December 31, 2007

meet Outlandish

“We live in times when political positions are becoming polarized and cultures are considered fenced-in entities that cannot be united. The world is often viewed through a faulty prism that divides “us” from “them”. That’s why it such a tension-breaker when someone takes the time and uses their talent to remind us that we are all human beings. That the blood running through your veins is significantly different from the blood that flows through your neighbor’s body, even though you may not share the same social status, political views, religious conviction or hail from the same latitude or longitude.”


This is where Outlandish enters the picture.

Their story is an uplifting tale about three friend’s common adventure, which starts in the youth clubs and soccer fields of the western Copenhagen suburbs. At the same time, it is the story of a band that insists on the vantage point called “the world we live in”, and through subjective, grass-root musical narratives, tries makes a difference. Quite a bit has happened since Lenny Martinez, Waqas Qadri and Isam Bachiri—with, respectively, Cuban, Pakistani and Moroccan backgrounds—broke ground in 1997 to build Outlandish and begin a career together.

With the release of Outland’s Official (2000) Outlandish publicly unveiled a unique mode of thought and approach to creating modern music: a musical, socio-cultural melting pot heated by the hip-hop Lenny, Waqas and Isam had had a passion for since early youth. It was like a special type of fusion cuisine in which the fundamental ingredients were clearly American, but with dashes of spices that might be beats, samples and snatches of Arab pop, Bollywood soundtracks as well as Latin American rhythms. The lyrics were expressed in English, Spanish, Urdu, Arabic—and Danish. Or as Isam later painted a verbal picture: “I was in my room listening to Tupac, my mother was playing Moroccan folk music on the stereo down in the living room, and somewhere along the line the idea popped into my head, that I could unite the elements of my life in music.”

Considering the quantum leaps the band has taken from album to album, it will be interesting to see how their music will leap into various areas of the world. One thing is sure: Outlandish has created its own definition of world music. And no matter how many differences there are in the world, the humble human being will be heartened, entertained and educated by listening to Outlandish.



Soon


Rating:★★★
Category:Books
Genre: Religion & Spirituality
Author:Jerry B. Jenkins
Can you live without God? That is this entire futuristic book that tells the life 36 years after the World War III (2009). After WW3, all the leaders in the world united in the same idea that the threat to world peace is religion, therefore they are out to eradicate all forms of groups that talks about God. Those who are caught red-handed are immediately killed in the most brutal way, government considered this as cancer of the society. However, there are still underground believers who are labeled zealot extremists who spread the words of God and so they are being haunted. Whether God helps them in their advocacy is for you to find out. The book is a tale of the beginning of the end.

December 23, 2007

Rubik-ation


Guess what swept our classroom by storm this past month. It’s not any movie star or the latest fashion items, not even the newest published book or the just-released music album. It is this four-sided cube composing of four different colors, four rows and four columns. I’ll give you a clue: the mechanism of playing is that one has to arrange all the scattered four colors from the four rows and columns by making sure that same colors stay on the same side. Ring any bell? Ya, it’s Rubik’s cube.

More than 50% of our class’ population is addicted into this cube. From everywhere you look, even at the corners of the class, whether there is doctor or not, you can observe an individual enthralled by the magic of solving the puzzle. I belong to those less than 50 percent who were spared by the spell of Rubik’s cube. I want to learn albeit seeing my classmates wrinkling their foreheads and their eyes almost popping from their orbital sacs from figuring out how to place a single color from where it belongs without disturbing other colors made me back off. Heheh.. Cellphone na lang kinakalikot ko.