... Would anyone stop to listen? Joshua Bell's performance at the L'Enfant Plaza, just outside the Metro in Washington, was arranged by the Washington Post. It was "an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?" The acoustics proved surprisingly kind. Though the arcade is of utilitarian design, a buffer between the Metro escalator and the outdoors, it somehow caught the sound and bounced it back round and resonant. The violin is an instrument that is said to be much...

After years of celebrating sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and more recently, sex, guns and thug life, the RIAA is apparently now seeking to teach our children morals . That is apparently the reason why the RIAA is cracking down on music pirates on campus. Read more via Boing Boing .