"Granada Doaba explores the broad roots and divergent branches of flamenco hip-hop. Inspired by the religious convivencia of Al-Andalus, the album features 16 musicians from around the world who all currently live in Granada, Spain.
Spain’s history of multicultural confluence dates back to the early morning of mankind. Andalusia, the birthplace of flamenco and southernmost region of Spain, sits at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and the New World. Until the Christian reconquista of Granada in 1492, southern Spain was known as Al-Andalus, a Muslim Empire that controlled Andalusia for 800 years.
Flamenco is Andalusian Gypsy music and dance with a diverse history of Arab, Jewish, Indian and Afro-Latin influences. As a result of convergent paths of immigration, rhythms from around the world have come together in Andalusia, where they evolved into an indigenous musical culture: flamenco."
"Hello! My name is Canyon Cody. In 2008, I was awarded a Fulbright Scholar research grant to study multicultural fusion and collaboration in Andalusian music. In concert with the Fulbright program’s mission statement, my project engaged the local Granada community by organizing a series of collaborative recording sessions in our home studio.
Gnotes is my partner in grime. He’s a multi-instrumentalist rapper who produced the 14 songs on Granada Doaba, which correspond with the 14 chapters of my accompanying academic text about the global roots of local music. Though the historical theory of convivencia initially motivated the recordings, the resulting songs eventually took up a life their own, which forced me to re-orient my thesis. In the end, we made an album in the dark and then I studied the result in order to shine some light on the process.
This a work in progress, both the music and my writing. Please send us a postcard with any criticism, questions or suggestions. Thank you for listening."
Contact Canyon Cody, he is responsive! - info@gnawledge.com
Granada Doaba took 4 years to produce, 4!!!! Take that all of you seeking instant gratification. Reading his blog about the experience is really cool and introspective; it presents the personal journey of someone that is so dedicated to a daunting task but doesn't want it any other way. I really admire this stranger because he is living exactly like I decided to starting with this year and will be ending...never!
Read the blog if you like details and want to learn how songs are built and mixed. There is also a really interesting theory on plagiarism, copying, biting, etc. and how it affects music vs. academia.
My point overall: Download the album and pass it around. Support this project because music is academic, it transcends history and borders, your music collection should be as diverse and dynamic as possible and because this is fucking good music.
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