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p>For the few weeks after I started my job in Paris, Amanda and I were staying alone at a friend's apartment. Our guilty pleasure was watching the "urban" music videos on French cable TV, and we discovered that many of the sophisticated videos (read: not just women dancing around in hot shorts) showed a more complex understanding of the world in all it's gender, race, and economic complexities than the lyrics did.

And then there was Kid Cudi's video,

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p>Just re-discovered Gilles Peterson's radio show (podcast link here), via a Saturday afternoon rebroadcast on Radio Nova .  Originator of Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Something club nights in the late 80s, and subsequently Talkin' Loud Records, as well as having

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p>I was originally going to write about Mitoka Samba's eponymous album that I downloaded from the US Amazon site. Except now, as a France-based referrer, I can't point you to it.  :-(  However, I found a compliation album which features Mitoka Samba and a few other artists as well - doing some interesting recomposing of songs in percussion arrangements.  Enjoy with my original notes on Mitoka Samba below....

Ahhh, this is awesome. 

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p>I remember hearing my first French accordion-meet-congas song (Afro-Musette by Marcel Azzola & Richard Galliano off the The Rough Guide to Paris Cafe Music album) and finding it... well, interesting....