Since 1968, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CMTD) has been fighting a good fight with more than a little success. Seen by few and recognized by even fewer, the CMTD fights for immigrating artists who, like other talented and professional folks who change countries, often find not only that their credentials are belittled but that immigration sunders the connections that would enable them to continue living as culture-makers.

But the work of the CMTD is not just about the first generation; it’s about the next and the one after that. In their decades of operation, their courses and touring artists have sparked the American-born to remember additional roots — other ways to voice themselves and move through space.

Celebrating 40 years of reconnecting artists — and artists-to-be — living in diaspora in New York, the CMTD will host a benefit-cum-dance party next Thursday, June 5th at the Hiro Ballroom.

Performing are David Oquendo, whose Afro-Cuban, rock-inflected jams earned him a Grammy; Merita Halili and the Raif Hyseni Orchestra’s soprano Albanian folk tunes; the all-women Cherish The Ladies traditional Irish music troupe whom BBC named the Best Musical Group of the Year (during the benefit dinner); and Banghra’s sonic steel sweetheart, DJ Rekha.

Directions here and more information on the CMTD’s work here.

The CMTD Benefit and Dance Party
Thursday, June 5th
9 : 00 pm — 11 : 30 pm
The Hiro Ballroom
16th Street and 9th Avenue, NYC

Williamsburg, NYC wishes it was cool enough to host events like THiRSTNY multimedia extravaganza on the regular. With a deep commitment to transculturals, THiRSTNY pulls artists — installation, performance and visual — dancers, musicians, designers and writers together to find a common aesthetic in their mutual thirst to create.

Watch these media, missions and artistic and cultural backgrounds fuse together through live art and performances this Thursday in Williamsburg as the hipster set who inhabit the cool-glut neighborhood thirst on, wishing THiRSTNY came to call more often.

Drink up here and get directions here.

THiRSTNY
Galapagos Art Space
Thursday, May 29th
9 : 00 pm — ???
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Kicked off with a Truth and Soul remix of Dinah Washington’s “Cry Me A River” that echoes like liquid smoke in a hot lounge, the latest Verve Remixed compilation doesn’t mess around.

Like the three volumes before it — all crammed with delicious remixes of sweet, sweet old soul, funk and motown loves — Verve Remixed 4 puts living legends like Antibalas, 9th Wonder, Cinematic Orchestra and Diplo into the studio with larger-than-life legends like Anita O’Day, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown and — because no Verve would be complete without it — the High Priestess of Soul herself, Nina Simone.

The series as a whole, re-released as a four volume box set also this week, is one of my favorite examples of remix magic. In these tracks, remix is not the shoddy production trick it’s become, but finds again it’s power to transcend; the voices that cooed and screamed sonic life into this American century’s social movements go hoarse again, brought to bear through remix on the ills we still live with and the fights that don’t stop.

As the Priestess sings, “I can’t stand it no more, so why don’t you give me some”; check out Dinah’s Truth and Soul here.

With an impressive list of production credentials accrued since his debut release — Estelle, Missy, John Legend and Alicia Keys among them — Jack Splash’s sophomore album has been building buzz much like his first: quietly and powerfully.

Riding the future soul movement with his Plantlife group, Splash’s Time Traveller record, which dropped last week, picks tricks up from just about every genre-creating artist out there: there are healthy helpings of jazz, funk and soul; a twinkle of that cooler-than-thou Justice noise; Prince’s sex drip minimalism; Marvin Gaye’s lush love smile; and a dash of ’80s hair rock.

There are even a couple of tracks in here with slick, bumping beats and attitude that could have come seamlessly from Michael Jackson in his prime.

Listen a little harder than usual here — you’ll probably hear a lot more than usual, too, if you do.

Punk has been through some rough times. It’s been loved, feared, reviled, killed, rekindled, academicized, imported, mutated and borrowed from since Johnny Rotten first learned to scream and working white boys in Londontown first fell in love with dub system’s DIY culture.

Following in the curatorial footsteps of the Summer of Love exhibit, which also made a splash in New York this summer, Vienna’s Kunsthalle opened Punk. No One Is Innocent last week.

Like Summer of Love, Punk. No One Is Innocent tries to capture the signification-destroying spirit of the movement through its relics, art and artifacts — creating a fascinating and eclectic scrapbook experience.

But, also like Summer of Love, the best thing is that these art and ephemera are grouped by birth location — New York, London and Berlin — highlighting punk’s global appeal as a youth power/art movement and the movements’ local productions.

Bond a little here.

In one of those incredible, posthumus collaborations that not only transcends life, but geographies, generations and artistic geniuses, DJ Spooky will be performing an original score alongside Senegalese director and inspiration Ousmane Sembène’s film Borom Sarret next Tuesday, May 27th at the French Institute Alliance Française in New York.

Hosted by Sembène’s close friend, Dr. Mamadou Diouf — director of Columbia University’s Institute for African Studies — this intimate evening of homage and celebration is the perfect close to the French Institute Alliance Française’s revolutionary month devoted to World Nomads, which included an impromptu dance party with Nigerian-German-Roma-French soul queen Ayo; dance by Reggie Wilson and Andréya Ouamba; a tour of contemporary African cinema influenced by Sembène’s groundbreaking films; and a lively discussion of Transculuralism with TRACE founder and Editor-in-Chief, Claude Grunitzky.

TRACE has been proud to be a media partner for this series.

Homage to Ousmane Sembène with DJ Spooky
$10 FIAF members/$15 non-members
Tuesday, May 27th, 7:00 pm
The French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues
New York, NY

Released on Tuesday, the latest intoxicating album by Groove Collective drummer and electronic whiz kid Genji Siraisi’s Surviving Freedom album has dominated my iPod’s heavy rotation speed dial since.

With atmospheric glitch-hop grooves steeped in cinematic clubspun downtempo, Surviving Freedom would be the soundtrack if David Mancuso’s Loft ever went on a liquid MDMA-fueled pirate space rave.

Fuel up with a little listen to the digital album here.

Evolving at fiberoptic lightspped, the Goth-Loli — or Goth-Lolita — movement in Japan is not longer just a ’style’, but an entire lifestyle, replete with outposts in other transcultural Japanese youth subcultures — punk, early American, cyber and even kimono.

Beyond even the best pages of Soichi Aoki’s Fruits — which introduced most of the world to the obsessively constructed, deeply theatrical costumes that pass for streetwear in Harajuku, Tokyo — the photographs of Masayuki Yoshinaga don’t just document the outerwear. They capture and communicate the the delicate balance of such Japanese youth subcultures — the frenzy of style, the studied poses for cameras and the surprising awkwardness when caught by Yoshinaga’s lens outside of those poses.

Partnering with TRACE magazine in celebration of our Erykah Badu and Q-Tip Art issue — free download here — the exhibition of Yoshinaga’s Goth-Loli series opens this evening in New York!

139 Norfolk Street
between Rivington and Stanton streets
New York

Celebrating 25 years of ingenious album art — the kind of design work that makes collectors fiend and eBay stocks soar — the Richard Goodall Gallery in London is opening a retrospective of Central Station, the design team that has graced tunes from Happy Mondays to the film 24 Hour Party People.

With their explosive, graphic style, Central Station not only earned spots on galleries world-wide, but also a place in the lore of Manchester’s ‘Madchester’ era for helping to define it’s fusion-heavy, indie dance-rock style.

Check out the show here, which opens today, and get more info on Central Station here.

For two days in New York every year, Tokion magazine pulls its global strings to pack the Cooper Union Art and Science college with some of the top creative talent from the world over. For anyone who keeps up with the current masterminds of culture and the Who’s Who of art, design, curating, architecture and film, this year’s roster of presenters will cause no less salivation that previous years. Check out the partial list below:

Harmony Korine (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, Mister Lonely, Kids); Kathy Grayson (Deitch Projects); Klaus Biesenbach (MoMA/P.S.1); Shamim M. Momin (Whitney Museum of American Art); Thomas Duncan (Gagosian Gallery); Massimiliano Gioni (New Museum of Contemporary Art); José Friere (Owner of New York’s Team Gallery); Lizzi Bougatsos of Gang Gang Dance; Nate Lowman; Gardar Eide Einarsson; Hanna Liden; Gary Panter; C.F.; and Lucky Dragons.

Salivate a bit more while thumbing through the rest of the line up and grabbing a ticket here — the event sells out every year, so grab soon!