I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: KOFFEE-Tiny Desk Concert #938 (January 27, 2020).

I can honestly say I didn’t know that there were musicians making new reggae music.  I mean, obviously there are–it’s not like the genre just stopped or anything–but I never hear about them.

So I was pretty surprised to play this Tiny Desk Concert and hear a reggae song start up.

Koffee is a 19 year-old Jamaican reggae star.  She just won a Grammy for best Reggae album (for an EP).  She is the first woman and the youngest artist to win the category.

She sings four songs.

“Raggamuffin” opens with her shouting out NPR quite a lot (is that all improvised or is she modifying existing lyrics?).  While the music has the typical reggae rhythm (although faster than old school reggae to be sure), her delivery is really amazing.  She sing (raps?) so fast during the verses.  It’s really an impressive display even if I can’t understand a word she says.

Her band is from different places around the world

“Rapture” has her singing along with her backing singers, Zhayna France and Shanice Drysdale (both from Jamaica) who really flesh out her voice.  There’s some cool moments where the lyrics pause to allow her to say a pointed word.  This song has a guitar solo from Thomas Broussard (from Paris).  It’s also really fun watching drummer Stephen Asamoah-Duah (London) and percussionist Stephen Forbes (Jamaica) communicating with each other and high-fiving at the end of the song.

Koffee centers her music around faith, resilience and gratitude. She has a new perspective to add to the pantheon of mostly male reggae greats and it’s resonating with a new generation that’s just getting hip to the iconic sounds. As her Tiny Desk performance shows, Koffee makes the best of her surroundings, channeling the day’s buzzy energy into a balancing act of youthful heart and old-pro precision, proving why she has become one of the most invigorating voices in reggae.

“I want to thank everybody who’s been involved,” Koffee told the crowd halfway through her show. “You have now become a part of my journey.”

The final song “W” is her latest single.  It’s a slower ballad.  I realize that she has a pretty heavy Jamaican accent but I really can’t tell how many times she says the letter W in the song.  It sounds lie a lot, but perhaps she’s rhyming it with something ele.

[READ: February 1, 2020] Rust Volume 0

Royden Lepp was born in the Canadian prairies which I’m sure had some impact on the design of this book–set in fields and farms and colored with sepia tone.

I saw this book series at the library and thought it looked really interesting.  Royden Lepp’s artistic style (and color palette) are really cool and the premise of a military weapon that looks like a little boy is pretty fascinating.

The book starts 48 years ago in the middle of a war.  Amid the human carnage there is a boy with goggles on.  He has on a jetpack and appears to be flying around saving people.  He saves them from a large robotic monster/creature which someone calls a kamikaze drone.

The first forty or so pages are almost wordless–its’ all battle sequences.  It is quite exciting, but it is also without question, a little confusing,   Especially since this a world that is not quite like ours. 

In the end there is a giant explosion and many humans are killed.  But this boy, who we soon learn is an experimental machines, survives.

This machine is named Jet, a machine that looks like a boy but which was made for battle.  His creator says that he was the cause of the explosion and Jet is devastated that he hurt so many people.  His creator explains that he was built to have freedom of choice–to learn and emote.

Jet wants to know why he wasn’t made for duty–isn’t doing the right thing better than having to decide what the right thing is?

The doctor says that the machines that are terrorizing everyone (the Model-C) were built with duty in mind.  But you cannot code your own victory.  The great power needed to be carried by an intelligent being.

Jet is furious and he flees the scene chased by the army.

The end pages flash to the present day on the Taylor farm.

The teenager(ish?) head of the farm, Roman Taylor, is writing  a note to his (dead?) father.  He tells his dad about Jet Jones, the boy who crashed into their farm a week ago,  He has been fixing the tractor because he feels responsible for the damage.

We see Roman trying to repair a Model-C–he hopes to re-code it to work on his farm–a farm that is struggling.

It’s 140 pages of intense action–some of it a little unclear–but the general sense of the story comes across well.

I really didn’t know what to expect from this series and I’m looking forward to seeing where this story goes.