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Azonto Americana

Azonto has been huge in Ghana, obviously, and the rest of Africa. Then it made its grand entrance to London and the United Kingdom with some help from the British-born Ghana boy Fuse ODG, especially with Antenna . It was cool seeing the London All Stars do their Azonto thing, but I was hoping maybe, just maybe, it might finally touchdown here in the US. My salvation might be at hand in the form of the production company, Level 7 .

Somali Justice

A rare and informative glimpse into a situation and part of the world that normally only receives minimal, lazy, and inaccurate coverage.

Weekend Music Break 63

We kick off our weekly installment of new music videos with OttawaParis-based Mélissa Laveaux riding the crunchy electronics with flair on her new offering, ‘Triggers’, in a video directed by Terence Nance — remember also this other video he shot for her earlier this year: Some trippy and transcendental downtempo music from YellowStraps (that’s Yvan Murenzi, […]

    Street Photography in Johannesburg: Akinbode Akinbiyi

    I love the way that Nigerian photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi works. I mean his approach to photography and the way that he uses his camera. At least in the video below, he’s shooting with a Rollei Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) camera, using the sports finder. That immediately makes him one of my favorite photographers. I adore Rollei TLRs, and it’s tremendous fun to use the sports finder. The technique, like the camera itself, went out of fashion in the early ’60s, except among fans and eccentrics. (I’m both, I’ll admit.)

      The death of Oury Jalloh

      One of Germany’s most enigmatic post-war lawsuits will have to be reviewed. This post is both a chronology of what is sufficiently proven and a list of the numerous crudities that remain. What is can’t be disputed can be summed up in one sentence: On 7 January 2005, Oury Jalloh, an asylum seeker from Sierra Leone, burned to death in a police cell in the city of Dessau. The narrative about these events that has dominated public dialogue in Germany ever since has followed the official version of events as they were uttered on the very same day by the police. It goes like this: