Akan artist / Nondi_ : Flood City Trax (Planet Mu)
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| Akan artist, Ghana, Western Africa, Finger or toe ring (mpɛtea) in the form of a starburst or cocoon. Gold, 5.5 x 6.3 cm; 2.3 cm (ring diameter). Bequest of John B. Elliott, Class of 1951 (1998-639) |
Interpretation: Worn in multiples, cast gold rings (mpɛtea) have featured prominently in Akan chiefly regalia since at least the sixteenth century. Drawn from a visual pool of some one hundred motifs, ring ensembles simultaneously display material wealth, amplify gestures, and reveal something of the wearer’s character. The starburst or spoke motif of this toe or finger ring represents a stylized insect cocoon, an allusion to the proverb “It is a puzzle to know how the caterpillar entered its cocoon; did it build it before entering it or did it build it around itself?” A reference to the unimaginable power of the chief, the proverb approximates the saying “Appearances can be deceiving.” via Princeton Art Museum.
Music Suggestion:
Nondi_ is the alias of Tatiana Triplin, a US producer based in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, who also runs the netlabel HRR, releasing the music of friends and herself under various aliases. Her brother is the up-and-coming MC, Eem Triplin.
The music Nondi_ makes is informed by footwork, breakcore, and Detroit techno. However, as she's only experienced them via the internet, she has filled the gaps with her imagination and consequently, the music is rendered from a dreamlike solitude that feels adjacent to other internet genres such as vaporwave. Her tracks are gauzy and abstract, smeared with gentle melody, rusty tones, and occasional shafts of sunlight, sometimes set to a distant pulse, sometimes collapsing as if the music itself is falling apart.
"Flood City Trax is music that captures the mood of living in a town like Johnstown, and more broadly the isolation of poverty. That's the environment these tracks came out of, after all. Johnstown is a very poor isolated small factory town in Western Pennsylvania that has a dark history of deadly floods, the most well-known being the 1889 flood which was like something out of a horror story, and the 1977 flood which the Triplin family survived. Johnstown has never moved past its floods, hence the nickname "Flood City". There's very little to do and every year the town shrinks more, and more buildings are knocked down or condemned. Everything is old but simultaneously the past seems like it has just disappeared.".
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