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DNA and the MDC on Fast Company

2012-05-18T14:04:36Z

We made Fast Company! Check it out

Derrick Ashong On Going Viral, Again and Again

BY Adam Bluestein | 05-17-2012 | 9:31 AM

Whether in the role of front man for world-music band Soulfege, hosting an award-winning TV show, or creating a better business model for independent artists, Derrick Ashong is just trying to communicate.

read more at Fast Company

A Global Mother's Day Shout Out

2012-05-12T14:17:14Z

This Mother's Day the band wanted to send a global shout out to all the Sweet Mothers of the world! So we've started a social media campaign to share the "Sweet Mother" remix video with the women we love, along w/ a free download mp3 download of "Sweet Remix"!

Download the Free mp3 of 'SweetRemix' via SoundCloud

Whether you remember the epic story behind the making of this video in DNA's hometown of Accra, Ghana, or you're seeing it for the first time, it is a tribute to the mothers across the globe who make our world go 'round. Please share it as a Mother's Day love letter to every mother you know!

Happy Mother's Day!

Bully

2012-05-10T20:49:39Z

Photo by: Jonathan Ernst / Getty Images

Today's Washington Post online has a revealingly in-depth story on Mitt Romney's mistreatment of some of his classmates as a high school student at the Cranbrook private school in Detroit back in the 1960s. In short, it details conversations with a number of his peers who recount him engaging in, and sometimes leading, bullying behavior towards students perceived to be gay (among other youthful "pranks"). Romney has denied any recollection of these activities, and issued the usual tepid Washington non-apology.

A couple of quick thoughts. First, I don't think it's fair to judge Mitt Romney the "60-something-year-old presidential candidate" by something Mitt Romney the "high-school prankster" did. I know it's tempting to all the people who can't stand the guy, and I must admit he's not currently on my Christmas card list. But something he did FIFTY YEARS AGO would have to be a lot worse than this to disqualify him from consideration - President Obama was smokin' weed and carrying on himself around the same age, and Lawd knows that Bill Clinton and GW were up to...

That said, what is fair to consider is how the present-day Mitt Romney responds to the allegations of misdeeds against his younger self. I kind of wish he'd just said "you know, I remember that incident and I've always regretted it. I wish I'd taken the time to apologize to that gentleman before he died." Oh yes, if you missed that part of the story, the victim of the most disturbing act of bullying succumbed to cancer in 2004. Today Mitt issued a general apology for any ancient malfeasance, even though he claims not to remember it. I wonder if he ever apologized to the victim, while dude was still alive? That's a greater measure of the man than the childhood ignorance we were all complicit in to some degree or other.

Turns out a second victim of Mitt Romney's bullying is in fact still alive today. Care to apologize to him Governor Romney? The rest of us don't really need the generalized apology, so maybe you might make a phone call?

It would say a lot more to us about the kind of man you are today.

D.N.A

American Taliban

2012-04-30T16:14:30Z

This Saturday I had the opportunity and honor to participate in the Unite Against The War on Women rally in Washington DC. The issue of the degradation of women's rights in this country is something I've been thinking about for a while now, but the impetus to attend the rally actually came from Facebook. One of the organizers of the campaign had reached out to us about using "Fight On" as the soundtrack for one of their videos and we agreed:

The interesting thing about the request is that while "Fight On" was written with oppressed people in mind, a big part of the theme of those who "fight on in a world that doesn't see them" is specifically inspired by the bravery and challenges faced by women around the world - those who don't get medals when the soldiers come home, but who nonetheless keep the world moving and make our lives worth living.

Today the rights of women are under assault in the United States by leaders who preach "small government" while practicing the politics of invasive ultrasounds. It strikes me that this actually follows a pattern we've seen in many parts of the world, where predominantly male leaders in societies facing significant challenges, latch onto the issue of a woman's "virtue" as a panacea for society's ills. Such efforts are couched in terms of honoring women, yet they result in such heinous practices as the prevention of girls from attending school in Afghanistan, women being forced to marry their rapists in parts of the Middle East, and the practice of Female Genital Mutilation in parts of Africa.

For Westerners these perspectives are seen as barbaric and a world away from anything we can understand. But how far are we from "barbarism" when an opinion leader like Rush Limbaugh can call Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" for testifying in Congress about women's contraception, and the putative leader of the GOP, Mitt Romney, doesn't have the balls to take him to task on it? The whole right-wing peanut gallery was likewise silent about the original all-male panel on the subject. If silence is consent, we have a political movement in this country today that is pretty Medieval in it's view of women's rights.

Now wait, some will argue - this is not about women but the rights of the unborn. Is all this controversy, truly based on the American right's love of children? If so, then certainly the policies advanced by the conservative leadership would clearly be pro-mother-&-child right? House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's budget reflects added money for pre-natal care and early childhood education right?

That's a bigger joke than anything we heard at the White House Corrrespondent's Dinner. We all know that these people's money has never been put where there mouths are (with the exception of Mitt Romney who apparently has money pouring out of every Swiss orifice). This is not about serving the interests of women nor children, it's about the exercise of power by men who feel powerless to address the real economic, social & political challenges facing the nation.

Looking at all this through that lens, I'd argue you don't need to be a feminist to realize that the so-called "War on Women" is really an abdication of responsibility by our leaders and as such it's assault on all of us. Whether you consider yourself liberal, conservative or indy like me, we all deserve better from our leadership. And until our leaders start pursuing policies that will provide good jobs for people other than ultrasound technicians, we need to stand firm with our mothers, daughters, sisters and lovers to hold those leaders to account. This ain't Afghanistan. The buck stops at our feet.

Peace,

D.N.A

Million Download Campaign - Palm Beach

2012-04-24T14:26:16Z

Last week I got to attend the Palm Beach International Film Festival to screen our animated short Love Rain Down. I actually had to go straight down to FL after hosting an awesome summit on social media marketing hosted by BazaarVoice. I left with a mindful of creative business ideas, and headed straight into a meeting of people in the business of creativity.

On arrival in Palm Beach I was a little confused as everything was not necessarily happening in the same area. The only other film festival I've been to is Sundance, where it's pretty much impossible to miss where things are going down. Just follow the nearest herd of people slogging through the snows of Park City in any given direction & you'll wind up at something awesome.

Palm Beach, however, had events going down around a much bigger town and in some of the neighboring ones, so the first thing I made sure to do was to literally get lost (no they didn't ask me to "get lost", I took it upon myself thank you very much). Once I finally figured out where things were, I managed to arrive at our screening just in time to see some remarkable short films. Two of them that particularly stood out for me were "Carboard Titanics" and "The Game". The first is a hilarious comedy about people putting they're all into something totally unnecessary - the building and sailing of boats made entirely of cardboard & a smidge of ducktape. The second is an ingenious & chilling animation of two people sitting down to play an otherworldly chess game with extremely high-stakes. Definitely encourage you to watch both.

Probably the best part of the experience for me, was the opportunity to speak to the attendees and filmmakers after our screening. Not only did we get an amazingly warm reception, but people were immediately looking for ways to collaborate. A filmmaker even asked me if I think of myself as a musician or a filmmaker first? He might as well have asked if I consider myself a humanoid or a jelly donut, but I was super flattered. ;)

I wound up having an amazing conversation with a group of filmmakers about the whole concept of open source culture and what it means for all of us as artists. Of course I had to tell them about the Million DOWNLOAD Campaign and they immediately "got it." It would be interesting to see how some of these ideas work in other areas of the arts. In the meantime, I've gotta' give mad love to the Palm Beach International Film Festival for recognizing & highlighting our work. Check out the other films & support creativity in all it's forms!

One love,

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

Wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

Million Download Campaign - Download & Share

2012-04-09T16:07:49Z

I took a weekend to relax away from Social Media & returned to find a flood of tweets, FB comments, messages etc. Thanks for all the outpouring of love! Rather than engage in a losing battle to answer all those notes individually, I'm going to let you all know what I'm up to it in the simplest way I can en masse:

Many of you know I've had a longstanding interest in how principles from the open source software movement, could be applied to other areas of culture. There are cool examples of it at play in areas ranging from visual art to farming and development, and of course in music. Back in 2004 I wrote the The FAM Manifesto, a text outlining a vision of how open source ideas could help revolutionize and ultimately expand and strengthen the music industry.

I'm going to spend the rest of this year doubling down on that theory. There's a huge opportunity for artistry, enterprise and society in rethinking how we "make, mix & move" music. The Million DOWNLOAD Campaign is all about putting that thought into action. DOWNLOAD & Share!

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

Wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

Sweet Mother

2012-04-05T16:35:04Z

Today is a very special day for a number of reasons. I'll try not to be extra mushy about it, but it's my last day on The Stream. Over the last year I've had an incredible opportunity to speak to people around the world about things that they care about. From the challenges facing youth in Bosnia, to the revolutionary change happening in the Arab World, and the rise of Private Prisons in the US. I've been able to catch a glimpse of what moves people to stand up and be counted.

I've had the opportunity to work with an amazing team, who daily put heart and soul into highlighting the untold stories of those who are too often forgotten by global society - to literally give voice to the voiceless and to do so with dignity and honesty and somehow manage to have a good time doing it. In the past year we've challenged the prevailing notions of what broadcast media should be and dived headfirst into the possibilities of what it could be. We've taken heat for doing so, and we've received kudos. I can't tell you how wonderful the feeling is to work with a group of people so fully committed to giving people across the planet a chance to speak their own truth. I want to take this moment to speak a bit of mine.

Something that's been particularly moving for me in working on The Stream has been the chance to highlight amazing stories from Africa. Whether the continent's connection to the global Maker Movement, the rise of #OccupyNigeria, or the innovation happening across the continent. This has been meaningful for me not only because I'm Ghanaian, but because for many years I was frustrated at the limited, skewed and often lazy depictions of who "we are" as Africans. Long before I joined The Stream I decided to make my own statement on that very point, through a music video showing a "day-in-the-life" of my hometown Accra:

The African continent has a wealth of material, cultural and human resources and I believe we are at a crucial juncture in our history where we have a real opportunity to see our great potential become manifest. In a few weeks I'll be making a visit to Accra to give a farewell send off to my dear sweet Grandma, who helped instill in me the love of my homeland, her people and all we have to offer (if you watch the video carefully you will see her). It was through her legacy and that of all my forebears that I learned the value of knowing when to speak and when to listen - so that others might also be heard.

In leaving The Stream I feel proudest that I was a part of helping so many people be heard. So I want to dedicate this special day to two very special women - my dear Mmaa whom I will never forget so long as I live, and the woman she gave birth to, who would grow to teach me the value of living for something greater than myself. Today I honor you my Sweet Mothers. I could never have come so far without you.

D.N.A

Million Download Campaign - The Race to 50K

2012-04-02T12:45:13Z

So it's been another eventful week and we've hit a crucial milestone. Over the weekend we crossed 40K tracks & remixes downloaded from AFropolitan! This has been strictly through word of mouth & people like YOU sharing it on Facebook & Twitter, writing articles, posting about it on your blogs, translating it into seven languages, and telling friends and family to take a chance on some new music & a revolutionary concept.

Next Monday the Million DOWNLOAD Campaign will have been in effect for three months. To help us commemorate that moment we are asking you to help us make a real statement. We want to hit 50K tracks downloaded by next Monday April 9th, which means we need to get 10K this week!

To do that we we need your help. Please share this blog post through your social networks, email lists, blogs, newsletters, fan sites and anywhere else you can think to post it. Share it with a friend who would also be willing to share it on their blog, social networks etc. Host a listening/download party & send us the pics! Invite us to do a Skype presentation to your students, colleagues & friends about what this is all about and why we're doing it. Even if you've done ALL this things before, we are asking you to pick two of them to do again this week.

The thing that makes this project so special, is also what makes it so simple. Fundamentally, this is about sharing music you love with the people you love. Imagine you download a great song from iTunes and you want your best friend to hear it. How do you share it? Either you need to ask them to go buy it themselves (which is a good thing to do), or maybe you play it for them when you're together (which is also a good thing to do). But what if in a few clicks you could share it with your friend, your mom, your college roommate and whomever else you think would love it, and they could download and discover the sound that's got your ears abuzz! How easily can you do that today, and how easily can they check out a new and amazing artist they've never heard of before?

The Million DOWNLOAD Campaign not only gives us an opportunity to share our music with you, it also gives us all an opportunity to reflect on how we really want to discover, enjoy and share new music. When we hit that million mark we will have made history by showing the incredible power of an open source approach to sharing music, to put a band and a movement on the map. Help us get to 50K this week. DOWNLOAD & SHARE!

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

Wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

Healthcare 101: Part II

2012-03-28T12:17:02Z

In yesterday's Healthcare Part I post I wrote about the basic factors that create the need for an individual mandate if you want to have a functioning private insurance market; particularly one that doesn't penalize people for pre-existing conditions nor engage in denial of coverage shenanigans. But there's another side of this argument. Conservatives will tell you that this is an unprecedented example of government overreach. That it creates a slippery slope towards government forcing us to buy all sorts of things, and that an individual should not be forced to participate in a market they don't want to.

It sounds like a reasonable argument, but in fact it's highly disingenuous. It's the kind of argument that's promulgated by people who are either ignorant of how healthcare works (which is kind of understandable, since it's so durn complex), or by people who are playing politics with the nation's future (which is much less understandable the more you understand what they're doing). Let's start with the latter group of people and think about why their argument stinks.

First, it can't be said often nor emphatically enough that the idea of the individual mandate is in fact a REPUBLICAN IDEA. It was championed by the Heritage Foundation and prominent Republicans like Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, and of course most famously: Mitt Romney. The idea was pushed forward during the "Hillarycare" debate as an alternative to Bill Clinton's proposal that would mandate employers cover the cost of health insurance. Republicans countered with a proposal that "individuals" should be mandated to provide their own insurance, which fit with their ideology of supporting the business community and promoting individual responsibility.

In fact, Republicans thought the individual mandate was such a good idea that then-Governor Mitt Romney, made it a center-piece of his Massachusetts healthcare reform initiative and lo & behold it worked! 98% of Massachusetts residents and 99% of children now have coverage. Unlike the Affordable Care Act, the Mass law punted on addressing cost controls (though one could definitely argue Obamacare doesn't do enough on this either), but it did manage to expand coverage and apparently improve health. Gov Romney went on to crow that it should be a model for the nation, which it became under President Obama. Confused that this doesn't sound like what Romney is saying today? That's because it isn't. Romney today hates Obamneycare, because...well, because Obama did it. Call it an Etch-A-Sketch moment...

The GOP establishment believes healthcare to be a good political issue for them, and so they've switched sides on their own proposal. Craven? Perhaps. Surprising? Not if you've been observing the recent trend towards increasingly partisan politics in this country. But what about the people who are not political salamanders? The ones who are generally worried about their freedom? I saw a Tea Party leader on Hardball Monday night, who spoke passionately against the dangers of Obamacare. She repeated again and again that the American people "don't want it." Chris Matthews asked her a question about the uninsured. She responded that she herself had once been uninsured and the doctors and hospitals had worked with her - that no one would be turned away.

In that moment she made the other side's argument.

This woman may not realize it, but she's effectively a free-rider in our healthcare system (or at least she was). When doctors and hospitals "worked" with her to reduce her costs, what they wound up doing was one of two things: A) eating the costs themselves or B) passing the costs on to Govt. Either way, the rest of us wind up paying for her care in the form of higher insurance premiums or taxation. If you don't believe me, just look at the case of Mary Brown. She's the lead plaintiff in the Healthcare lawsuit currently before the Supreme Court. She just filed for bankruptcy leaving behind a raft of unpaid medical bills. Guess who's now paying for her so-called "freedom?"

People have talked for years about the sense of entitlement in our society, but this takes it to another level. You want to be free not to pay for health insurance, you figure the tooth-fairy is gonna' pick up the tab anyway, so damn Obamacare to heck right? In the end it seems some conservatives truly love individual responsibility...as long as they don't have to practice it themselves.

To be fair, there ARE ways to have a viable healtchare system without an individual mandate - conservatives just happen to hate all of them (well, maybe all but one). In the next post we'll take a look at the good, the bad & the ugly alternatives to Obamacare.

D.N.A

Healthcare 101: Part I

2012-03-27T13:19:00Z

For the past week the media has been abuzz with talk of the Affordable Care Act, affectionately known to most of us as "ObamaCare". The source of this buzz, is the fact that the legal challenge to the individual mandate provision of the sweeping healthcare law, has reached the Supreme Court. Today in fact that very provision goes to oral argument before the justices, and the media-fueled rhetoric around it has been heated. I'd like to take a moment to point out the obvious just for the sake of my own conscience.

First of all, I do understand the reticence many people have about the individual mandate. "The Govt is gonna' tell me what to do & what to buy?? Oh hell naw. Next thing you know, we'll all be wearing jumpsuits & eating broccoli!" This was my own basic & flawed thinking on the topic prior to the 2009 healthcare debate, which is why I supported candidate Obama's approach over candidate Clinton's. But in the end that healthcare debate did indeed change my mind & here's why in plainish English:

If we're going to have a system of privately issued insurance (which we do have, and which the govt has made no moves to get rid of), we run into a basic problem: healthy people don't wanna' buy it. To be specific, young & healthy people in particular don't see the point. It's a bad investment - I feel good, I take care of myself, the odds of being hit by a car are low so, I'd rather spend my money on beer. This is actually pretty sound logic if you're young & have no medical problems.

If you're old and/or sick, however, you desperately need medical insurance. Why? Because the out-of-pocket costs are prohibitively expensive for the average humanoid to afford. What naturally tends to happen to insurance markets then, is they become dominated by sick people who use up lots of insurance services, with relatively few healthy people to offset the cost. This automatically breaks the system. The only way insurance works, is if 100 of us buy fire insurance and when 1 of us loses a house to a fire, the insurance company can use the money collected over years from all 100 of us to pay the damages. If 50 or 60 of us have house fires, the system can't work.

Private health insurance can only operate if the preponderance of participants are in fact HEALTHY. This is why Insurance companies don't want to insure the sick - the infamous "pre-existing" condition clause. And if you were an insurance company, frankly you wouldn't either. The math doesn't work out. But you're not an insurance company are you? You're probably a soft, carbon-based lifeform that's thinking about eating a chocolate bar right now. In which case, if you determine you need health insurance you don't want to hear from every company you call that no we won't cover you because you have, say diabetes. And if you do have diabetes that is EXACTLY what you're likely to hear if you try to buy insurance. In the midst of the Great Recession if, like many Americans, you lost a job that used to cover you and now you're in the healthcare market on your own, you're pretty much screwed. Pre-existing condition = no soup for you!!

Well since we all hate the pre-existing condition clause, why don't we just get rid of it! Great idea! With a small caveat...if you get rid of it, how do insurance companies stay solvent & capable of providing the insurance promised (instead of weaseling out of covering bills as some have been wont to do)? Remember, only sick people and old people (who by virtue of being old, are more likely to eventually become sick) are interested in buying health insurance. The answer: you mandate that "everyone" buy insurance, thus giving insurance companies the mathematical liberty to actually get rid of practices like the "pre-existing condition" & denial of coverage.

The "conservative" argument against this of course, is that it's an infringement upon freedom - why should the government be able to force me into a market I don't want to be a part of, just because I'm "alive"? Aside from the fact that the individual mandate is in fact a 20 year-old Republican policy proposal, this argument is fundamentally flawed because like it or not, you ARE a part of the healthcare market, and sad as it may be...it's just because you're alive! This is the argument that the government is going to make in support of the healthcare law and it is the correct argument. In part two of this post I will explain why. First I need to go grab a chocolate bar.

D.N.A