If you’re passing through Brussels the next months and you haven’t seen Belgian painter Luc Tuymans’s series Mwana Kitoko: Beautiful White Man yet, go visit his retrospective (Friday 02.18 > Sunday 05.08) at BOZAR. The original 2000 exhibition’s title ‘Mwana Kitoko’ refers to “the rather derogatory nickname Mwana Kitoko, i.e. beautiful boy, which was given to Belgian’s young King Baudouin by the Congolese, and which was promptly changed by the Congolese authorities to the more respectful and authoritative Bwana Kitoko, i.e. beautiful, noble man.” [Source]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muV6e1HPxcY&w=500&h=307] S: What does this say about contemporary white Afrikaans speaking music culture? T: That Van Coke Kartel prefers True Blood over sushi? That Francois van Coke is still a better actor than he is a singer? How I wish they'd come up with something fresh... I hope these guys (in this video) have got the crediting all sorted: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D8cDAk_dho&w=500&h=307] S: The tune's not that great. Sounds like your average Country Music Television band. T: That tune's terrible, no need to be diplomatic, I was pointing to the fact they're now even openly recycling. It's as if the only one getting something right/original is director/animator Louis Minnaar (who, admittedly, also did some stuff for Van Coke): check his work (and lyrics) for Bittereinder for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDnHBdaw1j8 S: I like how the Bittereinder video is shot. H: This is the first time I’ve seen/heard Willim Welsyn, and the first time I’ve seen the Bittereinder video–just recently listened to their CD for the first time. But this brief first listen did not impress me much–their music struck me as rather lame and clumsy (there’s one track on the CD with Tumi and the Volume which is not too bad – the parts with Tumi in them). The Welsyn song’s politics are predictable and transparent--perhaps a cheap trick--but there’s something in the tune’s nihilism that I quite like – like it could have been made into a decent song by a band that had a sense of humour about bleakness (I thought of e.g. the Belgian band Gorki). T: About Tumi: a fair piece was published on Mahala today.  There's a video of that Bittereinder/Tumi/Jack Parow song as well: A Tale of Three Cities: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JPpozgOOyI I grew up with Gorki. Their song 'Mia' anually ends up in the Top 3 of Radio 1's "Tijdloze Honderd". Rightfully so, but then I wonder whether it would resonate across our borders (apparently it does, H?). I don't think Willim Welsyn resonates beyond the Afrikaans festivals. Do they appear on MK at all? H: I’m not sure Gorki resonates beyond weirdo’s like me. I once interviewed them when they were invited to an Afrikaans festival in Potchefstroom (in the Northwest Province, a highly repressed Calvinist outpost) and nobody seemed to care about them. Afrikaans audiences only like Dutch/Flemish stuff when it’s schmalzy like Stef Bos or Herman van Veen. T: Don't forget Dana Winner (got ripped off by her manager when in South Africa during her last tour, forcing her to cancel many shows, disappointing hundreds of tannies). I've done five months of fieldwork in Potch. That was enough, really. On the other hand, I saw an Afrikaans interpretation of Festen (the play) at Aardklop. Now that was quite something. H: Five days in Potch were enough for me. T: Ethnographic fieldwork can bring you to the most interesting places. Speaking of festivals: have you seen this year's Woordfees line-up? With the exception of a handful of authors, all of them were also programmed the first time I attended it five years ago. But I read Arnon Grunberg has also been invited. They don't know what's gonna hit them. Oh, and there was one other song I liked last year: Will Mono & Jan Joknie's "Seks vir Plesier," [Sex for Pleasure] nominated for this year's MK awards in the category 'Beste Pornster': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZrlm2ap7ZE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTBlOvNzXzQ Illa J, younger brother of J Dilla, teams up with Belgian producer Cris Prolific. February is Dilla Month. - Tom Devriendt

[vodpod id=Video.5523753&w=500&h=411&fv=file%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Ffr.player-feed.previewnetworks.com%2Fv3.1%2Fcinema%2F5444%2F331100125-1%2F] Director Pascale Lamche’s got some help from Peter Mukurube (that's him putting Sepp Blatter on the spot in the video), Anas Aremeyaw Anas and ‘Basile’ for her new documentary Black Diamond: Fool’s Gold. From the press release:

It's an old story: in the past, it was known as the slave trade, now it's simply a business ranging from amateur operators to an organized network. The film sketches the portrait of an anarchic and international network of speculators and traffickers of young African boys, under the aegis of the global football cult. From the hovels of Accra and Abidjan to the gleaming temples of sport financed by petrodollars, it takes us on the trail of Ananse the Spider, an ancestral folklore figure, who tricks, cheats and manipulates his peers. Entire families are ready to sacrifice their only possessions to it. While on the human market, if the diamond is lacking, the gold of madmen will do the job.

And this is a (translated) snippet from an interview with the director:

For this film, you have chosen to work with African journalists only, why?

There are three journalists in the film: a South African (Peter), an Ivorian (Basile) and a Ghanian (Anas). In South Africa, Peter asks FIFA president Sepp Blatter the key question of the film. He reminds Blatter that he once called the transfer of young African players a ‘new kind of slavery’ and asks: “Can you tell us what you mean by that?” Here you have an African in the country that is about to host the first World Cup on the continent - the Biggest Spectacle in the World (after the Olympics) - posing a question that clearly embarrasses the president of the almighty governing authority of football. We have to wait until the end of the film for Sepp Blatter to rediscover his mettle and answer the question.

In Côte d'Ivoire, the journalist is presented in animated form. Why?

Because right now no culture of press freedom exists in this country. Basil is an alias. It is a composite character, embodying an emergency doctor present at a stadium catastrophe and a journalist. They both insisted on remaining anonymous for fear of reprisals. In Ghana, Anas Aremeyaw received the prestigious accolade from Obama himself for being a “courageous journalist who dares to speak the truth.” In the film, it is Anas who is doing the ‘investigation’. I find that much more interesting. He comes to the conclusion that football is a perfect channel for human trafficking. (...) Anas turns his attention to an organization funded by Arab potentates that ‘looks for talent’ among 700 000 players aged 13 throughout 15 countries in the developing world. Anas wonders why - if the stated objective is to give a handful of boys a grant every year - they avoid countries like Brazil and Argentina, which have a highly organized system to exploit their own football talents and have asked Sepp Blatter to intervene so as to stop the poaching of their players by foreign predators. Anas follows the trail of some “lost boys” of the system and discovers what he calls an “enormous machinery” of illegal double scouting of talents through which boys are being moved around the world, sometimes for as long as 15 years, in the hope to generate future profits.

Anybody seen it yet? --Tom Devriendt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cmWi0vn5Y4 Gasper Nali is one of the musicians featured in the 2009 Deep Roots Malawi documentary. I haven’t seen the documentary yet (and I'm sure it could do without the dubious 'heart of Africa', 'undiscovered' and 'lost heritage') but Nkhata Bay sure sounds attractive. Especially on a Sunday afternoon. H/T: Bart Deweer

A graphic novel probably doesn't come more timely than Dutch comic artist Milan Hulsing's City of Clay ("Stad van Klei"):

The book follows the misadventures of civil servant Salem and his descent into madness when he starts labouring on an elaborate scheme that involves the creation of an entire imaginary town and its police force. While personally collecting the invented town's security budget, Salem finds himself forced to write an endless amount of believable police reports in order to keep the invented town off the radar of his superiors. For this he starts to obsessively build a clay model of the town and its citizens in his own living room. Soon the imaginary and the real world fold into one when the town starts to reflect Egypt's corrupt and bureaucratic reality against Salem's will. Instead of earning Salem bonuses, the police force is cracking down on self inflicted security problems. Salem finds himself victimized by the merciless and corrupt police inspector he himself created.

Milan Hulsing has been living and drawing in Cairo for some years now. City of Clay is based on Mohamed El-Bisatie's novel Over the Bridge, "a compelling allegory about power and its abuse" in which "the bureaucrat's elaborate illusion begins, gradually but relentlessly, to take on a reality and momentum of its own and, by the conclusion of the tale, reveals itself as having contained the seeds of its creators demise." About the state of graphic novels in Egypt, Hulsing says that "... (s)omething is moving: you'll find more and more graphic novels on the bookstore's shelves. And a group of comic artists recently also launched a new comic magazine. It's alive." (Interview in Dutch.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVuqmpO0G2Y Following the release of "Love and Death", Ebo Taylor is touring in Europe these days. Although the album was recorded with the Berlin-based Afrobeat Academy, during this tour he is backed by Bonze Konkoma. Don’t miss it. The above video was shot in January 2010 during a string of performances with the Afrobeat Academy in Ghana. - Tom Devriendt

http://vimeo.com/18671156 Zimbabwean rapper/MC/poet UpMost aka My Brother’s Keeper shares his 'Lost for Words', recorded in Harare by Magee McIlvaine for Nomadic Wax. - Tom Devriendt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKPeN3ZNCOE Google’s new Art Project makes use of the street-view technology to take us by the hand through some of the better known museums around the world. There’s the Tate Britain and The National Gallery in London, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Uffizi in Florence. There's Prague, Berlin, Washington DC, Madrid, Amsterdam... Marvelous. The Museum of Marrakech, The National Museum in Lagos and The Nairobi National Museum? The museums in Cairo or Johannesburg? Not just yet. Street View works fine in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town, so it can’t be too hard to pay a visit to one of their museums, can it? Which ones do we want to see included?

http://vimeo.com/14544412 If you haven’t seen this documentary (trailer above) on South African artist William Kentridge yet, take your time for it. William Kentridge: Anything is Possible is the first in a series of Art21-produced features focusing on contemporary art and artists. Kentridge, as always, captures the essence of recent and less recent times: “This extraordinary nonsense hierarchy (we had in South Africa) made one understand the absurd not as a peripheral mistake at the edge of a society but as a central point of construction, so that the absurd for me is always a species of realism rather than a species of joke or fun.”

You can watch the documentary in its entirety here.

- Tom Devriendt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuxJzTrmYaM Ever since they started putting out records in 2007, Cape Town based label Pioneer Unit has been catching the local music scene off guard. (Remember them introducing Rattex, KONFAB, Ben Sharpa and Jaak.) But you’ll rarely see these artists on South African music channels. Whatever the reason for the industry’s reluctance in the past, it will be difficult for them to ignore this new video for Driemanskap's ‘S’phum’eGugs’. As the track title has it: they're from Gugs (or Gugulethu, one of Cape Town’s townships, you’ll recognize most of the landmarks) and they’re killing it. And the only female in the group, Kanyi, sure got some skills, even when finding herself balancing on one of Gugulethu’s rooftops as we can see in the raw footage for the music video below: [vimeo=http://www.vimeo.com/16969973 w=500&h=281] - Tom Devriendt

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=829dg3GN7aM&w=500&h=307&rel=0] Does it matter whether we know where a music video was shot? Probably not, but watching this first clip for Simphiwe Dana's new album Kulture Noir, I can’t help but stare at the steel barred windows of the police holding cells in the background. Daily, around that corner, you find people on the sidewalk exchanging messages with their imprisoned friends or family members.  It thus makes for a weird block party in Cape Town’s City Bowl. Fortunately, there is the music. That’s London-based South African bandleader Adam Glasser on the harmonica, by the way.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfu8z8_fresk-prenons-l-afrique-en-main_music The guys from Fresk have opinions, but we will go into that another day. Until then, this song by Brazzaville's Fredy Massamba, Mad Pluma and Steve Mavoungou (and friends) will do. You get the message. - Tom Devriendt

http://vimeo.com/17713639 Femi Kuti and his band strip it down for La Blogothèque, some hours before they got on stage at the Bellevilloise earlier this year. Not sure what I like most here: the band braving the cold, the sun setting over Paris in Autumn or Vincent Moon’s camera work. That same evening, they also recorded this version of ‘Day by Day’: http://vimeo.com/17758951 - Tom Devriendt

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRKFpx6zmYo&w=500&h=307&rel=0] “Après Tintin au Congo j’ai lu Sarkozy à Dakar / 50 minutes d'insultes... accusé à la barre / Blague à part, un fantasme d'il y a 400 ans / Une vision de l'Africain rappelant Tarzan.” A translation of Gabonese musician Lord Ekomy Ndong’s letter to Sarkozy would read something like this: “After Tintin in Congo I've read Sarkozy in Dakar / 50 minutes of insults... accused at the bar / Joking aside, a 400 year old fantasy / A vision of the African reminiscent of Tarzan.” - Tom Devriendt