Congolese/South African (via Belgium) musician Yannick Ilunga, AKA Iamwaves, has been rather busy lately. His group Popskarr, a new ‘electronic/Nu Disco/Misty Pop’ outfit, has just released a stylish single called Fighter; and as his alter ego Petite Noir he has released a mixtape for Okayafrica’s ‘Africa in Your Earbuds’ series (which earned him a tweet shout out from Questlove of The Roots) and a new video for his song ‘Till We Ghosts.’
A remarkable amount of new films in recent months have used migration, detention and illegal sea crossings as their subject matter.
The film, "Come Back, Africa," first released in 1959, challenged how white liberals imagined black people or tried to shape their struggles in South Africa.
Your weekly #musicbreak roundup. Mokobe and Oumou Sangare pray for peace in Mali:
A locally produced arts festival creates panic for Angola's authoritarian government, who has, predictably, responded with panic and repression.
Cécile Mella (remember her portraits of the Cape Town ad world) will be showing her photography series ‘Dreamland’ in Montpellier, France this month (at the Galerie Saint Ravy). Come through if you’re in the area.
Since 2004, Le Salon africain (part of the annual Geneva Book Fair) awards the Ahmadou Kourouma Prize to an ‘African oeuvre, essay or fiction that reflects the spirit of independence and creativity which is the heritage of [Ivorian novelist] Ahmadou Kourouma’. This year the Prize goes to Rwandan author Scholastique Mukasonga for her latest novel […]
Kenyan activists raise their voices, placards and fists over US$500 million allocated but not yet spent for anti-retroviral medications. That’s a lot of money, drugs, and lost lives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA6F553L17g ‘I am Malawi’ is a short documentary by Geert Veuskens and Pieter de Vos. (Part 1 above, part 2 below.) Veuskens gave us some more details about their project:
Malians have little patience for Amadou Toumani Touré, Mali’s former president, deposed in a coup on 22 March.
Tintin is full of offensive, racist, stereotypes. Should Africans take the publishers to court? No, argues the author; it is counterproductive.
Geo-branding is a serious thing. It is particularly serious when people from other geographic areas decide to brand your geographical area and the people in it, the way they see fit and the way that fits their purposes. No other country, region or continent, I’d argue, suffers from other peoples’ nonsense as much as the […]