Remember when I asked if anyone had seen the mystery vocalist from Kutiman's "I'm New"?

We found her.

Her name is Mandy. The video was always there - the credits just had the wrong ID (one letter was off!)

Here's the real one:

She's @va_songstress on Twitter. Turns out she didn't even know about Kutiman until people started flooding her YouTube comments:

OMG!!! I was ready to cry because i was honored that someone even posted my video in their work! I didnt know it was on here until you posted this comment!!! »

And:

OMG everyone knew about this video before me!!!!! i love the video Kutiman did! »

The internet came through.

Meanwhile, the coverage keeps coming:

Thru You is everywhere. A million views in less than a week.

Some backstory on Kutiman: he grew up in a small village in northern Israel with no record stores. Moved to Tel Aviv at 19, met DJ Sabbo, and discovered funk for the first time:

Fela Kuti, Parliament, The Meters, King Crimson and, of course, James Brown changed my world... If I hadn't heard these amazing artists, I think my music would simply be boring.

Wired got him on the phone:

I didn't expect it to blow up like this, even in my wildest dreams. I live in a small city in a small neighborhood in a small house in a small country. I didn't expect it to get this big this fast.

And on the process:

I downloaded a clip from a drummer, who I now realize is Bernard Purdie, who's sessioned on all kinds of records. All it needed was some bass and guitar; I loved the idea that I was playing along with him and he didn't even know it. But once I decided to download another clip and play over it, I thought, 'Why not get another video to play over it?' Since then, I haven't really slept or eaten. I lost track of night and day. I'd just pass out and wake up on the computer. I was fascinated by the idea. It was so magical.

Lawrence Lessig, who literally wrote the book on remix culture:

Watch this, and you'll understand everything and more than what I try to explain in my book.
...
If you come to the Net armed with the idea that the old system of copyright is going to work just fine here, this more than anything is going to get you to recognize: you need some new ideas.

The takes:

Seven years ago today, my cousin Alon was murdered by a suicide bomber on a bus, on his way to Nazareth. I translated an article, from about a week after the terror attack, written by Natan Zahavi, a good friend of the family.

The Saint

Natan Zahavi says goodbye to Alon Goldenberg, his best friend's son, who was killed in a terror attack in Wadi Ara

Natan Zahavi, 26/03/02

Wherever he went, people stopped and stared. "God, he looks like Jesus", they said. Alon Goldenberg, 27 and a half, was murdered on the way to the courthouse in Nazareth because of some shitty offence (with a maximum fine of 200 shekels, in the worst case). 1.98 meters, weighing 83 kilos, a muscular body without a drop of fat, sun-burnt blonde dreadlocks, a tiny ginger beard, green-blue eyes. A good person who never wronged anyone in his life, said the hippie kids when they surrounded his fresh grave and sang for him. Son of the sea, surfer, Yogi, traveler, photographer, a starting philosopher, a human being that seemed like he didn't belong in this filthy world of ours, went up to the heavens in a fiery explosion because of a programmed suicide bomber sent by a maniac neighbor, those referred to as our cousins; yet another victim of the endless struggle between the damned descendants of Abraham.

Update: We found her!

Kutiman's "I'm New" is my favorite track from Thru You. The vocals in the second part are haunting.

But when you click through to the source video in the credits...

The video you have requested is not available.

It points to nothing. Somewhere on YouTube there's a girl singing this song, and I can't find her.

If you know who this singer is, contact @nivs or @kutiman.

Update: Check out Researching ThruYOU for downloads and information about Kutiman's YouTube remix project

Yesterday, when I first set my eyes and ears on what Ophir Kutiel (aka Kutiman) did, my mind was immediately blown away by the freshness, the untamed talent and the attention to detail. Did it really take him only two months to produce?!

The minimalist site, thru-you.com (which is down, again), designed by Bacon Oppenheim (who also did the amazing Innovid website), gave the perfect feeling. The music and visuals sent shivers down my spine and gave me goose bumps (especially the final part of I'm New).

I found myself feeling the same astonishment when I first listened to DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist's Brainfreeze, or during Coldcut's live performance in Tel Aviv. I immediately started downloading the MP3 tracks - I had to "own" a copy... Then I went over some of the original videos, which were used as samples in the tracks, and started having YouTube conversations with some of the surprised talents, who seemed extremely flattered (as they should!). Then I emailed Kutiman (and got a very warm response from his agent), and started sending everyone I know to the site... which was already down. I'm still wondering why they chose to stream the video from their servers, instead of using YouTube's most powerful feature - embed. Since I didn't want people not to be able to experience it, I set up a very minimalist "unofficial mirror" site, containing the MP3 files and the YouTube videos downwithutube put online (great thinking, and kudos for including all the links to the originals!).

Kuti, if you're listening, you are a genius, and I think you've just started a revolution (just an example: see what Kevin Rochowski wrote here. He immediately went to the iTunes store and purchased Kutiman's debut album).

I am new.

I have some troubling thoughts after seeing the movie "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West":

1. It got me thinking about meme evolution and about Hawks vs. Doves (Game Theory) I learned about in Richard Dawkins' book "The Selfish Gene".
2. In a way, this is a struggle, and only one lifestyle can prevail - the Western, modern, free, skeptic way of life, or the ultra-conservative, religious way. However, the clashes between these opposite forces are important and natural factors in any social change.
3. Which one will win? Which will be more "adaptive"? Will the aggressive one win?
4. A quote from the movie still troubles me. A translation of the word Jihad supposedly means "inner-struggle". So does "Mein Kampf".
5. Another troubling quote: "Zionists [are] the spoiled offspring of the entity". Their God ("entity") means a world of difference from what I see in my mind when I think about God. And it's supposed to be the same god.
6. The question "Why do they hate us" leads us to blame ourselves. They must be suffering if they are so frustrated, otherwise, why would they spend that much energy, instead of just live and enjoy life? We must have done something to them! This is a very logical thought, which is very widespread in the Academia and with Leftists - but could it be that there is another explanation?
7. Additional quote: "If you want to get people to fight, you have to make them think that there is a threat and that they are in danger". People who are angry become hateful. This enables them to fight.
8. When they say "Death to America", what they're actually saying is "Death to Change", or "Death to Modernism".
9. People who try to see themselves from their perspective, like the extreme leftists, are acting dumb, thinking their "minds" are alike. The language, ideas and culture is so different, they think in different terms. They have a different meaning. It's very politically correct to try to put ourselves in their shoes, but this thought experiment can be very very wrong.
10. Additional quote: "Every one [in the West] is ignorant. Someone always says 'this is just an extremist group', and the speaker feels not politically correct for the generalization".
11. People around me seem to idolize Democracy, forgetting it's not perfect. It has merely "done less harm, and more good, than any other form of government" (Will Durant, The Lessons of History). It is especially not designed to withstand advanced, post-modern attacks against it.
12. Yet again, we are "strangling ourselves with our Political Correctness", which reminds me to re-read Gadi Taub's "A Dispirited Rebellion" (המרד השפוף). How come there is no Gadi Taub page in the English Wikipedia?
13. In order to create a clear-cut between friend and foe, the movie claims, there must have been a global, unifying event which would unite the world - Muslims and non-Muslims. This clear-cut was made, in their eyes, with the events of 9/11. For us, it's still very very hard to determine who's a friend and who's a foe, because there are too many options. It's not as clear-cut. This enables combatants to live among civilians and infiltration. This made me think about a Computer Anti-Virus analogy - but in the West's case, the detection of viruses is very very difficult.
14. The movie talks quite a lot about this struggle as a continuation of Nazism. I'm afraid it's a lot worse. This is DISTRIBUTED NAZISM.
15. A very painful claim that is made in the movie is about the extremists' crime against their children. The worst form of child-abuse is education to hatred. We all see, and ignore, what goes on in the Palestinian, Iranian and the rest of the Arab/Muslim world's media. Blood, gore, body parts - and this is what their children are exposed to. And this is not only the extremists here, this is the mainstream.

These are just several points, off my head. I would love to read your comments and discuss this with anyone. I'm afraid that as time passes, it's going to be too late to stop World War 3, if it isn't already.