#chimurenga renaissance

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Audio: Seattle's Black Stax Releases a Psychedelic Live Single

New Audio: Seattle’s Black Stax Releases a Psychedelic Live Single

Comprised of Jace ECAj (emcee) and Felicia Loud (vocals), the Seattle, WA-based duo Black Staxare set to release the first…

[douglasfur365]

Tendai “Baba” Maraire of Chimurenga Renaissance and Shabazz Palaces, 2014

Bumbershoot, Seattle

If I’m going to shoot a show the music always comes first, if I’m not into the music then it’s just not worth my time. It’s really a bonus if the artist puts on a great show, and whether Tandai Maraire is performing with Chimurenga Renaissance or Shabazz Palaces you’re guaranteed to get a great performance and some really eye popping costume choices. 

[affairesasuivre]

Remembering Grace, a Girl with a Gun : After spending the night listening to Girlz with Gunz, I spent the day remembering Grace Maseva. She was always cheerful, always smiling, and always making bawdy jokes. For her, sexual organs were a normal part of life. A person must pee and play with something. That’s just how things are; a tree has fruit, a baboon has that prideful butt, we have our special business. She would laugh and laugh. She was also a great cook. Always did the greens just right. She also fought in the Second Chimurenga, the war that ended white rule in Zimbabwe.

Grace was a trained killer. Grace, who survived a brutal war but not the spread of AIDS, could clean, assemble, and load an AK-47. She knew when to duck for cover, when to charge, and when to fire her weapon. There were many women like her in the War of Independence, and their sacrifice, dedication, and general brilliance is celebrated in Girlz with Gunz. This is the spirit of the work. The collaboration between two very talented American-based African musicians, Tendai Maraire and Hussein Kalonji (aka Chimurenga Renaissance), translates the fire of the revolutionary African woman into a music that’s richly and thickly innovative. It is fitting indeed that the most experimental, dazzling, and even dangerous work by Chimurenga Renaissance, a duo that is a part of the trans-African Black Constellation (Shabazz Palaces, THEESatisfaction, Erik Blood), is inspired by women like my cousin, Grace. She was once a girl with a gun. She was trained to kill her oppressors. She wanted to build and live in a better world. Peace always has a price. --- Charles Tonderai Mudede “Merging hip hop and African instrumentation into something mesmeric and true.” ---The Quietus “Speaks to Zimbabwe’s history (“chimurenga” translates to “struggle”), but this is classic message rap that spans regionally.” ---Pitchfork Chimurenga Renaissance features Tendai Maraire, from the widely acclaimed Seattle group Shabazz Palaces, one of the leaders of hip hop’s “audacious progressive fringe”(New York Times). Tendai hails from a renowned Zimbabwean musical lineage. His father, Abraham Dumisani Maraire, moved to the United States in the late 60’s and helped create a flourishing Zimbabwean music scene in the Pacific Northwest. Tendai’s partner in Chimurenga Renaissance, guitarist Hussein Kalonji, is a first generation Congolese American born in Washington DC. His father, Raymond “Braynck” Kalonji, is a Congolese guitar legend credited with pioneering the Rumba/Soukouss sound. Girlz with Gunz is a 27-minute, 11-song EP (vinyl/download). It is Chimurenga Renaissance’s first release for Glitterbeat Records. A full-length album will follow in the autumn of 2016. Otherworldly sonics, Zimbabwean beats, Congolese guitar ambiance, political heat. Directed by Daniel Kaufman Cinematography by Jordan Black

[kickmag]

Tendai Baba Maraire Goes Into The Studio For Mass Appeal’s Rhythm Roulette

Tendai Maraire of Shabazz Palaces, Chimurenga Renaissance and WOKE makes a beat for Mass Appeal’s Rhythm Roulette series. The producer/percussionist takes music from the Andes and Mexico and adds some live instrumentation to make a quirky beat ideal for the abstract funk/hip-hop that he makes with Shabazz Palaces.

[gbogn]

VOL. 62: BROUGHT HERE BY COURAGE OR DELUSION

1. Deakin “Just Am” 2. Chimurenga Renaissance “Queenz With Cannonz” 3. Themselves Remixed By Hood “Live Trap” 4. Speedy Ortiz “Death Note” 5. Slow Mass “Dark Dark Energy” 6. Schlemiel O’Neal “Evil Evil Evil” 7. Elvis Depressedly “Mickey Yr A Fuck Up” 8. Peter Pants “Streets Or No Streets” 9. Wildhoney “Seventeen” 10. Mass Gothic “A Run” 11. Kairon; IRSE! “Valorians”

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[coverazze]

from:

“Pungwe” by Chimurenga Renaissance - Tendai Maraire (2013)

to:

“Priorities” by Jena (2016)

enjoy some music here

[vagabondaesthetics]

Remembering Grace, a Girl with a Gun: After spending the night listening to Girlz with Gunz, I spent the day remembering Grace Maseva. She was always cheerful, always smiling, and always making bawdy jokes. For her, sexual organs were a normal part of life. A person must pee and play with something. That’s just how things are; a tree has fruit, a baboon has that prideful butt, we have our special business. She would laugh and laugh. She was also a great cook. Always did the greens just right. She also fought in the Second Chimurenga, the war that ended white rule in Zimbabwe. Grace was a trained killer. Grace, who survived a brutal war but not the spread of AIDS, could clean, assemble, and load an AK-47. She knew when to duck for cover, when to charge, and when to fire her weapon. There were many women like her in the War of Independence, and their sacrifice, dedication, and general brilliance is celebrated in Girlz with Gunz. This is the spirit of the work. The collaboration between two very talented American-based African musicians, Tendai Maraire and Hussein Kalonji (aka Chimurenga Renaissance), translates the fire of the revolutionary African woman into a music that’s richly and thickly innovative. It is fitting indeed that the most experimental, dazzling, and even dangerous work by Chimurenga Renaissance, a duo that is a part of the trans-African Black Constellation (Shabazz Palaces, THEESatisfaction, Erik Blood), is inspired by women like my cousin, Grace. She was once a girl with a gun. She was trained to kill her oppressors. She wanted to build and live in a better world. Peace always has a price. --- Charles Tonderai Mudede “Merging hip hop and African instrumentation into something mesmeric and true.” ---The Quietus “Speaks to Zimbabwe’s history (“chimurenga” translates to “struggle”), but this is classic message rap that spans regionally.” ---Pitchfork Chimurenga Renaissance features Tendai Maraire, from the widely acclaimed Seattle group Shabazz Palaces, one of the leaders of hip hop’s “audacious progressive fringe”(New York Times). Tendai hails from a renowned Zimbabwean musical lineage. His father, Abraham Dumisani Maraire, moved to the United States in the late 60’s and helped create a flourishing Zimbabwean music scene in the Pacific Northwest. Tendai’s partner in Chimurenga Renaissance, guitarist Hussein Kalonji, is a first generation Congolese American born in Washington DC. His father, Raymond “Braynck” Kalonji, is a Congolese guitar legend credited with pioneering the Rumba/Soukouss sound. Girlz with Gunz is a 27-minute, 11-song EP (vinyl/download). It is Chimurenga Renaissance’s first release for Glitterbeat Records. A full-length album will follow in the autumn of 2016. Otherworldly sonics, Zimbabwean beats, Congolese guitar ambiance, political heat. www.facebook.com/chimurengarenaissance/ twitter.com/chimurenga1980 Directed by Daniel Kaufman Cinematography by Jordan Black danielkaufmanswebsite.com

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AYFJEGQ9Fw)

[permanentsatisfactions]

Song Of The Day side b:

“Pop Killer”-Chimurenga Renaissance

from “Defenders Of The Crusades ep”(2013)

[musicmeds]

Vitamin C(himurenga Renaissance)

listen: Girlz With Gunz LP

New side project of Tendai Maraire from Shabazz Palaces. Out now on Glitterbeat.

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Audio: Shabazz Palaces Team Up with Thundercat on a Trippy and Elastic, New Single

New Audio: Shabazz Palaces Team Up with Thundercat on a Trippy and Elastic, New Single

Now, if you’ve frequenting this site over the past four years or so, you’ve come across a number of posts featuring the Seattle, WA-based JOVM mainstays Shabazz Palaces. Comprised of

[dustedmagazine]

Chimurenga Renaissance – Girlz with Gunz EP (Glitterbeat)

Though Chimurenga Renaissance is often billed as a Shabazz Palaces side project, Tendai Maraire and Hussein Kalonji have been working toward more explicitly political ends right from the beginning. It’s not just in the name, but also in the song titles (“Red, Black & Green,” “Proud to Be Afrikan,” “Bloggers vs. Journalists,” etc) and raps themselves that color Chimurenga as tied to something more than an implied rendering or a dream state. The group is on the ground, at the front lines, and they’re not backing off on Girlz with Gunz.

At 11 songs and a not-totally-insubstantial 26 minutes, it’s curious to see this being marketed as an EP (though it may have something to do with a forthcoming full-length proper due out later this year). Even so, Maraire and Kalonji waste little time in cementing both their sound and their ideas. The echoing JusMoni is the first voice you hear on “I See You for Who You Are,” but Maraire gets to work quickly thereafter in a mission statement describing the strong women he’s looking to venerate. Namedrops include the Williams sisters, Dilma Rousseff, and Benazir Bhutto as his rhymes remain just out of reach thanks to the delay, delivered in a voice akin to an interstellar Beanie Sigel in its combativeness.

Maraire can get a little over the top and bawdy in his exultations but on “Queenz with Cannonz,” he spits at the heart of what the EP is about: “She wants it, I afford it / She’s worth it, and gorgeous / Reptile handbags and couture kicks / We ain’t perfect but we happy, we were more so we gremlins / Focused on family, our lifestyle’s not cheap / Steaks are grass-fed, red grapes with cake, cheese / In more than one way, we eat.” Tightly packed in words, Maraire is balanced by the following Q&A exchange he has with Mall Saint, where Maraire asks, “How you need ‘em, Mall?” and the latter replies, “I need ‘em as confidence as companions, strong girls with guns. Better yet, queens with cannons.”

The guests, in fact, may be the most alluring aspect of this release. Featuring the aforementioned JusMoni and Mall Saint, Chimurenga also manages to allow room for Sassy Black of THEESatisfaction, Nyoka and Moon. Each of these artists is in the Africa Black Constellation orbit and their presence is felt in the most memorable choruses, (Nyoka’s “What we do, what we say, how we feel, how we are is none of your business” refrain on “Nunya Buziniez” is an early example) and in the margins of the mixes (Moon’s extraordinary performance throughout “She is the Fairest of Them All” is without doubt the highlight). Given the number of rhymes and musical ideas packed into Girlz with Gunz, it’s a feat to see how quickly everyone gels. There’s no time to misfire as songs bleed into one another.

Girlz with Gunz is accompanied by an essay from noted academic and cultural commentator Charles Tonderai Mudede regarding Grace Maseva, a cousin of his who fought in the Second Chimurenga and passed away later from AIDS. The perspective he provides better aides the listener in understanding the Chimurenga Renaissance worldview. Ultimately, however, it’s Maraire who gets the last word: “I love girls with guns / and let ‘er cock for fun / that sparks everyone / One resolute to shoot farther.” Aim high.

Patrick Masterson

[affairesasuivre]

Chimurenga Renaissance's Homage To Nina Simone - Speak The Truth For Free

[noiserap]

CHIMURENGA RENAISSANCE “GIRLZ WITH GUNZ (FT. MOON)”

[gbogn]

VOL. 56: SPIRITUALLY BALANCED AT THE CREST OF POSSIBILITY

1. Mr. Lif feat. Blacastan “Whizdom” 2. Chimurenga Renaissance feat. Moon “Girlz With Gunz” 3. Open Mike Eagle feat. Busdriver “Degrassi Picture Day” 4. Yoni & Geti “Down” 5. Jeremy Lee Given “Heartache” 6. Slow Warm Death “Madonna” 7. Frameworks “Worn Out” 8. O’Brother “Complicated End Times” 9. Melkbelly “Theme From Blarr III” 10. The Anomalys “Ain’t Got a Lot to Give” 11. Mathew Lee Cothran “No Way Out” 12. Pill Friends “Darkness Understands” 13. Hooded Fang “Venus”

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[cabingames]

Announcing the Cabin Games Global Showcase at A3C!

We're proud to announce the lineup for our Cabin Games Global Showcase at the All 3 Coasts Fest in Atlanta, GA! 

The Cabin Games Global Lineup Includes: 

Silas Blak Gyasi Ross Chimurenga Renaissance Malitia MaliMob PS the Rebels Truss

The show starts 7:30PM on October 9 at the A3C Festival in Atlanta, GA. 

Hosted by Skyy Hook from the Wake Up Show!

In Atlanta for A3C? Come through for a killer show!