AfricaIs aCountry

"When It Hits You, You Feel No Pain"

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

"When It Hits You, You Feel No Pain"

By
Sean Jacobs

“When It Hits You, You Feel No Pain”: A Conversation about Music and Politics

Wednesday, April 27 · 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Lang Cafe, The New School, 65 West 11th Street, NY, NY, 10003

65 West 11th Street

New York, NY

Music has power to move people’s bodies, but does it have power to move their bodies into action? Music and politics are often intimate partners in society whether an artist consciously connects them or not. What role does music play in the politics of today’s world?

What is the responsibility of artists as public figures to be politically conscious? Can the two stand on their own, or are they forever linked? We will explore some of these and other questions at this panel as part of GPIA’s Media and Culture Concentration’s

Conversations series.

With invited panelists Brian Jackson (musician/composer and Gil Scott Heron’s main musical collaborator in the 1970s), Raquel Cepeda (journalist and director of “Bling, A Planet Rock”), DJ Laylo (DJ/filmmaker), Eddie ‘Stats’ Houghton (journalist, The Fader), Wills Glasspiegel (artist manager and radio producer) and Masauko Chipembere (musician, composer).

The panel will be moderated by Megan Bandle (South Africa House Initiative, Brooklyn).

Organized by Sean Jacobs and Boima Tucker.

Plus, Afterparty at Cayenne featuring Eddie Stats and Boima DJing
128 West Houston. Starting at 10pm
Celebrating Sierra Leone’s 50th Independence Anniversary

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.