What is it about music that draws us in? Is it the artist? Their talent? Their voice? Their musical ability?
And why is it that we are sometimes drawn to musical styles that we would not normally identify with? I'll admit to not normally listening to the music of the club. House music, trance, hip-hop, electronic funk...you get where I'm at? Look, it's not that I really, really dislike it. It's just more a case of it not being a genre that I normally inhabit. If it comes on the radio, I'm usually switching over or switching off. And let's face it - I can't dance, I'm the whitest white man on the planet and you would never find me at the club gettin' it on, on the dance floor...per se. Yet, there are occasions where I will abandon myself and my acoustic roots and surrender to the most urban of urban beats. And it is usually met with a scratching of heads from my family and wider circle of friends. Perfect example - when I recently download and first clicked on the play button for HUNTER, a free offering by American singer/song writer Baiyu, I found myself very quickly addicted. This is an album that sits right at the core of the club experience - a highly polished, thumping recording, featuring 13 tracks of unabashed beats that would set the club on fire. I'm listening to it last week and I'm digging it. I'm totally digging it.
The tracks, a combination of hard electro-pop fused with RandB are impeccably structured, with top shelf production values that make use of the best electronic wizardry that, quite frankly, shits all over anything that Lady Gaga or Katy Perry has to offer. They are satisfyingly loud and they are sensually layered. Baiyu makes use of her vocals as an instrument and gives crisp harmonics to the songs that, from an aural standpoint, are as addictive as fuck. The title track "Hunter" is a perfect example of this. Likewise "Laws Of Attraction" boasts a powerful lyrical melody throughout that marries effortlessly with the primal urban beats and slick bass and keys to deliver a powerful and sexual punch. But there is variation in the playlist too. It doesn't just stick to the pure dance tracks but offers more ballad like compositions that allow for listening rather than participation (ie. kicking back and listening rather than shaking your ass on the dance floor).
There is something deeper in this music that is undeniable. They are tracks that are deceptively well crafted, giving them a story and an arc that means much more than the average run of the mill pop tunes. "Lost In Lisbon" is one such track that fuses sexuality, killer lyrics with charged beats to deliver a composition that bristles with energy and style. And there's an experimental side to the tracks too, whose focus is simply on the aural experience rather than dance or ballad. "Mind Freak" is one where Baiyu's voice pairs beautiful with the keys in a sort of Vangelis-esque kind of composition that has serious imagery conjuring abilities attached to it. I, personally, was having a whole kind of, Blade Runner, thing happening on my first listen. The second track of note is "White Dove" which is a track engineered in reverse, but possesses a seductive beauty that has me coming back to it time and time again. Man, this album is a pleasure to listen to. I recently declared it on Twitter as #Aural #Sex. A declaration that caught the attention of Baiyu herself - and she was good with it to. My serioso has no idea of course why I would be listening to her. It is my guilty pleasure. So who is Baiyu.
Baiyu Chen is a Chinese-American singer/songwriter who has garnered an increasingly visible profile in her adoptive U.S. and who has developed a strong pedigree as a artist of substance and style since she first appeared on the scene States-side in 2010. As a model and actress, Baiyu has contributed to a number of indie film projects, the most notable of which was the 2012 release "The Illuminators: Division" in which she has a producer credit. She has turned discs as a VJ on MTVu's "The Freshman" and she is currently competing in the latest incarnation of TV talent show on CW's "The Next".
Baiyu has also developed a profile as a passionate humanitarian and in 2011, decided to donate all of the profits from her 2nd EP "B-side" to the relief effort in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami there. As I explore more of Baiyu's music, it is becoming clearer to me just what it is about her that so attracts me to her music. There is a work ethic there that shows me that she is a dedicated artist and technician but there is also raw talent. A YouTube music video titled "Together" shows Baiyu in stripped back mode, performing with just a guitarist and herself and she delivers a performance that is intimate and beautiful. She is, in a word, the entire package.
Connect with Baiyu at her official site here. Download Baiyu's "Hunter" here. Interact with Baiyu here. DFA.
I make no secret of the fact that I love technology - specifically, consumer technology. I am writing this now on my Samsung Galaxy Tablet which has almost become my primary device for interacting on the interweb and conducting my online life. When I'm not using the Tablet, I am sitting down with my Dell XPS M1530 laptop which is at the core of my career as an author in both the print and digital media. I make calls on my Samsung Omnia i8000 smart phone and listen to my favorite show Keith & The Girl using it in tandem with my Nokia BH-501 bluetooth headset. Just the other day, I bought the new Lego Star Wars 3 game for my Sony Playstation Portable console and my son and I have been having a huge amount of fun romping around in the Star Wars Lego universe. I could go on but, for the sake of your sanity, I'll surmise that you get the idea.
I love geeking out on the latest releases in the world of smart phone technology because I don't yet believe that I've seen a device that ticks every single box in terms of THEE feature set that I would love to see (although the Tablet comes really, really close). I love to play around with these new toys when I can afford to buy them or my cell phone provider encourages me to recontract with them - in which case I can usually score a new device for free (as part of said contract). I marvel at the advancements developers have made in their quest for faster, lighter, more powerful and more interactive. But I have given no thought to hands that have wrought these devices into being. The fingers that soldered the wires to the circuit boards or turned the tiny screws or packaged them into the boxes that take them from the factory to the retail outlets that whip their customers into a frenzy with the next anticipated release.
I subscribe to a magazine called New Internationalist which hits my letter box once a month. I always enjoy getting my copy. The New Internationalist takes a deeper look into the geopolitical climate globally and examines human rights issues, poverty, ethical industries, non ethical industries and global justice. And when it arrives each month, I love nothing more than to sit down with my copy in the afternoon and get right into reading it with a cup of coffee. Today was one such day.
And in my haven of deeper thought and focus upon the global issues that define my generation, I came across an article that stopped me in my tracks.
The article was about a corporation in China called Foxconn which is, apparently the largest manufacturer of consumer electronics in the world. Foxconn produces the iPhone, the iPad - both 1 and 2 - and its components can be found in computers and hardware and technology the world over. In fact, by the middle of 2011, Foxconn will have captured 50% of the global market in consumer electronics. I've no doubt that much of the compnentry inside my Samsung Tablet that I'm writing this on now came from Foxconn.
The article in the New Internationalist examined the working conditions inside Foxconn's Shenzhen factory, which is described as a city within a city, occupying some three square kilometers of Chinese real estate. Somewhere in the region of 1 million workers are employed by the corporation. They live and work in the factory and, according to the article, are ruled over by the corporation bosses like a super government that exerts absolute control over their lives.
Disturbingly, there has been a spate of suicides at the factory - 18 officially reported deaths in 2010 alone. Workers as young as 17 and no older than 25 have taken their own lives as a result of the draconian conditions they endure inside the factory.
Their every moment is monitored, tracked and watched over by a security service that would rival the Secret Service. They have strict production quotas to meet and the failure to meet those targets results in harsh disciplinary action which is often humiliating. They are forced to adhere to a strict regime of assembling before the bosses each day and declaring that they are good - "Very Good, Very Very Good" when asked by their bosses to state how they feel. Their work schedules are relentless, their pay pitiful and their lives monotonous, without hope or direction. In an interview with the magazine, workers - who spoke on the condition of anonymity - reported feelings of helplesness, of despondency and of feeling as though they have no future. These are workers with college educations, graduates who have studied to better themselves to seek a better life. They are not surprised that these feelings have lead some of their colleagues to resort to drastic and often tragic measures...
...All so that we in our comfortable western lives can line up in front of a local Apple store at 2 in the morning on release day for the latest iProduct...
Our insatiable appetite for 'the product' has contributed to this disturbing and tragic phenomenon and, having admitted to being a total tech geek, I myself feel part way responsible for it. As a writer who has, belatedly, embraced the idea of digital literature as a means of income and a portal for my published work, I am rendered uncomfortable by accounts like Foxconn's and it's workers. But I'm not about to lay down my Galaxy, Omnia 2, Sony PSP or Nokia headset in solidarity with these workers either, because I believe that would be counter productive.
The thing is, I appreciate the quality of the product that I hold in my hand and NI's article leads me to think about the hands that constructed this device. Despite China's rapid emergence as 'the' super power of the 21st century, there remains vast poverty and inequality among it's people. Jobs - occupations - are hungrily sought out by its citizens because the alternative to working would be desperate poverty, which is as bad as the situation that has been described in Foxconn's factory.
The solution is therefore simple. Our insatiable desire for cheaper and cheaper consumer electronics in the longer term is not sustainable, if we are to have any regard for the plight of workers at corporations like Foxconn. In fact, I think there is a moral and ethical imperative on our part to demand that we accept higher prices for these devices and ensure that the beneficiaries of our willingness to pay more are those very factory workers. Corporations like Foxconn should not be allowed to continue operating unchecked. It should be held acconutable for the deaths that have occurred inside its factory. 18 suicides in 1 year cannot ve dismissed out of hand. It chilled me, reading this article today and I had visions of scenes from George Lucas' 1970 film "THX-1138" where an entire society was depicted in very much the same Orwellian way that the NI article reported the conditions inside Foxconn.
And that was a work of fiction.
There are some encouraging signs of a fledging movement that is agitating for workers rights inside corporations like Foxconn but they are going up against not only a corporate behemoth but a Government whose track record on human rights is arguably, appalling. My conscience will very much form a part of my focus on promoting my written works in digital media. I believe the two can co-exist.
I encourage you to think deeper too, about the hands that constructed whatever device you are reading this article on right now. Would you be prepared to pay more? Would you be prepared to help defend the human rights of those hands?
