Antenna dilemma

>> Tuning in to DJ Vadim

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Talk about the ironically impaired. This past June the American FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, hit KBOO-FM, a Portland, Oregon non-profit radio station, with a $7,000 (U.S.) fine. The offending song was "Your Revolution," a collaboration between U.K.-based, Russian-born Ninja Tune hip hop artist DJ Vadim and American black, feminist spoken-word artist Sarah Jones. A play on the famous words of Gil Scott-Heron, with whom Jones has previously worked, the track is a funny yet vitriolic attack on the sanctioned sexism in hip hop that doesn't hold back on naming names.

Some lyrics for you: "Your revolution will not happen between thighs/ The real revolution ain't about booty size/and though we've lost Biggie Smalls/your Notorious revolution will never allow you to lace no lyrical douche in my bush/You will not be touching your lips to my triple dip of French vanilla butter pecan chocolate deluxe/or having Akinyele's dream/A six-foot blowjob machine."

That last line really set the FCC off, prompting charges of "unmistakable patently offensive sexual references." The irony here, while lost on the FCC, hits home with Vadim. "It's ridiculous that you've got songs by DMX or Ja Rule or LL Cool J and nobody blinks an eyelid," he tells the Mirror from London, in a sharp, fast tone (the Russian Percussion catchphrase holds true here). "This one, everyone's up in arms.

"Last I heard of it," he says when pressed for an update, "they had to pay the fine, there's an appeal and a lot of people are interested in the case."

Fear of a black woman

Asked for insights into what sparked this incident, Vadim does his best. "I understand the principle of censorship and things being banned from the radio, but I never really thought that, of all the records I've recorded in my life, they'd choose that one to ban. I saw the court transcripts and they had professors from the UCLA, this person and that, talking about the poetical content and how what Sarah referred to had to be understood in the context of hip hop. But the judge said something or other about how, even if she's saying she's not a six-foot blowjob machine, she's still mentioning those words which some might find offensive.

"You get to the point where you wonder, do the FCC have an ulterior motive in banning the song? I don't think it's about creativity, it's that she's arguing something that the FCC don't want to see happening, positive black women or whatever. One, I'm not black and two, I'm not a woman, so for me it's much more difficult to understand. But that seems a much more rational argument than anything else I've heard. There've been controversial songs by loads of different groups, Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, all the way through to now, that get popular and played on the radio and nobody says anything. But most of those songs are white forms of rock music. Maybe they see this as slightly challenging and going into something else."

Fogg alert

On a more upbeat note, Vadim is scoring major airtime in the U.K.--an eight-part series on the BBC World Service, in fact, called Around the World in Eight Relays, which kicks off on Oct. 4. Vadim is your congenial host as musicians from across the globe are interviewed, recorded and ultimately mixed down by Vadim himself in the final episode.

"People offer me really exciting stuff to do all the time, but nine times out of 10, it falls through. This one got commissioned, though. So I went along, met some musicians and it's been absolutely fantastic. I've learned so much about music in general. It's a bit like a history lesson."

Starting with the percussion, natch, Vadim finds himself working first with a djembe thumper from Burkina Faso, followed by trad Moroccan basslines on the guimbri, Brazilian guitar licks, Zimbabwean thumb piano, Japanese shakuhachi flute, Indian violin and finally the voice of Sarah Jones. The final instrument is the sampler, wielded by Vadim, bringing all the bits together in a global grab bag.

"If we started it again from scratch, I would have chosen slightly different instruments, maybe. But it's easy to say stuff in hindsight. It's been a real smash, though, and it's opened my eyes to lots of new things--a wonderful experience. One of the best things about doing this program is, everyone I've done it with, I've had them back to my house to work on music for my own album."

With his Russian Percussion Group in the Sona bar on Friday, Sept. 14, midnight, $20