Welcome to the latest episode of The Rebel Beat, a Firebrand Records podcast!
This is our year end episode, and it is a HUGE one. Every year, the Polaris Music Prize is awarded for the best album in Canada, as selected by a jury of music journalists. The winner of that award in 2017 was Lido Pimienta for her album “La Papessa”. Lido is a queer Indigenous afro-Colombian musician who lives in Toronto, she is rad as fuck, she is never shy to speak her mind, and she is our guest today on The Rebel Beat. Check out Lido’s music and buy her stuff here.
Want to see our round-up of best radical music in 2017? Check out our blog post here!
In our Turn It Up segment, we drop a brand new tune from the Palestinian band 47 Soul, and honor the hundreds of thousands of people who are taking to the streets around the world to say #HandsOffJerusalem!
The Rebel Beat is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. www.channelzeronetwork.com
The year is almost up, and we get ready to turn our calendars on a year that has been marked around the world by rising sea levels, rising far-right movements, and rising repression. Luckily, there will always be social movements out there to confront these injustices, just as there will always be artists and musicians ready to put a deadly beat behind a righteous message.
As we get ready for 2018, here are some highlights of radical music and podcasts that we have enjoyed at The Rebel Beat throughout 2017. If you dig these artists, and if you have some cash to spare, do consider buying their music, as this is really the only way to support independent music in our digital age.
Also, if you enjoy The Rebel Beat, please consider throwing $1 per month (or more!) our way! You can sign up easily on our Patreon page today.
Oh, and we’re about to release the next episode of our podcast, which will feature an interview with Lido Pimienta! So if you don’t wanna miss that, subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you like to get your podcasts.
Fiver – “Audible Songs From Rockwood”
Fiver (aka. Simone Schmidt from Toronto) is a phenomenal singer-songwritter who crafted this amazing album based on the archives of a women’s prison that locked people up in southern Ontario from the 1850s-1870s. It’s hard-hitting, insightful, and the wild thing is that pretty much all the issues that Fiver sings about on the album can still be seen in the prison industrial complex today.
Welcome to the latest episode of The Rebel Beat! Class war on the dancefloor, delivered to you once a month, in a podcast.
Our special guest on the show this month is Jord Samolesky, drummer and founding member of Propagandhi! We spoke with Jord while he was in Montreal touring the band’s new album “Victory Lap”. We spoke about the history of the band, the state of the world, and most importantly, hockey!
Finally, in our Turn it Up segment, we give another shout out to Lido Pimienta for carving out positive spaces for women of colour in the music scene. Read more about that here.
***Support The Rebel Beat!***
Sign up on our Patreon page for as little as $1/month, and get some great swag! www.patreon.com/rebelbeatradio
Playlist
Snotty Nose Rez Kids – KKKanada
Talib Kweli – All of us
Propagandhi – And we thought nation-states were a bad idea
Propagandhi – Fuck the border
Propagandhi – Victory Lap
Propagandhi – Dear Coach’s Corner
Propagandhi – Resist/comply
Ryan Harvey, Shireen Lillith, Kareem Samara – Omar
A Tribe Called Red w/ Lido Pimienta – For you (The Light pt. 2)
Check out the video for “Omar” by Ryan Harvey, Kareem, and Shireen!
Welcome back to another episode of The Rebel Beat, a Firebrand Records podcast! This is your monthly installment of class war on the dance floor.
We have a stacked show lined up for you, as usual. The name of the game this month is capitalism, gentrification, and its impacts on underground music scenes. We know already that gentrification fucks over poor communities, the homeless, and immigrant neighborhoods, but how much have we looked at how gentrification can actually hurt the music we love? From venues being shut down to make way for condos, to artists being priced out of their homes, that’s what we’re gonna explore on this episode of The Rebel Beat.
In our Turn It Up segment, we pay some respect to Princess Nokia, the hero who threw hot soup on a racist on the NYC subway. Read more about that here.
Lee Reed was one of the first guests we ever had on The Rebel Beat! Check out our older interview with him here.
The Rebel Beat is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. Check them out here: www.channelzeronetwork.com
**Playlist**
Playlist
The Slackers – Eviction
The Evaporators – Gassy Jack
The Weakerthans – My favourite chords
Lee Reed – Members of the board
YG feat. Nipsey Hussle – Fuck Donald Trump
Lee Reed – No Kanada
Lee Reed – Bad Gas
Immortal Technique – Harlem streets
Lee Reed – The new steal
Princess Nokia – Tomboy
Welcome to the Rebel Beat, a Firebrand Records podcast! This is your monthly dose of Class War on the Dance floor, hosted by Aaron Maiden.
It’s September, class is back in session, and to help us fuse the old school with the new school, educate, agitate, and organize, we’re gonna be introducing you to a Rap Battle like you’ve never heard of before – the Rap Battles for Social Justice based outta Montreal. Our special guest on the show is one of their coordinators, Nazim. Nazim is also an amazing MC in his own right. Check out his stuff here.
***If you like The Rebel Beat, support us!
Donate for as little as $1/month, and get some awesome swag in return: www.patreon.com/rebelbeatradio
In our Turn It Up segment, we honor Lido Pimienta an Indigenous Colombian artist based in Toronto, who just won the Polaris Music prize for Best Canadian Album of 2017! Check out “La Papessa” by Pimienta here.
**Playlist**
Billy Bragg and Wilco – all you fascists
Downtown Boys – A wall
Propagandhi – Victory lap
Lycka Till – Gaza
Nazim – Ta3ban
Nazim – Back to Egypt
Nazim – Diaspora blues
Rap Battle for Eco-Justice track
Lido Pimienta – Agua
Welcome back to another edition of The Rebel Beat, a Firebrand Records podcast!
Our special guest on the program this month is a Jamaican dub poet who is considered by some to be the god-mother of rap, hip-hop, and spoken word. She is a writer, educator, and grassroots activist, and we’ll meet her in just a little bit – Lillian Allen.
On our Turn It Up segment, we give a shout out to a dope trans hip-hop artist and Black Lives Matter organizer in Montreal, Lucas Charlie Rose.
**If you dig our podcast and want to support us, tell a friend about The Rebel Beat, make sure you subscribe on any of your fave podcast platforms, and leave us a rating!
Also, donations are always appreciated. You send us Paypal donations at rebel@ckut.ca, or sign up on our Patreon page to get some nifty swag: www.patreon.com/rebelbeatradio
* Playlist *
Morgan Heritage – Politician
D’bi Young w/ Assata Shakur – R/evolution
Linton Kwesi Johnson – Di great insohreckshan
Mutabaruka – Dis poem
Lillian Allen – Riddim an’ hardtimes
Lillian Allen – Fight back
Lillian Allen – Black voice
Lillian Allen – The subversives
Lucas Charlie Rose – This is what trans looks like
We had a chance to present on a panel at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit earlier this summer with two of the hosts of Suena, Paola Quiros and Krusheska Quiros. This is a little interview we did with them on the grass outside the conference, just before a big rain storm!
If you’ve never heard of Suena A Revolucion, it’s an amazing Spanish-language podcast that profiles revolutionary, and especially feminist music from across Latin America. Even if you don’t understand Spanish, you’ll love the music, so check it out!
What’s up Rebel Beat massive! Hope you all have been having a great summer so far. Inspired partly by our homies at SubMedia who have made some amazing music playlists this summer, and partly inspired by our need and desire to keep sharing and amplifying the rhythms and rhymes of resistance, we’ve put together a special Rebel Beat playlist for you all to rock out to this summer. There’s a bit of everything here – some punk, some folk, some hip-hop, and some new tunes from Firebrand Records. Enjoy!
Welcome to the latest episode of The Rebel Beat podcast! Our special guest on the show this month is the veteran Minneapolis underground rapper Brother Ali! Brother Ali is a mainstay of the venerated RhymeSayers label, and a true legend in the game. His music encapsulates so many parts of his identity: activist, father, lover, Muslim, body-positive albino, deep thinker. He has a brand new album out called “All the beauty in this whole life”, and we caught up with him while he was touring his album through Montreal last month. What follows is a conversation on the new album, racism in America, how to lead a virtuous life, and why he can’t watch horror movies.
**3 easy ways to support The Rebel Beat podcast**
-Tell a friend about the show, or share it on social media!
Our special co-host on the show this month is Jesse Freeston. Jesse is a documentary filmmaker, and his most recent work, Resistencia, is an inspiring story about the battle of peasants in the Aguan Valley of Honduras. Check it!
Channel Zero Network
Yup! We’re proud to say that we’re officially part of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. The network website will be launching any minute now. Stay up to date on their Facebook or Twitter pages.
We gave a quick shout-out to those organizing the legal defense for the J20 defendants. Click this link to find out more, or make a donation!
Turn It Up segment
We honour the Black Lives Matter chapters of Toronto and Montreal, who briefly shut down the Montreal Jazz Festival during a demonstration for justice for Pierre Coriolan, murdered by Montreal police on June 27th. Here’s a report for more info.
On this latest edition of The Rebel Beat for June, 2017, we meet Kiwi Illafonte. Kiwi is a California-born, Montreal-based radical Filipino hip-hop MC, graphic designer, and community organizer. He’s a former member of the seminal Bay-area Filipino-American groups Native Guns and Mass Bass. Our conversation touches on hip-hop as a powerful vehicle for self-expression, and anti-imperialist struggles world-wide. Check out Kiwi’s stuff here: kiwizzo.wordpress.com/
**If you enjoy The Rebel Beat, please support us! Click here to sign up on our Patreon support page: www.patreon.com/rebelbeatradio
We’re extending a special offer until June 30th – for everyone who signs up at only $2/month, you’ll get a custom-made Rebel Beat enamel pin sent to you in the mail!
For our Turn it Up segment, we look at the beautiful compilation “Hugs for Chelsea” to support Chelsea Manning, put together by Evan Greer. You can check that out here: hugsforchelsea.bandcamp.com/
And, as an added bonus, we also have a “Turn it Down” segment, where we talk about Radiohead, and their stubborn insistence to entertain apartheid in Israel. More info on that here:www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/uk-…03101841006.html
Enjoy!
Playlist
KRS-One – Same shit
Brother Ali – Dear Black son
Meryem Saci (feat. Tali Taliwah) – This too shall pass
Kiwi Illafonte – Free
Native Guns – Hammer
Mass Bass – Ooh mama
Kiwi Illafonte – Seeds
Kiwi Illafonte – Highway robbery
Ike Reilly – Bolt cutter
Rebel Beat Radio 