The photos below (click to enlarge), offering a glimpse into the joy and optimism of the immediate post-Independence period in Accra, are from Samuel Kobian Pobee’s Modern Photo laboratory. They were acquired by Samy Ben Redjeb of the Analog Africa record label while he was during research for the liner notes for his latest release […]
Bandile is a giant of the Abahlali baseMjondolo social movement, which agitates for housing for poor, black people,
Why is Toto's 'Africa," a song with ridiculous lyrics, so popular with everyone? It has to be the melody and the hook.
Three South African videos to start with. Cape Town rapper Youngsta moves between the city’s neigbourhoods of Wynberg and the CBD: …while fellow Cape artist HemelBesem went for a stroll in Utrecht, Netherlands earlier this year. EJ von LYRIK who was on tour with him gets a cameo:
After the death of at least 130 Somalian and Eritrean migrants off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa, the Italian (and European) press is once again filled with words of pathos: the human tragedy, the pictures of lined body bags and the tears of Lampedusans for those who never reached them.
How some American Zionists make connections between Israel and Rwanda.
In Sudan, the numbers of women political prisoners are rising, largely because the numbers of women protesting the government and the state are rising. Last week, in response to both economic difficulties stemming from South Sudan’s independence (and loss of oil revenues) and World Bank ‘advice’, the government of Sudan ended gas subsidies. Good ‘economic’ sense? […]
Conceiving of the relationship between public space and positions of power as a hall of mirrors.
The film "Winnie Mandela" is what happens when you combine bad history and bad filmmaking.
Alas! a snake has bitten me My right arm is broken, And the tree on which I lean is fallen. (from Songs of Sorrow, by Kofi Awoonor) When Kofi Awoonor started out as a writer, after his first book of poems, Rediscovery, had been published, he went to sit at the feet of traditional Ewe […]
When the author heard Astatke's music, it was like listening to hip-hop for the first time.
The U.S. premiere of Alain Gomis' new film "Tey (Aujourd'hui)," starring Saul Williams.