Video: The Foreign Exchange - Daykeeper

Hailing from the Netherlands, Grammy-nominated musician and producer Nicolay is an independent in every sense of the word. The Dutch producer first made his mark in a transatlantic collaborative project with Phonte Coleman , who at the time was ½ of the highly respected North Carolina hip-hop duo, Little Brother . The two met on OkayPlayer message boards after Phonte asked to place rhymes over one of Nicolay’s beats. The two have since gone on to form the Grammy-nominated independent group, The Foreign Exchange [...]

Tonight's The Foreign Exchange show should probably get two separate previews: one for Phonte, one for Nicolay. As far as collaborations go, they’re practically parallel lines. Nicolay, a producer from the Netherlands, makes electronic music across all genres; Phonte, a rapper from North Carolina—and a member of the classic trio, Little Brother—is all about hip hop. Nicolay and Phonte crossed paths in 2004 on Questlove’s hip hop forum, Okayplayer. The buzz back then, when we were still amazed by the internet, was that the duo exchanged their beats and rhymes via the web, creating [...]

BASSEKOU KOUYATE (Oregon Zoo, 4001 SW Canyon) In the 1980s, when Bassekou Kouyate was still making a name for himself as a sideman, playing in groups with the likes of Ali Farka Tour� and Toumani Diabat�, he shocked his native Mali simply by wearing a strap and standing up to play solos on his ngoni-an ancient, traditional West African stringed instrument akin to a lute crossed with a banjo. Now the leader of his own band, Ngoni ba-with four standing ngoni players-Kouyate plucks out a jubilant, life-affirming style of desert blues that just can't be played, or watched, while [...]