Joshua Pablo Rosenstock » funk

Shrine to the Funky Drummer

Josh — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:55:41 +0000

This project was initially developed during my residency as Artist In Research at the Berwick Research Institute.

It is being published by ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art in Volume 16: Low-Tech.

Audio commentary by Wayne Marshall of wayneandwax.com and presently Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT.

Spotlight On the Candidates

Josh — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:49:07 +0000

Band temporarily recast as The Hanging Chads. We’re backing up Mayor Menino and other aspiring political wannabees.

Traffic Jam ‘09

Josh — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:40:56 +0000

The funky 11-piece juggernaut is back this summer!

Berwick Artist In Research

Josh — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:40:23 +0000

I’ve been chosen as an Artist In Research at the Berwick Research Institute for this spring.

Here’s what the press release says:

Joshua Pablo Rosenstock is a multimedia artist, musician, and educator based in Boston. His work explores the process of remixing via the creation of new instruments, interactive interfaces, and multimedia installations. With the Berwick, Rosenstock will be working on ‘Shrine to the Funky Drummer’, a multimedia installation that will seek to portray a specific instance of media sampling as an archetypal cultural moment and a lens through which to examine a multifaceted story of creative appropriation. The ‘Funky Drummer’ is a five-second excerpt from a James Brown song that has been used as the foundation of hundreds of other musical compositions and is one of popular music’s most famous samples.

During his project, he’ll be gathering, creating, and presenting artifacts and ‘holy relics’ that explore the early history of Hip Hop and the creative acts of sampling and remixing. Rosenstock will be investigating debates about copyright and fair use in relation to Afro-Diasporic musical notions of ‘versioning,’ the fetishistic culture of record-digging, and postmodern theoretical questions about authorship in the age of digital (re)production.

Update: My Berwick project blog can be found here if you’d like to follow along.

Traffic Jam

Josh — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:56:30 +0000

This summer I helped organize a new afrobeat/funk/world band for a series of outdoor performances out on the street in a busy intersection in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston. It’s been great fun seeing the diverse audience that shows up or discovers us playing – from little kids who dance around wildly, to teenagers who start out skeptical but end up getting into us, to the Nigerian guy who got unbelievably excited to hear us play a Fela tune, to the drunken Caribbean guy who shouted along happily when we struck up a reggae tune but loudly showed his disapproval whenever we played something in any other style!

It’s been wonderful to be in a funky band again and get the people up and dancing. Everyone in the group is having lots of fun so we’ll be continuing with the project in the fall.

32 Miniature Themes

Josh — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:21:47 +0000

A collection of musical compositions created over the last year or so under my solo moniker Avocado Kid.

Each song can be thought of as a soundtrack to a distinct imaginary world. As most of them are quite brief, I conceive of them as miniature themes, conjuring the essential impression of a scene and story.

The instruments I play on these tracks include electric and upright bass, drum kit, guitars, electric piano and organ, violin, bamboo saxophone, trombone, synthesizers, drum machines, african and latin percussion, melodica, voice.

south san juan swagger

tiptoeing into the sunset

Funk Improvisation For One Performer and Archival Dancers

Josh — Thu, 17 Oct 2002 07:07:04 +0000

My first piece that linked musical gesture to video processing.
Programmed in Max/MSP/Jitter, this piece is conceived as a dialogue between myself as musical performer and the dancing figures contained in the video material. The visual qualities of the video playback are controlled by the sounds generated by my bass, and my playing is in turn influenced by the randomly-generated combinations of video clips, video filters, and audio loops.

Excerpt of performance video

Groovement

Josh — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 11:28:40 +0000

Dedicated to the funky sounds of the late 60s and early 70s, Groovement gets your booty shakin’! Steeped in East Bay funk history, Groovement’s members are vinyl junkies, breakbeat scholars, vintage tone freaks, and rhythm connoisseurs.

Shane Baird/Will Dowling – saxophones
John Foord – drums
Aaron Julin – rhodes, organ, clavinet, moog
Chris Howard – percussion
Kevin O’Dea – guitar, talkbox
Josh Rosenstock – fender bass

1. Brick Shithouse
2. ‘Lectric Pants
3. In 3s
4. Pungee
5. Knucklehead
6. Superstrut
7. JB Medley
8. High Heeled Sneakers
9. Flood In Franklin Park

10. Sanford & Son
11. Mr. Magic
12. Sack O’ Woe
13. Windjammer
14. Soul Power
15. Sanford & Son
16. Kool Is Back
17. Ain’t It Funky Now