The Distance to Amherst: How Far Is the Internet?

It must have been over four years since I first encountered the music blog Benn Loxo du Taccu. It would have been when I was still living at home outside Boston—still in or just have gotten out of high school. I think I remember how I found the blog: by clicking through the links bar of the distinguished (as far as that term can be applied to such a young medium) music blog Fluxblog. I must have downloaded a few songs; I had been trying a bit of this and that from the different music blogs on the list. As I listened, I discovered I really dug all of what I downloaded from Benn Loxo.

Now music blogs are semi-well known. There are search engines like The Hype Machine that index their entries. The writer of Fluxblog has joined the staff at Pitchfork. There was probably been an article in The New York Times “Style Section.” At the time though, they were new and fresh, still developing the accepted posturing and presentation that comes with a codified form. Benn Loxo’s initial conceit was that it contained exclusively African music (now, the music is sourced internationally, from any country the writer, Matt Yanchyshyn, has visited). Even though Mr. Yanchyshyn would routinely feature very different African cultures or musical movements in his posts, I enjoyed all most all of his choices and would routinely download from him. Whatever his guiding taste was in picking the music, it closely matched my own. His blog is one of the few that I don’t download selectively from, instead trusting that anything he picks out I will like.

Mr. Yanchyshyn is a Canadian record collector who started blogging about music when he started to live in Senegal. He traveled around and then moved to Paris, he continued writing about African music (until very recently). His posts are characterized not just by the good music, but the apparent research and knowledge about the music and the African music scene he tries to transmit in each entry. (This information is from this piece at AfricanLoft).