Indie Everything

Chilean indie! Irish indie! Indian indie! Maybe even Congolese indie!

Lots of people writing about indie scenes this past month, which more than anything shows just how broad a category “indie” has become. Articles on South Korea and southern India tend to veer more pop, articles on Ireland and Latin America tend to veer more punk, and many have a bit of hip hop mixed in. Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s DIY scene continues to be beautifully resourceful, and Africa’s DJs find common ground under the banner of 3-Step.

Scroll below for the full article list, and for paying subscribers, scroll to the very bottom for a custom playlist with one song pulled from each article.

The Album:

ADG7, Such Is Life (South Korea):

Before Black Country, New Road was showing hipsters that klezmer could be cool, a different 6+ person band was updating traditional music styles for a modern audience. That band was ADG7, a self-proclaimed “shamanic funk” group whose stellar 2020 sophomore album Such is Life approaches North Korean folk with a pop-shaped flair that will keep you on your toes and on your feet.

The Reports:

1. Mainstream K-pop tends to emphasize the “pop” more than the “K,” but Hwang Dong-Hee’s piece in The Korea Harold highlights a collection of bands that are adapting traditional Korean music styles into new, experimental pop structures.

2. Speaking of K-pop, Choi Min-Ji shares in Korea JoongAng Daily how that particular mega-genre captures so much of Korea’s listenership that indie acts are now focusing on international markets, where music fans have a more omnivorous stylistic palette.

3. Shiba Melissa Mazaza is back in Mixmag with part two of her three-part series on 3-Step, this time exploring how the African house genre is uniting musicians across the continent.

4. In Hyperallergic, Carolina A. Miranda writes about the Chilean label Hueso Records and, by extension, the punk and indie artists who subverted the right-wing dictatorships that controlled large swaths of Latin America in the 80s.

5. El País sent Carlos S. Maldonado to explore the musical dynasties of the La Independencia neighborhood, aka Mexico’s “Little Colombia” aka the birthplace of cumbia rebejada. And for those with an El País subscription and Spanish language skills (or Google Translate), Andrés Ortiz also wrote up a deep dive on the music of Colombia’s Pacific coast.

6. In ABC Asia, Karthiga Rajendran shines a spotlight on the rather pop-oriented Tamil indie scene, which has been given a helpful boost by the Chennai-based soundtrack-focused label Think Music.

7. Jacques Denis is in Pan African Music with a fervent, somewhat head-spinning report on the contemporary Congolese music scene. I wrote a similar piece for Bandcamp a while back and am psyched to see more coverage of this exciting corner of the music world making its way into English-language media.

8. Anna Cafolla contributes an exceptionally well-developed report on Ireland’s fast-rising indie scene to The Guardian’s music coverage, diving into race, welfare policy, and the generational trauma left over from The Troubles.

The Playlist: