This is a song by one of my top 10 favorite artist and honestly, who I believe is one of the best electronic artists in the Americas. Marco Antonio da Silva, or DJ Marky, was born in Sao Paulo, and began his DJing career there. He got the attention of a a British record executive and DJ, and after impressing British radio listeners, would experience a decent amount of popularity in his native Brazil and the UK, where he frequently performs. DJ marky, who specializes in the genre of Drum and Bass, has released several mixes and albums, and has collaborated with several other artists, with some being fellow Brazilians or Japanese DJ, Makoto, who he regularly hangs out with on his Instagram Stories.

I initially heard of him from a radio mix by one of my favorite bands ever, a British duo named Lemon Jelly, and really got into some of his songs later that same year. Believe it or not, DJ Marky was how I learned that there was a black population in Brazil (a very significant one!). My favorite works of his are his collaborations with the Brazilian DJ S.P.Y, but his most popular song is LK by him and XRS with Stamina MC (all Brazilians). The song samples a Brazilian song from the 70s called “Carolina Carol Bela” by Toquinho and Jorge Ben.

(This video contains some flashing lights so please give a warning beforehand if it’s played in class)

DJ Marky is still very much active. He released a new single a month or two ago and just a few days ago had concerts in Argentina and Scotland. I follow his instagram, in which he documents his trips to cities where he performs concerts, hangs out with other DJs, shares other’s recordings of his concerts, and also promotes his weekly or twice-a-week live DJ sessions on Twitch, Twitter, and Youtube. If I could personally chime in, I would LOVE to go to a concert of his sometime.

Today’s discussion and last night’s reading were very interesting to me and provided a very good insight into China and its continuing imperialism.

The Chinese for a long time conquered non-Han territories like Vietnam or Korea, but the Qing dynasty dramatically expanded China to mostly similar frontiers as today. The Qing were ruled the Manchus, a minority ethnic group from northeastern China, making their rule over the mostly Han Chinese quite imperialist in terms of controlling a different people. The Qing didn’t encourage assimilation into the new territories and a good chunk of their culture survived the Qing era. Though after the 1911 Revolution, it’s leader Sun Yat-Sen encouraged assimilation among the minorities to ensure the survival of Chinese civilization. A lot of these ideas weren’t fully put through though, as Sun Yat-Sen only ruled China for a year or two. After the Chinese Civil War and the conquest of Tibet, a dilemma confronted the PRC in their new vast territory; how to treat the many ethnicities. At first they used a stalinist approach in giving them autonomy and also used western writings to scale down the number the number of ethnicities based on shared languages. However, in recent years, due to growing calls for equality and independence, Yat-Sen’s idea of assimilation has been revived, and some of the means of assimilating have garnered the justified scorn of the international community.