The weird thing is that on the way to the cinema, and then back home, I listened to a tape I bought in Morocco in June by the psychedelic moroccan band Lemchaheb… I unexpectedly felt reverberations between Lemchaheb’s music and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s images. It’s all about imaginaries, look at the cover… Aliens and ghosts populate the film.
Tutuola is all over the place, the catfish scene is emblematic in this sense. I cannot escape afrofuturism signals, fire clothes, alien abductions and displaced memories.
Of course, a subjective trip, but what an explosion!
Follows the whole tape to download.
Some info on Lemchaheb taken from a wikipedia page on ‘Sha’abi’, a “style of living, a style of dance, and a style of music. The word is Egyptian Arabic شعبي and refers to the poorer, commoner sections of the city. An English equivalent might be “ghetto.”:
“The five-piece Lem Chaheb, has ventured furthest into western idioms, pushing the boundaries of a music scene wary of foreign influences. Guitar and bouzouki ace Lamrani Moulay Cherif, the group’s star attraction, plays over traditional percussion, electric bass, horns, voices, and now, inevitably, drum machines.”
Here some stills from Phantoms of Nabua (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2009), which is streamable here.
And here some others from A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2009), streamable here.
And here a drawing from Cujo Primitive, published by Edizioni Zero, Milan, downloadable here.
