Music Video: Irie Révoltés - Zeit ist Geld

A couple of months ago, I profiled four bands that play in French, but who come from elsewhere.  Today, I bring an unofficial fifth.  Irie Révoltés comes from Heidelberg, Germany, but for some reason they sing about 70% of their songs in French, with most of the rest in German.  To my own ear, it's an exciting mix because Irie Révoltés' music combines the Gallic tongue with decidedly Teutonic inspired reggae, ska, hip-hop, and electronic beats, with the music changing the feel of the language, and the language changing the feel of the music.

A good example of this mix is Irie Révoltés' song, Zeit ist Geld.  This is heavily electronic hip-hop, with some ska horns mixed in, and lyrics in both German and French.  As Irie Révoltés is an explicitly political band (thus the name of the band), this linguistic and musical internationalism merely adds further punch to their universal message of speaking to the common man.

Music Video: Uwe Banton - Aufstehn

Friday afternoons in the summertime always put me in the mood for reggae.  Yeah, I know that traditional roots reggae is typically a voice of protest against social injustice, but it is still so hard to not think of sipping rum on a beach when you hear that groove.  For that perfect combination of social protest and Caribbean groove on this beautiful sunny Friday afternoon, I bring you German reggae legend Uwe Banton with one of his very few German language songs, Aufstehn. If watching a bearded and heavily dreadlocked white German sing roots reggae has you scratching your head, I encourage you to close your eyes and open your ears.  Uwe Banton brings you roots reggae at its best.