More Pics From MyMic

Here are a few more pics from MyMic Khachmaz.  These pictures were taken by Glendene Wolf, who is also doing an interesting photo a day project documenting her life here in the 'baijan.  Check it out HERE

This guy's band, New Skin, won Baku's Battle of the Bands last year

Enemy, of Enemy & Black, from Baku

These two girl hip-hop dancers brought the house down.

Dustin, the Ganja PCV who started it all, reading some poetry.

Hip-Hop From The Land Of Fire: Enemy & Black - 23:44

This past Saturday at MyMic Khachmaz was good for Hip-Hop From The Land Of Fire.  I was able to hook up with 2 new rappers and get some contact info and material.  Both were really solid and I'm looking forward to some of the posts I have lined up.

This week's track comes from Enemy of Baku duo Enemy & Black, who came up for some stage time this past week.  I dig the barren aesthetic of this track, vocals and a slight supporting backing track.  No techno effects, no massive drums, just a man stressing over late night insecurities.

Also, Hip-Hop From The Land Of Fire has started a radio show on GrupFM.com.  It comes on Wednesday at 9pm(ish) Baku time, which is Wednesday at 12pm EST.  This week will be week 4 and I'm fairly confident at this point that it actually will come on.

Enemy (of Enemy & Black) - 23:44



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Khachmaz Has Got Talent!

MyMic'rs from Ganja warming up before the show.  Note the most Azeri backdrop ever.

Ali, the 2.5 foot Lesginka dancer.

I really like Khachmaz.  The people here are nice, its a place that's seen Americans before, and we've got beautiful (relatively speaking) shoreline only a few kilometers away.  Heck, we even have a pretty supportive relationship with our local government, which is to say, they are not explicilty unsupportive.  Yeah, Khachmaz has a lot of good things going for it.

But what I like most about my site are my incredibly sitemates, who continue to do things that amaze and impress me.

Previous causes of pride have resulted from activities such as what Glendene is doing.  She's teaching yoga twice weekly to a growing group of women.  In a country where so many aspects of the female body are shamed and objectified, Glendene is helping some of these women rediscover their own body for the first time since leaving school (and sports) over 20 years ago.

Or Lannea who, with her counterpart has opened a sustainable women's computer center, which not only provides computer lessons and internet capability to girls in a culturally safe environment, but also is creating leadership and employment opportunities for graduated students in teaching new girls.

These are pretty awesome things.  And on Saturday, another awesome thing happened; Khachmaz hosted its first MyMic.

MyMic is a program that was started in Ganja by a Peace Corps Volunteer, and its basically a monthly open mic night.  I attended one this winter and it was great-people sang and played piano.  There were bands and rappers, dancing and poetry reading.  It was an awesome way for kids and adults to showoff their talent and an enjoyable way for the audience to discover what Ganja has to offer.

Recently, Dustin applied for a grant to initatiate MyMic in two new regions and Lannea and Kelsey applied to bring it to Khachmaz.  We were selected and this past saturday 7 talented youth from Ganja came with Dustin to help launch Khachmaz's first MyMic and it was possibly the most enjoyable experience of my service.

The first act set the tone; two kids around 10 blew the crowd away with some great breakdancing.  A girl sang Adele's rolling in the deep.  Two guys from Ganja performed Led Zeppelin's 'Black Dog' and afterward one of them performed an absolutely insane 3-minute guitar solo.  A trio of 6 year olds, clad in Minnie Mouse dresses, did a choreographed dance to 'Barbie Girl'.  The house nearly lost it when two girls from Ganja did their hip-hop dance routine, only to further be blown away by the next act-the smallest, and most adorable, 5 year old, performing Lesginka in traditional garb.  People rapped, read poetry, and sang mugam.  It was awesome.

I'm super excited for this monthly event.  After the show, people were rushing up to find out how they could perform next time.  We already had a crowd of about 100 people in the region's (beautiful) Culture House, I can't wait to see who shows up next time.

Like It Or Not Josh, You've Got Some Friends

Earlier, in winter, I was struggling with the idea of friendship in Azerbaijan.  I had definitely made some great friends amongst the Americans here but felt as if there was this invisible wall between me and Azeris.  These friendships always seemed a little distant, there was always this feeling that whenever I was socializing with Azeri friends there was a little bit of Peace Corps work going on.

And then, after feeling frustrated that I hadn't yet made any true friends amongst Azeris, I suddenly came to an 'Aha' moment; this wall was entirely of my own creation.  I remember laughingly telling myself that, like it or not, so and so people are my friends.  Real friends, not some sort of half way there, cross-cultural image of a friend.  I just needed to deal with the fact that I actually have some friends in Azerbaijan.

It was a weird thing to realize, it should be so easy to recognize the people you consider friends.  But in Peace Corps, so much of my everyday speaking, working, and living is tinged with an element of work, even if just providing a worthwhile representation of America.  By constantly looking at people as employees, colleagues, or students, even if only slightly, I was unfairly preventing them from just being a person wanted to be around.

This was a bit ethnocentric, a bit too much of a 'what I can benevolently grant to this unfortunate culture' storyline going on here, and I'm glad I came to this sudden, if obvious, insight.  There is a really good lesson for me here: to determine a friendship based on the person to person interaction rather than whether the context of the friendship is familiar to me.  Yeah,  maybe we don't go out to concerts and drink beer together, but that doesn't mean the friendship is any less real, its just simply in different locations with different activities.

Hip-Hop From The Land Of Fire: Burito - Na Vostochnom

I like how this song throws you a curve within the first two seconds of opening.  Expecting a quick beat, it immediately drops out to half-time.  But when Burito comes in, he's rapping as if it the beat stayed sped.  The production is simple, it sounds like it was created in GarageBand, but its well crafted.  It will be interesting to see what else Burito has in store for us this year.

Props to AzRap.Az for the exclusive

Burito - Na Vostochnom (which I believe translates to 'The Eastside', I'm not sure because it is using an Azeri alphabet to spell a Russia title)




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