Sunday, March 28

Kenya's First Viral Music Video: An Auto-Tuned, Blaxploitation-Themed Epic | Dan's FC Blog | Fast Company

makmende amerundi

Just a Band's music video (or, more accurately, short film set to music) is a pastiche of blaxploitation like Shaft, crime-centric American film ranging from Tarantino to the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage," and a dash of kung fu tropes, all tossed together and filtered through the lens of another country. It's funny, violent, at times confusing, low-budget, and undeniably fun--in other words, of course it's going viral.

The video, for the song "Ha-He," is the first such video to really take off in Kenya. It's gotten tens of thousands of hits (no comparison to the "OMG cat," but that's not really a fair fight--look how surprised that cat is!) in just a week, and the Wall Street Journal reports that it even launched its own "Chuck Norris quote" phenomenon for the main character, Makmende. (Our favorite: Makmende can tweet 141 characters).

The song itself is pretty catchy too, using Antares's Autotune to create a song that sounds a bit like the Black Eyed Peas, minus the ear-stabbing horribleness. And the song along with the video has spread like wildfire across Kenya--it's the first real homegrown "have you seen this video?" moment, and should pave the way for all kinds of cute Kenyan animal videos. The video, here: The Wall Street Journal

Posted via web from sophie's posterous

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