But first, some background: This past November, WAMA board member and musician Diana Quinn asked me to suggest some nominees. Each year, WAMA members select most of the nominees, but the organization also contacts "experts" for additional assistance.  I sent her an extensive list of local performers and recordings in the areas of rap, pop, rock, EDM, world music, blues, soul, jazz, roots rock, and metal, and included links from a variety of publications covering those artists and recordings. On the jazz front, I urged her to contact Washington City Paper critic Michael J. West and DJ, writer, and recording engineer Larry Appelbaum.

Quinn said she'd bring my suggestions to WAMA's board. She said WAMA compiles the votes of its dues-paying members, and if there are not enough nominees in some categories, they consider the suggestions of the experts, which have to be seconded by someone in WAMA to make it on the ballot. As for the number of experts contacted this year, WAMA president Mike Schreibman says "anywhere from 2 to 10 depending on the category."

Obviously, I'm pleased to see some of my suggestions made it. For the first time, rapper Fat Trel, experimental-pop act Bluebrain, Mariachi Los Amigos, and eclectic indie label Sockets Records were nominated. Oddisee, Zenizia Allstar, Orquesta La Leyenda, The Caribbean, Deleted Scenes, Kid Congo Powers, and Edie Sedgwick also are included. The Wammies will be that much more diverse this year. The addition of these artists helps make the rapper, electronica artist, record company, Latin duo/group, and pop/rock duo/group categories more reflective of what D.C. had to offer in 2011.

Now for the bad news. The go-go categories almost entirely ignored younger musicians, such as popular and critically lauded bounce beat groups like TCB, XIB, Reaction Band, TOB, and ABM. (I suggested go-go talker Killa Cal, but he didn't make the list.)

The omissions continue. Maryland-based Haitian band Rafrechi may have played Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage recently, but they weren't nominated. Maryland soul singer Jim Bennett won a southernsoulrnb.com award, but he didn't make the cut, either. There is no heavy metal category. Sockets Records got a nomination, but indie-rock acts associated with that label, like Hume and Laughing Man, were not (nor was the Sockets hip-hop band The Cornel West Theory). Few of Michael J.  West’s favorite local jazz musicians are included—where are Brian Settles, Nasar Abadey, and Brad Linde? Volta Bureau , Protect-U, and Outputmessage released acclaimed EDM recordings, but they're not applauded here. I've made the case for many of these musicians in earlier articles on the Wammies, but WAMA doesn't seem interested.

Real talk: In the end, my complaint isn't that individual artists I like are ignored by the Wammies (although plenty are), but that the Wammies need to reach out to a truly wide variety of experts, and do a better job demonstrating they care about all styles of music. It was nice that Quinn reached out to me and included some of my suggestions this year, but it's still disappointing how much impactful local music—much of which is heralded by local media—is ignored each year. While time and time again, WAMA insists it does its homework and that it's the responsibility of skeptics to become paying members of WAMA if they feel a sound needs more attention, the hit-and-miss nature of this year's ballot shows that WAMA's approach is not working. After a quarter century, WAMA has not convinced many local musicians that it is worth it to join the organization.

To get a sense of WAMA's biases, look at the general music awards at the bottom of the ballot. WAMA’s “musician of the year” nominees include roots rockers, folkies, and a klezmer musician, but no modern jazz, reggae, R&B, go-go, metal, or indie-rock players. It should probably go without saying, then, that the category is disappointingly homogeneous—it includes 10 white men and one white woman. Since the Wammies include a wide range of genre categories honoring musicians from all walks of life, you'd think the "musician of the year" prize wouldn't seem limited to such a narrow few.

But that is WAMA. Dues-paying members  have until Feb. 5 to vote for their choices.

*correction-This blogpost originally said there were no metal bands nominated.  While there is no metal category, Periphery was nominated for best modern rock group, and Pentagram for best modern rock recording.

Things got pretty confusing when we received an e-mail announcing the forthcoming release by a DIY act called The Gift. That's because the most recent issue of the City Paper included a "One Track Mind" about a song off the debut album by a local DIY trio called, yes, The Gift. The band celebrated the release of Mostly in Sickness at the Black Cat almost two weeks ago. Something didn't add up.

Turns out, this e-mail described the latest effort by a band from Portugal, not D.C. It turns out they play light, airy synth-pop, and their new album is called Explode and comes out in September. Oh, and they've been around since 1994. 

The Portuguese group may have the locals beat in age—the D.C. act started up in '09—but we prefer the harsh, heart-pounding tunes from the hometown crew. But take a listen to both acts and decide for yourself:

The Gift (Portugal) – "RGB" (off Explode):

The Gift (D.C.) – Mostly in Sickness:

Tonight's show at St. Stephen's Church is far from sweetness and light. Headlining the affair is Ilsa, a local metal-laced crust punk act (or, conversely, crust-punk infused metal band). The five-piece recently dropped a 12-inch EP on Contagion, a split with Finland doom-slayers Hooded Menace. Their lone song on the release is titled "Titan Arum," the name of a massive flower that emits a smell akin to a rotting animal. It's an apt choice for a band that delivers swaths of brutal, blood-curdling noise, and happens to be named after a '70s Nazi sexploitation film called Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.

A couple Providence acts hit the stage before Ilsa: The Body is an epic doom duo and Assembly of Light Choir is a loose ensemble of female vocalists with a headcount in the 20s (but only 14 singers have been on tap for their current trek). The Body got some assistance from the choir on its critically acclaimed 2010 album, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood, and the two musical, um, bodies are in the middle of a joint tour that's often collaborative.

Also on the bill is an introspective post-rock band from North Carolina called Braveyoung. There's been a flood of post-rock bands on the scene lately, making it hard to distinguish one band's fragile riffs from the next. But perhaps the best introduction to Braveyoung's music is a New York Times video about a young couple dealing with the painful reality of living with an terminal illness, "Love Endures Even Cancer." Braveyoung's classically imbued music soundtracks the heartbreaking story with moving grace.

Ilsa, The Body, Assembly of Light Choir, and Braveyoung perform at 7 p.m. at St. Stephen's Church, 1525 Newton St. NW. $10. All ages.

Some folks from the Washington, D.C., area won awards, as well. Blues-rock singer Mary Ann Redmond won a WAMA award for the 17th time, and country/roots-rock singer Ruthie Logsdon took home her 40th and 41st  WAMA awards. Al Williams, known mostly for smooth jazz these days, took home a jazz musician trophy. Roots-rocker Janine Wilson won the album of the year category.

With the long-troubled Wammies, the artists who do not win or even get nominated are as important as those who do. WAMA leaders have said they sometimes consult "experts" to fill out the nominations slots, and in recent years they have, indeed, reached out to Washington City Paper writers (including me). But they've then largely ignored those suggestions.

Despite pleas from D.C. Blues Society members, WAMA for the second year in a row chose not to select any old-school blues or soul artists for its hall of fame. As previously noted, WAMA also left out all metal bands, traditional D.C.-based Ethiopian, Haitian, and mariachi musicians, new indie-rock labels, southern soul groups, and many more. While those artists have received media and public attention here and elsewhere, the dues-paying, voting members of WAMA are apparently not interested or aware of them.

In 1994’s metal-head romp Airheads—in which the decidedly un-metal trio of Adam Sandler, Steve Buscemi, and Brendan Fraser hijack a local radio station to promote their band— there's a memorable exchange with a suit from Capitol Records, played by Harold Ramis.  Asked to name the victor of a wrestling match between Lemmy and God, Buscemi reveals it's a trick question—since Lemmy is God, a belief shared by generations of young men, many of whom are interviewed in Lemmy, Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski’s recently released documentary about Ian Fraser "Lemmy" Kilmister of Motörhead. “The man’s a modern day Jesus Christ,” one young British fan gushes.

For the uninitiated, the gospel according to Motörhead reads something like this: a few choice passages in the late '70s and early '80s—notably Overkill and Ace of Spades—followed by decades of endless repetition. Motörhead's music, described by Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker as like “getting stuck in a sandstorm,” is identified throughout the film as the missing link between '50s rock & roll, metal, and punk.  True enough. However, the band’s biggest asset seems to be Kilmister’s adamant refusal to shift gears, preaching to the converted by producing a nearly evolution-proof body of work over 30-plus years. Lemmy's fierce individualism has become the stuff of rock legend, a reputation fervently (and sometimes embarrassingly) asserted by everyone from Dave Grohl to members of Metallica, whose Lars Ulrich suggests that "Lemmy" be used henceforth as a verb. “There’s not a fake bone in Lemmy’s body,” proclaims one of Lemmy's bandmates.

The primacy of authenticity is central to Olliver and Orshoski’s muddled thesis, a notion—popular as it may be—the film doesn't so much explore as it categorically accepts as fact, never demonstrating what exactly makes Kilmister worthy of such adulation. A lifetime rocker—“I’m not qualified to do anything else," he offers—the Lemmy captured in Lemmy is the result of three years of filming which, if the documentary is to believed, involved a great deal of slot machines, discussions about The Beatles, and the collection of ephemera for his cluttered, rent-controlled apartment near the Sunset Strip. If Lemmy wasn’t rocking, chances are his unhygienic home would be seized by the state.

The directors' unconditional adulation reflects the passion of thousands who show up whenever Motörhead play their local amphitheater or club. Unlike the claustrophobic psychodrama of Some Kind of Monster or I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, Lemmy is a vehicle for fans to reiterate the two central tenants of the cult of Kilmister: Lemmy is awesome and people who don’t recognize Lemmy's awesomeness are stupid. Like the late Joey Ramone, Kilmister exists in a kind of purgatory, a perennially well-known musician who never made it to the Top of the Pops, but who hardly toiled in obscurity. That the Ramones and Motörhead didn't go multi-platinum is a mystery easily solved by diminishing returns and a refusal to break from type that's mistakenly equated with integrity. Even still, it's unclear why Lemmy goes to such great lengths—nearly two hours' worth—to defend the legacy of such a widely admired figure.

More than the actual music, the beauty of Lemmy’s myth—an imposing, barrel-chested figure in tight black jeans and a low-hung cowboy hat—is one of the musical desperado, a lifer whose cavalier attitude toward drugs and alcohol is indeed legendary. Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction recalls, “The first time I ever met the guy, he proceeds to offer me crystal meth.” When these freewheeling behaviors trickle into other aspects of his life, it lacks the same amusing bravado. Describing an instance in which Lemmy swapped women with his son, his progeny's queasy smile says it all.

Lemmy's quintessential Spinal Tap moment comes when Kilmister, dressed in full German military regalia, unironically states that he’s couldn't possibly be a Nazi sympathizer because of his numerous black girlfriends; he simply enjoys the Third Reich’s sartorial flair and attention to detail, as demonstrated by his swastika-draped bedroom. Um, sure. The film isn’t equipped to deal with the thornier aspects of its subject, be them World War II obsessions or Kilmister’s hard-knock childhood, which shoehorned into the last 15 minutes of a 110-plus-minute movie is literally an afterthought. Did the filmmakers' obvious affection blind them to Kilmister's myriad inconsistencies, or was their intent to simply add another chapter to his over-sized reputation? Or perhaps like Motörhead's music—blunt,  a bit simplistic and enjoyable in small doses—there isn’t all that much to get. You win some, lose some…it’s all the same.

Mole Rating: 2 out of 5 moles.

Disclaimer notice: The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED, it's representives [sic] or sponsers [sic].

Apologies in advance.

Why the new legal talk on Randall's personal site? The blurb went up shortly after Randall wrote a post ripping into local grindcore trio Magrudergrind for putting out their newest EP, Crusher, on Scion A/V. Shortly after publishing his thoughts, Axl Rosenberg, the co-editor-in-chief of the popular metal blog MetalSucks, posted a news item about Randall's rant.

"After we published our own piece, J. suddenly started tweeting about getting angry phone calls or whatever," Rosenberg says.

As my feature this week on Magrudergrind details, grindcore is a bit more hamstrung when it comes to breaches of the scene's so-called ethical code. Napalm Death set the political and musical tone for grindcore when it unleashed Scum in 1987. Just take in that album's first track, "Multinational Corporations," a short, thundering tune complete with simple, succinct lyrics: "Multinational corporations/Genocide of the starving nation."

Of course, Magrudergrind never followed that code. Sure, the music is loud and aggressive, but the aesthetic is off the grindcore map. "We take collages and pictures from here and there," says Magrudergrind singer Avi Kulawy. "I think a lot of people misconstrue our art and our aesthetic, and they see it as us being a socio-political band making a statement."

While Magrudergrind has taken its music in new directions, most of grindcore has stuck to Napalm Death's tried-and-true message and voice. By sonic nature, grindcore is so far outside the mainstream that an ethical code isn't unlike a badge of honor, a re-enforced status of being "outcast and proud of it," complete with a whole boatload of sanctimonious beliefs and baggage.

"There is really no change of grind ever being anything other than a niche market," Rosenberg says. "Since there's no real money to be made, everything becomes that much more DIY, and as a result, the people involved tend to really, really feel passionate about it, because there's no reward beyond the music itself. So that ethical code gets a big shot of steroids."

Which might explain Randall's response to Crusher, and the response of some within the grindcore community. Yet, that discussion is absent on Randall's blog post—it's just Randall's own words—sans one comment:

"I don't mean to whore out my video but I'd rather not re-type shit over and over. Here you go."

The comment comes from Keith Carlson, an Orlando-based graphic designer and illustrator and a co-founder of an online music community called The Apparatus. The link he posted on Randall's blog is for a confessional-style YouTube video Carlson made about his thoughts on Crusher. It tops seven minutes.

Carlson has been quite active in discussing the Scion controversy on The Apparatus, and was upset enough to post the YouTube video. "I was nervous and cussed a lot," Carlson says. "I made the video in hopes people would see a little more sincerity as apposed [sic] to just reading text."

Carlson's love for grindcore is certainly sincere: He capitalizes the "g" in grindcore during our AIM interview. He loves the genre's dark themes, aggressive tones, and raw instrumentation. Which he feels Magrudergrind does well. "They play all the standards of Grindcore," Carlson says. "I think they do it in a way that is so fluid and natural. They definitely have a 'rally up and mosh' groove that a lot of active Grindcore bands don't do as well."

But Crusher's Scion connection made Carlson feel uncomfortable. "I praise them in their hard work and strong DIY ethic but at the end of the day I don't think it entitles them to a dirty freebie," Carlson says.

While the grindcore scene is known to be rigid–as seen with the Crusher controversy–Carlson is a fairly open-minded fan. He also thinks he's on the losing side of the coin. "From what I've seen, I'm in the minority on this issue," Carlson says. "It's interesting that people are getting upset about fans like me questioning the situation as apposed [sic] to forming a thorough opinion about it from any perspective."

Sure, Magrudergrind got a ribbing from Randall and others in the grindcore community. But it wasn't before long that Randall got a healthy helping of complaints from impassioned grindcore bands, and fans like Carlson felt they were losing a battle. The back-and-forth in grindcore only seems natural. Soon enough, the arguing may as well stop completely.

"The good news, all the sound and the fury never amounts to much," Rosenberg says. "In other words, I have a difficult time believing this will have any negative affect on Magrudergrind in the long-term."

Still, the fury concerning Crusher—no matter what side fans took—is as much a part of grindcore as the music. Agree, disagree, whatever: For fans like Carlson, open conversation is part of what makes grindcore so great.

"It’s lyrics like 'it’s not a revolution but a life of strive [sic]' [from Magrudergrind's "The Price of Living by Delinquent Ideals"] that encourage me to speak up and try to get other people talking," Carlson says.

Magrudergrind's Chris Moore, left, Avi Kulaway, and R.J Ober

Magrudergrind singer Avi Kulawy doesn’t want to talk about Scion, the Toyota brand that controversially released the group’s recent EP, Crusher. Kulawy would rather chat about the years his band spent toiling in D.C.’s underground music scene. He’d rather discuss how the trio brought its unique spin on grindcore—an aggressive sound that combines elements of hardcore punk, death metal, and just about anything and everything that makes an abrasive noise—to Europe and Asia thanks to years of hard touring. Kulawy would rather talk about Magrudergrind’s history because it says so much about its present.

But that would be burying the lede. Bona fides didn’t matter when Magrudergrind struck its deal last year with Scion Audio/Visual, the marque’s appeal-to-the-cool-kids promotional wing, which works with up-and-coming musicians, filmmakers, and visual artists. Since 2006, Scion has released free music from a slew of dance artists and garage rockers, and has recently begun opening its coffers to bands it identifies as metal. Funded entirely by Scion, Crusher was released as a free download in November. (It’s still up, but if for some reason you want to buy the EP on iTunes or Amazon, beginning this week you can do that, too.)

Free for download doesn’t mean free from baggage, according to some of Magrudergrind’s peers. Since Magrudergrind announced its Scion partnership, fans have fiercely debated the band’s ethics on message boards like The Apparatus. Notable metal and grindcore bands with bigger profiles than Magrudergrind have denounced the band as sell-outs.

You’d think that 17 years after Dischord bands Jawbox and Shudder to Think signed to major labels—and in an era in which licensing songs to car commercials no longer carries a stigma for many independent acts—debates over the slippery-to-define notion of “selling out” would finally be extinct. Or, at the very least, acts not comfortable with corporate sponsorship would have little to say about acts that are.

But not so within metal and hardcore’s most extreme niches, where strict integrity and independence still matters, according to Axl Rosenberg, the co-editor-in-chief of the popular metal blog MetalSucks. “If you stray even a little bit from the code, or, maybe more accurately, are perceived as having strayed from the code, there’s a portion of the community that will crucify you.”

—

Kulawy started Magrudergrind in 2002, when he was a sophomore at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, and his friend Chris Moore joined the group soon after. (Disclosure: I was also at Walter Johnson at the time, but didn’t know the band’s members well. I didn’t hear about Magrudergrind until 2007.) The band cycled through several guitarists before settling in 2007 on its current lineup: Kulawy on vocals, Moore on drums, and R.J. Ober on guitar.
When the group first began playing in D.C, it wasn’t exactly welcomed. “We would play shows with hardcore bands and metalcore [bands], and I guess screamo metalcore was really big in D.C. then,” Kulawy says. “People would look at us with their jaw dropped and kind of like, ‘What is this?’”

Grindcore isn’t exactly known for its accessibility: You can often measure the songs in seconds; belly-aching growls tend to obscure lyrics about death, disarray, and radical politics; instrumentation combines pulverizing speed with ear-shattering heaviness. Some critics complain grindcore hasn’t evolved much since the British band Napalm Death defined the genre with its debut album, Scum, in 1987, but the fans don’t seem to mind.

Though the D.C. area has produced grindcore acts like Enemy Soil and Pig Destroyer, Magrudergrind didn’t exactly fit into a local scene mostly centered on hardcore punk. “We knew that outside of the D.C. area there is a scene and a demand for grindcore music, so I think it really pushed us to tour more, or to try to tour initially,” Kulawy says. “We wanted to get out there and play and meet grindcore bands and see what kind of scenes there were other than the D.C. scene.”

In the summer of 2003, Kulawy scheduled Magrudergrind’s first tour using a website called Book Your Own Fuckin’ Life, and over several years, the band built a reasonable following within the national grindcore scene. In 2006, the band released a split with Shitstorm, a grindcore side-project from Torche drummer Rick Smith. The band’s first official full-length, Rehashed (Six Weeks Records), caught some ears, but a sophomore release, 2009’s Magrudergrind (Willowtip), was a breakthrough. According to Rosenberg, the self-titled album “really cemented them as being at the forefront of modern grind.”

Produced by metalcore icon and Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou, Magrudergrind is remarkable because it challenges grindcore’s conventions. Certainly, the tunes come loud, hard, and fast, but the record’s overall aesthetic is different. Songs like “Bridge Burner” fester and swoon with a lumbering, heavy beat; audio samples, like a speech about gentrification from Boyz n the Hood and a Yiddish song, populate the record alongside Kulawy’s ambiguous and arty lyrics. Most notably—and to some, most jarringly—there’s a smattering of hip-hop. Most grindcore fans aren’t in the market for break beats, but they may well have brought Magrudergrind to a bigger audience.

“They have this hip-hop aesthetic that goes through all of their songs, and I think people latch onto that,” says Fred Pessaro, who writes about metal for Brooklyn Vegan, a popular music blog. “It’s a really unique thing in that scene, whereas grindcore is so anti-capitalist, anti-fascism, such a political music, and hip-hop is pretty much the polar opposite in a lot of ways...Maybe [that’s] where they’re coming from with this whole Scion thing, as well.”

—

Crusher wasn’t the first time Magrudergrind worked with Scion. The band performed at a couple of free shows hosted by the brand, including last year’s Scion Rock Fest in Columbus, Ohio.
Representatives from Scion A/V didn’t speak to the band’s marketing strategy, but it’s clear they think they can sell more Scions—whose image is meant to appeal to a hipper, younger crowd than Toyota’s—by penetrating certain subcultures.

Inking a deal with Scion isn’t like signing with a typical label. Instead of an advance, Magrudergrind got a lump sum which it could spend however it wished on recording, artwork, and manufacturing. It doesn’t have to split its cut of digital sales with Scion (Magrudergrind also released limited-edition physical versions on LP and CD for free, plus shipping and handling). The band kept the masters, and after a year, gets full control of the recordings.

For Magrudergrind, that meant no risk (Kulawy wouldn’t say how much Scion gave the band to make Crusher) and one trade-off: the Scion logo, displayed prominently on the EP’s cover.

The group was prepared for some backlash, and released a statement explaining why it felt working with Scion hardly mattered. “We have always been, always will be and currently are very deeply involved in the band processes and the scene we are involved with,” they wrote. “We still take care of all the day-to-day tasks of this band and would not have it any other way.”
The band wrote that it made the deal so that it could release the EP gratis. “We decided to take up this offer in order to give out a 100% FREE, high quality record to everyone, at the expense of a Scion.” Later, the statement went on, “If Scion covers the expenses of this record and say no one buys their product, who really gains? Us and every single person who got a Magrudergrind record for free.”

To the band, it wasn’t being co-opted by Scion; it was taking advantage of the brand’s new-found taste for harsh sounds.

Others didn’t buy it. Jay Randall, vocalist for prominent grindcore act Agoraphobic Nosebleed (whose bandmate Richard Johnson appears on Crusher), wrote a blog post calling the Magrudergrind/Scion deal not just an act of whoring, but a pointless one: “Hey Scion you get what you pay for -no ding dong is running out to buy one of your hipster crap wagons because you did some metal/hardcore showcase, your just publicly outing some poor band as your whore.”

Justin Foley, frontman of the metal act The Austerity Program, refuted Magrudergrind’s statement in an op-ed for MetalSucks, writing that it “comes across as a rationalization, not an explanation.” Foley advanced an argument that found purchase among message-board users who also debated the ethics of Crusher in November: that displaying the Scion logo was tantamount to appearing in a commercial, and that taking Toyota’s money was avoidable. Or, if the band wanted Scion to foot the bill, “why not go for a car and a fat paycheck and free Scion tattoos and your own Scion branded sneakers that say Magrudergrind on the tongue-pump?”

These kinds of debates aren’t uncommon for the grindcore scene: As much as the sound is known for its creative inflexibility, the same can be said for the scene’s ethical boundaries.

The band didn’t respond to the criticisms. While Magrudergrind came up in the grindcore scene, Kulawy says it always saw itself as an outlier. “A lot of times, you get lumped in as like a straightedge, vegan, completely socio-political, left-of-center band. But, in reality, each of us do have our own political beliefs,” Kulaway says. “We don’t have any lyrics or imagery that’s really saying that we’re anti-anything.” Often, Magrudergrind’s songs are meta-commentaries on the band’s subgenre. Take the song “Lyrical Ammunition for Scene Warfare,” in which Kulawy sings: “I refuse to live by what’s expected.”

Magrudergrind isn’t a full-time job for its members, although it probably could be. But that would mean touring for most of the year, Kulawy says, a stress he doesn’t want. “We have lives outside of the band,” he says. The Scion deal helped Magrudergrind make a record without worrying about paying for it. And they were never hung up over politics, anyway. Meanwhile, the increasingly visibile Scion A/V site means more listeners. “We have gotten exposure to certain people that may have not heard our music and may have not even heard this style of music because it is just underground in its nature,” Kulawy says.

And, predictably, the message-board furor eventually cooled down. The EP got positive buzz. Recent shows, including one last Friday at St. Stephen’s Church in Columbia Heights, have been packed.

Even the dankest, darkest corners of independent music can get past the old indie debates. It just hurts a little more.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

As made clear in my 1998 and 2010 articles, the Washington Area Music Association (WAMA) largely views any suggestions regarding changing the Wammies nomination process, or the organization itself, as simply sour grapes, naïve, or an undemocratic attempt to impose someone’s else’s opinion. Write WAMA a check, become a member, and we’ll listen to your opinion on nominations, they say, while WAMA critics wonder why they would want to join an organization that ignores widely heralded musicians, has a history of embarassing mistakes, and dispenses juvenile insults (see the reactions to the two prior pieces) in response to criticism that is meant to be constructive.

WAMA board members have told me in the past that they on occasion consult "experts" to fill the nominations slot, rather than simply relying on the suggestions from members. My point continues to be that WAMA needs more experts, and that WAMA needs to do a better job making their organization useful and helpful and demonstrating that it cares about all styles of music. WAMA members may still not vote for expert-suggested names, but getting more such names on the ballot would at least be a start. I am not talking about substituting my own view; I mean consulting various participants in the area music scene, including critics, promoters, bloggers, and academics. WAMA needs these experts because, frankly, numerous musicians and others do not see the organization or its Wammies as being valuable, and therefore do not want to join and nominate artists themselves. The list of well-regarded artists not nominated under the current process for the Wammies is simply too extensive to be dismissed in the manner that WAMA partisans have done for 25 years.

(An aside: WAMA should  update its website, which contains a number of out-of-date items including a link to a list of D.C. venues that contains the long-since-closed Warehouse Next Door, Capital City Pavilion, and Ellington's on Eighth, but not various facilities that are open.)

As for this year’s ballot, the Wammies have ignored all metal bands, including Northern Virginia's Salome, a favorite of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the City Paper.  They have again neglected bluesy soul artists such as the Hardway Connection, Jim Bennett, and Little Margie.  The world music category contains virtually the same choices as last year while again overlooking Haitian band Rafrechi and all Ethiopian performers (despite this area including one of the largest Ethiopian populations in the U.S.).  Rapper Fat Trel may have the support of Wale and the Washington Post and the City Paper and be on the WKYS list of hot area hip-hop artists, but that's not enough to get nominated for a Wammie. The Latin list again contains no mariachi bands, including Mariachi Los Amigos, whose membership includes the Smithsonian’s Dan Sheehy, one of the organizers of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.  The Latin roster also omits again Zeniza, Orquesta Romana, and Orquesta La Leyenda. Roots and country guitarist Jim Stephanson’s Say Go album was recorded with members of NRBQ and made a WFMU DJ’s top 10 for the year, but WAMA did not mention it.  Electronica vocalist nominee Bob Mould moved to San Francisco in 2009, and electronica vocalist nominee Ultra Nate is based in Baltimore. Electronica DJ act Nadastrom is wrongly listed as a performing act while DJs Dubfire & Sharam are listed together, when they have rarely DJed together since releasing solo projects several years ago. Where are electronica act Bluebrain and D.C. rock bands like Title Tracks, True Womanhood, Imperial China, and Medications, which The Washington Post, City Paper, DCist, Brightest Young Things, and other local media hailed as top acts last year? Michael West and others can surely name more ignored jazz participants, but it's obvious to even a non-fanatic of jazz like me that veteran players such as Bobby Felder, Jacques Johnson, Sr., and Nasar Abadey deserved to be mentioned.

Sure, it's nice that artists such as Warner Williams, the What ? Band, Joe Falero, Wale, Lena Seikaly, and others have been nominated in various genre categories, but when the water glass is so empty year after year, it’s hard to appreciate the water that's there.

HO HO WHO?: Jesu is Justin Broadrick's latest project, a name you might remember from his work in "I've seen kids in all black wearing that t-shirt" bands like Godflesh and Napalm Death. More post-rock than grindcore, Jesu has just released the digital-only Christmas EP, which he describes as being "inspired by the onset of the Christmas period and the emotions and feelings of nostalgia, joy and sadness that the period evokes." Judging by that description, Broadrick still sounds plenty heavy.

IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR:  For those about to rock around the Christmas tree, a truly righteous metal holiday song can be hard to come by. Luckily, Jesu's careening compositions spare us the requisite jingle bell jangling and replaces it with "Christmas," a nearly 9 minute mood piece conjuring the bleak desolation of a half empty bottle and an oncoming blizzard. The EP also includes two remixes by other Broadrick projects, Pale Sketcher and FINAL, both of which sound even chillier than the original.

...TO PULL THE TRIGGER: The holidays are tough for everyone. Swelling downbeat crescendos don't make them any easier to take. Existential angst is a-ok with The Sleigher every other day of the year, but can't he at least feign some joy on Christmas?

CHEER FACTOR: 8/10. If you're planning on holing up in your childhood bedroom with one song this holiday season, you couldn't do much better than Jesu's "Christmas."

LISTEN: Jesu's "Christmas"

The 44th annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival came to a close yesterday. As I noted earlier, due to financial reasons, this was the smallest Folklife Fest ever, but it remains a well-curated, exciting event. It could be publicized better, but for those who did attend, there were unique things worth seeing.

I spent much of the final hot day under the tents of the Mexico portion of the event. My main south-of-the-border highlight was the Son de Madera Trio, a son jarocho band from Veracruz whose speedy and rhythmic picking on their small guitarlike instruments—-a guitara de son (a type of  requinto) and a jarana—sounded best when accompanying the group's dancer, who tapped and slapped her shoes on top of a wood platform. Their high-pitched strumming immediately brought  “La Bamba” to mind, and sure enough they later played it.  The guys in the group were all over today—on two stages and in a tent,  making new requintos, alongside others making instruments.

The Chinelos de Atlatlahucan (pictured up top) are a carnival-like troupe of costumed dancers and a marching band. While the drummers and horn section are lively and loud,  live the music often lacked the funkiness of New Orleans brass bands and the groove of Brazilian samba outfits. With the dancers they were still fun, but the music was sometimes dissonant, stiff, and repetitive.

Los Verdaderos Caporales de Apatzingán feature a harp, two fiddles,  a vihuela,  and a jarana. They also chant and sing rural-feeling rancheras and mariachilike slow dance numbers.

The one YouTube video I had seen of Hamac Caziim suggested it wasan avante-garde Mexican rock band with artsy vocals and unusual time signatures. Yesterday they came across like a mid-'80s hardcore-meets-metal band with Central American Indian vocals. The group's emphasis on power undoubtedly scared many festgoers; the tent quickly felt pretty empty. It could use more creative arrangements and  varied tempos in its set.

Mariachi Tradicional Los Tios played yesterday without it guitarist and dancer(they were sick). Their polkas and waltzes weren't bad, but they felt less than full without, well, the full group. Oh, and while the traditional food at the fest is always overpriced, the etote, Mexican corn-on-the cob with spices and mayo, sure was tasty.

My hat is off to the Smithsonian Folklife festival for booking Haitian band Boukman Ecksperyans last weekend, plus various Mexican outfits who rarely if ever play D.C. and lots of locally based Asian American music and dance groups who seldom perform before non-Asian local audiences. While I understand that financial restrictions prevent the fest from also incorporating a U.S. state as it did in years past, it's a shame the Smithsonian does not market the event better to various local audiences. The Smithsonian likes to boast about how many thousands come to the fest each summer, but there were a lot of empty seats under some tents on this Monday government holiday. While a daily listing of events appeared in the Washington Post Style section each day, there did not appear to be any mention of the Festival on the websites Kesta and Eventoslatinos.us, which have Latino concert calendars, or in the Washington Hispanic newspaper. With Mexico as a theme, one would have expected a larger turnout from the local Latino community.  Also, despite my efforts, the fest still appears to be viewed by many local Anglos as simply an event for tourists and aging hippie Peace Corps types. The Folklife Festival's press team needs to work on that as well.