She lives and dies…again lives and dies [Ńdụ̀, ọ́nwụ́, ńdụ̀, ọ́nwụ́, ọ̀zọ́]

Not from the old school or from the new
Applaud or boo; do what you want to
Talk to me then try to put me down
We used to be cool now we don't hang around
Used to be friends but now we're foes
Ask me why, man, no one knows.

—Rob Base [Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock] - Joy And Pain

I live, I die; I scorch myself and drown.
Mine is intense heat and immortal chill:
Life is too soft on me, and too hard, still.
My doldrums meshed with joys—each smile, a frown.

All at a stroke I laugh and I lament,
And suffer many torments in my pleasures:
They live forever, my absconding treasures:
All at a stroke I wither and augment.

Thus love tows me by inconstant line:
And just when I expect to find more pain,
Unknowingly I find myself carefree.

Then when I believe that certain joy is mine,
That I've now gained the fancied heights I deign,
It casts me back to my prime misery.

—Louise Labbé (translated by Uche Ogbuji) - Sonnet VIII: Je vis, je meurs

80s party rocking wasn't all that much on finer points. I mean, Maze has Frankie Beverly doing a pretty nifty job channelling Louise Labbé, but never mind that when we've got a bubble up in here. Some call Labbé the first notable, French woman poet, but that's a designation more down to subtleties of national identification than anything else. After all, Marie de France was stomping the block almost four hundred years earlier, but back then, France wasn't really a thing. There were various splinters of formerly Roman colonized territory making a jigsaw puzzle of the modern country we recognize. Then again, Marie was writing in Anglo-Norman, a language you can squint at and sort of follow if you have French and Latin. Labbé was writing in language any modern Francophone would probably read with no more than an occasional ("Alors, c'sont chelou, ces mots."—"Yo! These some funky ass words, fam!").

Je vis, je meurs: je me brule et me noye,
J’ay chaut estreme en endurant froidure:
La vie m'est et trop molle et trop dure.
J'ay grans ennuis entremeslez de joye:

If you want to read this entire Labbé poem, Sonnet VIII, in its original, you can find it at my old weblog—"Chez Labbé, au-delà de la terre". Indeed Frankie Beverly really nails her sentiment, taking all those feels from the very cusp of the 80s.

Love can be bitter, love can be sweet
Sometimes devotion, and sometimes deceit
The ones that you care for give you so much pain
Oh, but it's alright, they're both one in the same

But later that decade, see, Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock just wanted to rock the party, because that's Hip-Hop. They weren't all that concerned with the piebald vicissitudes of the amorous breast. They needed Maze's brilliant hook to crank up the vibes. Rob Base's rhymes are mostly classic 80s Hip-Hop toasting and boasting, but he did leave a little sliver of the original Joy cum Pain/Sonnet VIII sensibility in there—just the bit I quote at the jump.

In the weblog post I referenced earlier, with the full Sonnet VIII, I mention how

The first time I heard Morcheeba's Au-delà, featuring Manda, the French fan who became a lead singer for a brief spell, I was at a Morcheeba concert in Denver, just before the album Dive Deep came out.  When she started singing the lyrics, I started jumping up and down yelling "C'est Louise Labbé!" I guess half-hoping Manda could hear me.  Yeah, wifey thought I'd gone mad.  She would have thought so even more if she'd realized, as I did quickly, that the lyrics that started with Labbé quickly went [their] own way.

Je vis, je meurs; je ris, je pleure.
Je vis de la mer; je vis de la terre.
Je le dis aux fleurs; au lac de vapeur.
Au ciel de toutes les couleurs,

Ton soleil réchauffe mon cœur.
Je vis, j'ai peur; je crie de douleurs.
En secret je m'enterre: je cherche la chaleur.
Je m'enfuis dans les airs; au delà de la terre.

Au ciel de toutes les couleurs,
Ton soleil réchauffe mon cœur.

—Manda [Morcheeba] - Au-delà

I live, I die; I laugh, I cry.
I live of the sea; I live of the ground.
I say it to the flowers; to the vaporous lake.
In the all-colored sky,

Your sun warms my heart.
I live, I die; I scream of pain.
I secretly bury myself as I seek heat.
I abscond into tunes, into air, beyond the earth.

In the all-colored sky,
Your sun warms my heart.

—translation by Uche Ogbuji [slight modification from 2012 version]

Manda hints at torment, but she is really less about Petrarca's poetics of dramatic contradiction, and more about the dramatic roller-coaster whoops of budding romance. Louise Labbé and Petrarca are all like "ahh these Millennials" why can't they be more like our Renaissance generations? Meanwhile Rob base is all: "Yo, who's up for the get-down? We've got juice and vodka at the cash bar." As he says, he's "Not from the old school or from the new".

Can Bard do the bardess?

Google released its large language model, Bard, for general use yesterday. I took the occasion to have a sniff.

Sorry, Bard. I'm not convinced. If you'd just told me you'd be making a yarn ball with Maze, DJ E-Z Rock, Louise Labbé, Marie de France, Petrarca and Morcheeba, I'd have at least called you admirably crazy, but still, nah!

Why no music? Music please!

I love that yummy bit of Les Nubians's "J'veux d'la musique (Tout le temps…)" when it pauses, Hélène asks, speaking the only English words in the song "Why no music? Music please!"

D'la musique? Eh bien! I'll start with my own latest. Today is the official label release of the April Beat Garden Beat Tape. I have a couple of tracks in it: “Le Le Leaf” and “By the Scruff”. It's a cherry blossom theme, with varying levels of nod to the late, great (gone at too early a date) Japanese producer Nujabes.

I came across a cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up" that does what I'd have thought impossible—captures a wide slice of the original's sheer joy—Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, live on KEXP, in a session recorded in London. I hadn't heard of this group, but the chemistry and feel between them is glorious. You can hear it in the music & see it in their faces. The drummer looks like a supply history teacher, but LAWD is he living in the pocket! The Live on KEXP series has some of my favorite performances ever, including my favorite version of "Rise to the Sun" by Alabama Shakes.

My ears have been tickled lately with the unique Jazz/Soul style of Lonnie Liston Smith. The Jazz is Dead crew, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad recently re-upped their admirable series honoring Jazz, Funk and Soul masters with contemporary collaborations. JID017 starts with "Love Brings Happiness", a funkadelic soul jaunt on which Lonnie Liston Smith lets his voice soar, as it does. The album doesn't let up after that.

The next set after this, JID18, will feature none other than Tony Allen, rhythmic founder of Afrobeat (yeah, ya'll, not the Afropop that kids these days are confusingly calling "Afrobeats"). No better choice, then, for this post's African music recommendation than a remix of "Jakelewah": Doctor L's "3 Years In Heaven Remix". Here we have Tony Allen, who died in 2020, and the Igbo-UK rapper Ty (Benedict Okwuchukwu Godwin Chijioke), who tragically followed, just a month later, of COVID-19, at the too-young age of 47.

As a bonus, check out Ultralight, the new album by Suté Iwar, a Nigerian musician and producer featuring a variety of his friends and colleagues, who as I listen remind me a bit of my crew back in Nsukka and Port Harcourt.

On the Hip-Hop tip, how about some hardcore? Yes, yes, a new M.O.P. courtesy Bronx producer Amadeus 360 the Beat King, calling back to M.O.P.'s 2011 classic "World Famous".

Allergies were too much for me to come through with the full livestream for the last post, and it's been raining all day, so we'll see how this weekend goes. At least you have the short version linked at the top. Please do consider sharing this newsletter with others, and subscribing, if you haven't (button in the lower right). Ever new sounds for the listening, new plays on the field of words, fresh takes for tech's sake, with the side sauce of odd juxtapositions. Dá àlụ́-nu!

❧ Égwú 🪘 Ókwú ✍🏿 Ígwè 📡 Ńdụ̀ ❣️