Word: beachings
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...early 21st century folk singer Jack Johnson. The contemporary Johnson, 26, spends his days shuffling between rooms of a shabby-chic Santa Barbara bungalow, editing surf films and strumming out tunes on an acoustic guitar. When life gets too tough, he takes a five-minute stroll to the the beach. "I try to surf everyday," he says quietly. "If there's no waves, I'll go swimming, or we'll just set up camp with a cooler and a guitar and play some music...
...Fairytales, is doing a slow but steady sales burn in Southern California, Hawaii and other places where sand abounds. With a supersoft vocal style and influences ranging from Jimmy Buffett and Cat Stevens to Ben Harper and De La Soul, Johnson has perfected the admittedly picayune art of contemporary beach music. If the rest of the country hasn't yet heard of him, it is likely because he could barely muster the ambition to get a recording contract in the first place...
...sell a few copies of Brushfire Fairytales in surf shops and boutique record stores. The 50,000 albums sold on a production and promotion outlay equal to your average Iranian art film made for a tidy profit. Johnson has also managed to tear himself away from the beach long enough to do some sporadic touring with Ben Harper, though he hopes not to make a habit of it. Nor is he sure there will be another Jack Johnson record. "There's no ambitions musically. I like to just sort of let whatever happens naturally, go with it. So who knows...
...Janeiro is the city in Brazil that people all over the world know. They know the cathedrals and the samba clubs, the curved white strip of Copacabana beach, the spread-armed statue of Cristo Redentor on the peak of Corcovado mountain. Sao Paulo, on the other hand, is the city that foreigners don't know. They don't know that it is in many ways Brazil's musical center, accounting for 57% of record sales in the country, vs. 13% for Rio. They don't know that, with a population of 17 million, it is not only far larger than...
...audience who really have something to bitch about. Protest music in other parts of the world is complicated by a dynamic unfamiliar to Western listeners. American political music is traditionally an individual's complaint about the surrounding society. Standing on a street in Lagos or on a beach in Brazil, or staring down an invading army of Pokemon and Britneys, however, it can be equally as radical to speak out for your society. To a protest singer in Mali or Haiti, is the target a government that stifles personal freedoms or a global juggernaut that threatens local traditions and economic...