Weekly Music Roundup: The Dreamer & Xenia Rubinos

Week of Dec. 18: This week, the unexpected returns of Benjamin Franklin and J Dilla, collaborations between Jackson Browne and Mexican-American roots band Los Cenzontles, and Xenia Rubinos, Olga Bell, and MC Sammus.

Lin-Manuel Miranda Presents: Ben Franklin, Via The Decemberists

Lin-Manuel Miranda apparently isn’t done with our Founding Fathers. As a kind of offshoot project to his hit musical Hamilton, he’s created a monthly series of collaborations called Hamildrops, and this weekend saw the first of them come out. It’s the popular prog/folk/rock band The Decemberists doing “Ben Franklin’s Song.” Lead singer Colin Meloy chooses not follow Miranda into the world of historical rap – a decision you can view as either wise or cowardly, as you see fit – but his Benjamin Franklin certainly comes off sounding like a preening, bragging rap star. (“76 and I’ll still kick your ass” might be my favorite line in the song, though there are numerous other contenders.) And it is startling enough to hear the mild-mannered, hyper-literate Meloy singing “do you know who the fuck I am?” repeatedly in the chorus, beautifully supported and harmonized by orchestral-sounding strings and equally foul-mouthed backing vocals. 

Amp Fiddler Returns – With The Late J Dilla

At this point, it’s no surprise to see songs credited to multiple artists – “Eminem, featuring Beyonce,” to take a notable recent example. Still, I was taken aback when I saw this new Amp Fiddler track called “Return of the Ghetto Fly (ft. J Dilla, T3 & Neco Redd),” because the great Detroit hip hop producer J Dilla died of a rare blood disease at 32 back in 2006. So what kind of feature was this? Well, Amp Fiddler was the guy who introduced J Dilla to the MPC, the drum machine-cum-sampler that became the instrument that Dilla constructed his legendary beats with. Fiddler himself is no slouch as a producer, and his new album, Amp Dog Knights, moves slyly between contemporary Detroit hip hop (which owes so much of its sound to Amp himself) and classic Parliament/Funkadelic soul, R&B and funk. Fiddler played with George Clinton’s Parliament and Funkadelic bands for a good portion of the 80s and 90s, so the combination isn’t just clever, it’s convincing. So, back to the Dilla “feature” – Dilla had created a number of tracks that were stolen, and later recovered by Amp. Two of those tracks form the basis of songs on the new Amp Fiddler record. With rapping by former Dilla bandmate T3 and singing by the emerging Neco Redd, who is featured on about half the album’s songs, this is a tune with a multi-generational Detroit sound. 

Jackson Browne and Los Cenzontles Collaborate On New Song

“The Dreamer” is the name of a new song from Jackson Browne and the Bay Area-based, Mexican-American roots band Los Cenzontles (The Mockingbirds). Browne was a 70s soft-rock icon, but he has also shown a strong political streak since the 1979 No Nukes concert and subsequent film. He’s been a vocal supporter of environmental causes and in this song takes on the plight of the so-called Dreamers – the children who came to this country illegally but who have built lives here under President Obama’s DACA program. With that program now under threat, Browne, Los Cenzontles, and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos got in front of the cameras to shoot a video for this new song, sung in both Spanish and English. “The Dreamer” has the sound of an old Mexican ballad, and its corazon is in the right place.   

Xenia Rubinos, Olga Bell and MC Sammus Release Collaborative New Song

As she’s shown on Soundcheck in the past, singer and keyboardist Xenia Rubinos doesn’t need a lot of help to make a big noise – or to make thoughtful songs. But she was invited by Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards to do something for Garbus’s Red Bull radio show with other female artists; so Rubinos got together with Sammus and former Dirty Projectors singer Olga Bell to create “Levitating,” which features a relaxed, almost weightless groove created by Bell, over which Sammus offers some provocative and definitely weightier thoughts about white privilege and the responsibilities to carry calls for change through to their conclusion. Then Rubinos adds her bilingual singing and the “Levitating” really does seem to defy gravity.

Albin Lee Meldau’s New Video Has An Old Message: We’re All In The Same Boat

The Swedish singer/songwriter Albin Lee Meldau has a voice you won’t forget – smoky and soulful – and a face you may not remember if you watch his new video. “Same Boat” is as simple a song as you could want: mostly just Meldau’s voice and an accompanying piano. The message also couldn’t be clearer – when things look dark, remember that we’re all in the same boat. But the video, while it begins and ends with Meldau, is mostly a procession of people, each lip synching a bit of the song. It’s another simple idea, but an effective one, and it suits the song beautifully.