Ghetto Palms 114: Busy Signal / Elephant Man / Secousse / Sahel Phones

Photographer KingstonStyle
September 15, 2010

Ok, people. I have to get myself together and catch a flight to India so I am going to dispense with the usual Ghetto Palms formalities of blending and whatnot and just play you a bunch of music and tell you some stuff. If this was Stats' Slept On I would weave a verbal spell around these disparate items in alternating paragraphs until you understood how they all flow seamlessly together within the Stats-ian weltanschauung, but I really don't have time for all that. Instead I am going to hit you with some bullet points and trust in your ability to connect the dots the same way retinal retention makes makes the discrete images of a moving picture into a cinematic whole. Ready? Let's go:

Scene 1: Elephant Man steps into the back of a container truck parked in the overgrown tropical grasses of an empty lot in New Kingston, kisses his new pink diamond-frosted Ganesh-piece and records the following song:









Elephant Man, "Shake It" (Truck Back)

Scene 2: Workers wheel gigantic potted palms into a grungy warehouse space somewhere in London as Ivorian dancers in acid-wash jeans and grey flannel sapeur-vests rehearse their pelvis rolls and synchronized Night at The Roxbury head-turns. Perhaps it is a release party for the new Radioclit Presents: The Sound of Secousse comp due out on Crammed Discs ca. October 15th:




DJ Serpent Noir, "La Go Attoto" (video)

Scene 3: A group of sarahwi tribesmen haul a cheap PC into a mud-walled mosque, clean the sand out of the motherboard with an airgun, and start to fuck around with some autotune software:








Side A: Music from Saharan Cell Phones

Scene 4: Two punk rock tourists from Germany lose their way in the MC Escher sidewalks of Rocinha. They are left behind when their organized favela tour heads back to the asfalto world without them and end up getting smacked repeatedly in the face by the ass-cheeks of a group of preteen girls practicing the latest dance craze:








Schlachthofbronx f. Gringo & Nem, "Fock Me Avontade"

Scene 5: Back in Jamaica, Reanno "Busy Signal" Gordon posts up in the shade of a banana tree in the backyard of a one-story Kingston  breezeblock, throws some Alphaville on the boombox and starts to tap out lyrics on his Blackberry:









Busy Signal, "Jamaica Love"









Busy Signal, "Between Eyes"

Roll credits.

~ fin

From The Collection:

Ghetto Palms
Ghetto Palms 114: Busy Signal / Elephant Man / Secousse / Sahel Phones