This coming Friday Maal and British playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah will begin their UK tour of “Tales of the Sahel.” Maal and Kwei-Armah “… will spend the six performances talking, the conversation interspersed with songs from Maal and his two accompanying musicians.” Preview in The Financial Times

Last December I met the impressive Omoyele Sowore, founder of Nigerian online news site, Sahara Reporters. I was chairing an independent media panel in Brooklyn ahead of the World Social Forum in Dakar. Sowore was one of the panelists.  Based in New York City, Sahara Reporters have broken a number of big stories, including events around […]

Probably to deal with the stresses associated with next month general elections scheduled for next month–there’s a real threat of terrorist violence and vote rigging is widespread–Nigerians (online especially) are having too much fun at the expense of First Lady, Patience Jonathan, who has a history of mangling her words. An audio recording has emerged […]

The video for Dutch singer Ntjam Rosie’s song “In Need” featured in the latest episode of online series, What’s Up Africa!

My department at The New School is co-hosting a two-day conference on “Re-Mixed and Re-Mastered: Defining and Distributing the Black Image in the Era of Globalization.” I am also a discussant on one of the panels:

Recently Al Jazeera English’s media review show, Listening Post, did a breathless profile of South African cartoonist Zapiro and his satirical TV show, ZANEWS.  The insert focused on Zapiro’s outsize influence. The country’s president, Jacob Zuma, is suing Zapiro for libel for how he is portrayed in one of Zapiror’s cartoons.  But it now appears […]

You know what Nelson Mandela was trying to calculate in the image embedded above, right? While you figure it out, check out this new Google-paid initiative in conjunction with the Nelson Mandela Foundation to put “… thousands of documents on the Internet, from a 1977 letter smuggled out of prison to his membership cards in the […]

The Johannesburg filmmaker Cedric Sundstrom has been working on a documentary film on the history of cinema in South Africa.  The South African-based movie review show “The Admiral and Akin” has put the trailer of Sundstrom’s film online. (That’s it above.) They also interviewed him on the show. You can only see the the episode […]

The video for Gil Scott Heron and Jamie X’s “I’ll Take Care of U,” from the album ‘We’re New Here.’ The video posted on Youtube on International Women’s Day, “tells the story of Nisa Rodriguez, a 19-year old boxer and single mother from the Bronx, New York, as she works for a spot on America’s […]

Anyone who makes songs about politicians eating all the money–what else do they do?–gets our vote. South African rock-reggae band, Tidal Waves (see also our earlier post) will be touring in the U.S. the next two weeks. Only in the American South, apparently, but don’t miss them if you’re around and you’re in for some […]