Socalled | |
---|---|
Background information | |
Birth name | Joshua Dolgin |
Born | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | December 28, 1976
Origin | Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
Genres | Jewish hip hop, klezmer |
Occupation(s) | Rapper, record producer |
Instrument(s) | Piano, accordion |
Years active | 2003–present |
Labels | Piranha Musik, Label Bleu, Dare to Care Records |
Website | socalledmusic.com |
Joshua Dolgin (born December 28, 1976), better known by his stage name Socalled, is a Canadian rapper and record producer, known for his eclectic mix of hip hop, klezmer, and other styles such as drum & bass and folk music. A pianist and accordion player, he has taught the latter at Klezfest London, where he has also run workshops in "hiphopkele". [1] He has played with clarinetist David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness!, Michael Winograd and has also worked with artists such as rappers C-Rayz Walz, Chilly Gonzales, funk trombonist Fred Wesley, and Sophie Solomon. Dolgin has Ukrainian, Romanian and Russian roots. [2]
Dolgin's Socalled collective and guests celebrated the Jewish Festival of Lights with the seasonal concert "Hip Hop Hanukkah" in 2007. [3] He is the subject of The "Socalled" Movie, a documentary released in 2010 by Garry Beitel for the National Film Board of Canada, which also features Krakauer and Wesley. The documentary includes footage of the first "Klezmer Cruise", in which a boatload of klezmer fans sailed down the Dnieper River in Ukraine. [4]
In 2013, his remix of Moe Koffman's "Curried Soul" became the new theme music for CBC Radio One's As It Happens . [5]
His 2011 recording "Work With What You Got" was co-written by and features vocals by calypso musician The Mighty Sparrow. [6]
Organized Rhyme was a Canadian hip hop group based in Ottawa, Ontario.
Richard Terfry, better known by his stage name Buck 65, is a Canadian alternative hip hop rapper. Underpinned by an extensive background in abstract hip hop, his more recent music has extensively incorporated blues, country, rock, folk and avant-garde influences.
Fred Wesley is an American trombonist who worked with James Brown in the 1960s and 1970s, and Parliament-Funkadelic in the second half of the 1970s.
The Canadian hip hop scene was established in the 1980s. Through a variety of factors, it developed much slower than Canada's popular rock music scene, and apart from a short-lived burst of mainstream popularity from 1989 to 1991, it remained largely an underground phenomenon until the early 2000s.
Jully Black is a Canadian singer, songwriter and actress. She has released 4 studio albums, and 2 remix EPs. She has collaborated and written for many artists, including Nas, Saukrates, Choclair, Kardinal Offishall, Destiny's Child, and Sean Paul.
Geoff Berner is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and musician from Vancouver.
Jason Drew Harrow, better known by his stage name Kardinal Offishall, is a Canadian rapper and record producer. Often credited as Canada's "hip hop ambassador", he has been regarded as one of the country's most prominent hip hop producers during the 2000s and is distinctive for his reggae and dancehall-influenced style of hip hop.
Sophie Solomon is a British violinist, songwriter and composer who fuses many different musical influences into her music. She was artistic director of the Jewish Music Institute, SOAS from 2012 to 2015 and is now Chief Marketing Officer at high-growth music technology start-up ROLI.
Shades of Culture was a Canadian hip hop trio from Montreal. Its members are known as DShade, Revolution, and DJ Storm. The group performs mainly in English. Shades of Culture was one of the first Quebec hip hop groups to become known outside of their province.
David Krakauer is an American clarinetist who performs klezmer, jazz, classical music, and avant-garde improvisation.
Shadrach Kabango, known professionally as Shad or Shad K, is a Canadian rapper and broadcaster. Beginning his career in 2005, has released seven studio albums and three extended plays. He won a Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year in 2011 and five of his albums have been shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, the most short-list nominations of any artist in the prize's history. In 2013, CBC Music named Shad the second-greatest Canadian rapper of all time. Shad hosted Q on CBC Radio One from 2015 to 2016, and hosts the International Emmy and Peabody Award-winning documentary series Hip-Hop Evolution on HBO Canada and Netflix.
Toby Ross is an American film director who made straight and gay pornographic films in the 1970s and 1980s and later on went to produce nonsexual and cult films with a strong sense of comedic flare. Many film aficionados consider Ross the only missing link between adult films and commercial independent films, as Ross calls it The Antarctica of the film business. He was born in Landsberg am Lech, Germany, to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father. At the age of eight, his mother having remarried an Austrian Jew, he moved with his mother and stepfather to Israel. He served two years in the Israeli army. After studies in Los Angeles, attracted by stories of the freedom in San Francisco, he moved there in the 1970s.
Beyond the Pale is a Toronto-based Canadian world/roots fusion band. Their style is rooted in klezmer, Balkan and Romanian music but heavily accented with contemporary and North American styles including bluegrass, jazz, reggae, funk and classical chamber music. They are known for unique songcraft, virtuosic musicianship, meticulous dynamics, and exuberant live performances. They are widely regarded as one of Canada's most accomplished and innovative acoustic ensembles. Some have described their sound as being in the same spirit as "New Acoustic Music" and David Grisman's "Dawg" music, but tinged more heavily with an east European accent. The name of the band is a reference to the Eastern-European Jewish Pale of Settlement, from where their music is partially inspired.
Michael Alpert is a klezmer musician and Yiddish singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, scholar and educator who has been called a key figure in the klezmer revitalization, beginning in the 1970s. He has performed solo and in a number of ensembles since that time, including Brave Old World, Kapelye, Khevrisa, The Brothers Nazaroff, Voices of Ashkenaz and The An-Sky Ensemble, and has collaborated with clarinetist David Krakauer, hip-hop artist Socalled, singer/songwriter/actor Daniel Kahn, bandurist Julian Kytasty, violinist Itzhak Perlman, ethnomusicologist and musician Walter Zev Feldman, trumpeter/composer Frank London and numerous others.
Rap Essentials Volume One is a Canadian hip hop compilation album, released in 1996 on Beat Factory Music, and distributed by EMI Music Canada. It is considered a landmark hip-hop album, and it was very influential.
Grand Analog is a Canadian hip hop band, fronted by Odario Williams. The project combines R&B, jazz, reggae and rock influences into a hip hop style performed mainly on live instruments instead of digital electronics.
Thunderheist was an electronic music duo from Toronto, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec in Canada. Thunderheist was made up of producer Graham Bertie (Grahmzilla) and Omolola Isis Salam (Isis). The two began collaborating before they had ever met in person, sending MP3 files to each other over the Internet. They were signed to and released one album on Big Dada. Thunderheist was founded in 2005 by Graham as an anonymous dance music side-project to his more hip-hop leanings as Metrix. They became a duo in August 2006 when Graham inadvertently sent Omolola a remix he was working on for a Spank Rock remix competition and she recorded a rap over it. They've received moderate popularity for their track "Jerk It" featured in the 2008 film The Wrestler. Thunderheist was selected as the X3 Artist of the month by Aux.tv, CBC Radio 3 and Exclaim! Magazine for April 2009. Their self-titled full-length was released March 31, 2009. They were nominated for a 2010 Juno Award in the Dance Recording of the Year category.
Ritchie Acheampong, better known as Rich Kidd, is a Canadian hip hop recording artist, record producer and film/video director from Toronto, Ontario. He is a two-time nominee for the Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year as a solo artist, garnering nominations at the Juno Awards of 2013 for The Closers and at the Juno Awards of 2014 for In My Opinion. In 2013, he formed the project Naturally Born Strangers with collaborators Tona and Adam Bomb. That group's debut release, The Legends League Presents: Naturally Born Strangers, won the Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2015.
Jewish hip hop is a genre of hip hop music with thematic, stylistic, or cultural ties to Judaism and its musical traditions.
Haviah Mighty is a Canadian rapper from Brampton, Ontario. She rose to prominence in 2016 as a member of the hip hop group the Sorority, before releasing several EPs on her own, most notably Flower City, in 2017. Her first album, 13th Floor, was released in 2019 and won the Polaris Music Prize. After her debut, XXL named her one of the "15 Toronto rappers you should know" and CBC Music called her one of the "New Faces of Canadian Hip Hop".