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.
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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/
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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
Welcome back to the latest edition of The Rebel Beat!
Our special guest this month is Alas. Alas is an MC who is consistently spitting out pure revolutionary fire, and when she’s not on the mic, you can probably find her on the front lines of the struggle to decolonize Turtle Island. You might already be familiar with her work with Savage Fam, who we’ve also interviewed on this show, and we had a chance to talk to her about the time she spent at Standing Rock in so-called North Dakota last winter. Check out her Bandcamp page!
Also, if you like this show, please support it! The podcast is free, it always will be, but if you wanna support revolutionary music being pumped into your ears and podcast apps every month, please consider throwing us a 1 or 2 bucks per episode. You can support us on our Patreon page: www.patreon.com/rebelbeatradio
Or if you want to make a one-time donation, we’ve got a big Paypal button at the top of our website, which you can find at rebelbeatradio.com.
For our Turn It Up segment, we look at 2 very different but very important struggles:
-The battle to save Radio Centre-Ville, a long-running multi-lingual community radio station in Montreal. To find out more, visit: www.facebook.com/frauderadiocentreville/
-The “Battle of Berkley” on April 15, when anti-fascists confronted neo-nazis, fascists, and other Trump supporters in the Bay area. For more info and reporting, visit: itsgoingdown.org/igd-black-bloc-d…ve-nazi-salutes/
Enjoy the show!
** Playlist **
Snoop Dogg w/ BadBadNotGood – Lavender (Nightfall remix)
Sa Roc – I am her
Mob Bounce w/ Boogey the Beat – Vision quest
Alas – Outlaw
Alas – A game (the poor can’t afford to play)
Alas – Tourist
Savage Fam w/ Alas – Walking with the Dead
Alas w/ Savage Fam – Go away
Dio Ganhdih feat. Chhoti Maa – Indigenoust lyricist
Moscow Death Brigade – Papers please
One downside of only publishing the Rebel Beat podcast once per month is that I feel there is just TOO MUCH GOOD RADICAL MUSIC OUT THERE to fit onto a monthly show! So this is a bit of an attempt to bring together some things I’ve been listening to lately – all artists that I hope we’ll feature as guests on the podcasts some day, and albums you should check out. So hope you enjoy this video mixtape!
Fiver is the solo project moniker of Simone Schmidt, a gifted songwriter, ex lead singer of One Hundred Dollars, and also a dear friend of mine. For her upcoming album, due out in April, Simone spent years doing research in the Ontario archives about women who were locked up in the Rockwood asylum in the 1800s. The result is a beautiful collection of songs based on some of the real stories of women who were incarcerated there. If you want to hear a great interview with Simone, as well as teasers for some of the songs, check out this recent episode of The Imposter podcast. And here’s a great little mini-doc about the album!
To me, Montreal’s very own Narcy can do no wrong. In a climate of heightened xenophobia and racism against refugees, this video couldn’t have come any sooner.
On this edition of The Rebel Beat, we bring you to the streets of The Bronx. We met up with RodStarz, one half of the prolific revolutionary hip-hop duo Rebel Diaz, at the Madres en Movimiento community space that they help to run. Surrounded by radical books, recording equipment, and movement murals, we talked about the history of hip-hop in the Bronx, community spaces (such as the Rebel Diaz Arts Collective), gentrification, and much more. Continue reading →
Welcome back to the latest episode of The Rebel Beat, a Firebrand Records podcast!
Our special guest on the show this week is Giordano Nani of The Juice Media. The Juice Media are an Australian collective of radical video ninjas who famously produced The Juice Rap news for over 5 years, garnering millions of views and faithful fans around the world. Their poignant, satirical rap videos touch on issues of colonialism and Indigenous resistance, security culture in the face of state surveillance, and the war against migrants. Be sure to check them out! www.thejuicemedia.com
We also gave shout outs to the Standing Rock resistance against the Dakota Access pipeline, and the #BlackLivesMatter movement for supporting the Palestinian #BDS call.
And finally, we end with our Turn it Up segment, this time for Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip.
Enjoy!
Tracklist
Zach de la Rocha & El P – Digging for windows
A Tribed Called Red feat. Yasiin Bey & Narcy – R.E.D.
Son of Nun – Free Palestine
Beatnick, K-Salaam, Talib Kweli, M-1 – Checkpoints: Ghetto to Gaza
Sandhill – Kubrick
Provocalz & co. – Stand Proud
The Tragically Hip – Goodnight Attawapiskat
Welcome to our second edition of The Rebel Beat podcast with Firebrand Records!
We start the show by recognizing Prisoner Justice Day (August 10), and playing some of our favourite anti-prison tunes from Bob Dylan and The Man in Black. For an extensive history of Prisoner Justice Day (within the Canadian context), check this out.
Then we bring you some news from the Firebrand Records family, including the new single from Chilean artist Ana Tijoux, and the Rock Against the TPP tour!
Our feature interview is with Montreal hip-hop legends Nomadic Massive. Their name just about says it all. With over 10 full-time members of the band dropping verses in English, French, Arabic, Spanish, and Creole, this politically-conscious band have been supplying us with treats for our ears and minds for over a decade. They just launched their latest album “Big Band Theory” in June, and it’s on fire! Continue reading →
Hi! We’re back with a quick update to say we haven’t gone anywhere! We’re taking a bit of time off before re-launching as an official Firebrand Records podcast in July. In the meantime, we’re planning some amazing interviews, including one we just did with the Montreal hip-hop supergroup Nomadic Massive (and we’ve got a little teaser of that interview here).
Soon, you’ll be able to subscribe to the Rebel Beat podcast via the TuneIn app, and of course you can still find us on Stitcher and iTunes.
And most importantly, we want to hear from YOU! Got some music suggestions or requests for us? Any artists out there we should interview? Hit us up on Twitter @rebelbeatradio, on Facebook, or email us at rebel@ckut.ca.
Summer’s here, so turn up the heat! Smash the state! See you on the streets, and on the dance floors.
Boom! Welcome back with another edition of The Rebel Beat podcast, and this one is a HUGE one for us. Sadly, this episode marks the end of The Rebel Beat as a weekly show at the mighty CKUT radio in Montreal. It’s been a beautiful 10-year run for me doing live radio on Wednesday nights at CKUT, and I’ve finally decided to give it up so that I can make time for other things in life.
BUT FEAR NOT! This is far from being the end for The Rebel Beat! As you’ll hear in this podcast, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re teaming up with Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Ryan Harvey, and the whole family at Firebrand Records to keep The Rebel Beat going as a monthly Firebrand podcast!
So even though the show will only be coming out once per month, and might be a bit shorter than 2 hours, we’ll still be bringing you all the amazing interviews and music from revolutionary musicians that you’ve come to expect.
So, be sure to subscribe now in iTunes, Stitcher, or anywhere else you get podcasts! We’re gonna take a bit of a break, and then come back to re-launch the show with Firebrand in July. Continue reading →
