Today's edition of Metro carried on its front page a story about 'YouTube Gangsters' - trailing recent news stories about tragic gang shootings in south London it talks about gangsters recruiting, bragging and brandishing weapons on videos uploaded to social networking sites like YouTube and MySpace.
Presumably you've assumed that the image to the left is a screen grab from such a video. Challenge your prejudices as YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG.
It is a grab taken from a video on a Metro train in France
with a group of young, black men. It's from a social networking site, found via Digg. It's a brilliant video of Naturally 7, an "award-winning gospel, r&b, jazz and soul septet from New York City".
Now this to me is a sign of the musical times ahead. Forget copyright fights between major record labels and social networking sites, they'll never be able to permenantly remove their content. Not only are these guys extremely talented but they've just unwittingly pioneered the C. 21st bastard-child of the resurgently popular 'flash-mob' - Gigs 2.0. There's music, talent, an appreciative (if somewhat suprised) audience - it's being spread through social networks and finding a huge audience (eg. 870 diggs at time of writing).
So let's take this model for music - if you've got talent, a videophone and internet access you can share your music with the world for free! Roll on the musical revolution, goodbye DRM, record labels, chart-fixing and the brain-washing of young people with Hip-pop & glossy bling culture. Generations to come will vote for their artists online and in networks where media is socially promoted.
Anyway, enough from me - listen and watch these guys spread joy and rhythm on one of modern society's most miserable and inhuman environments - the big-city metro:
2/21/2007
YouTube Gangsters?
Stumble it!
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