http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7boL1EkW7M Mos Def, “Umi Says,” Live at the Austin City Limits Festival 2009.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWbSVS0AmtA] I’ve been wanting to post for a while now about the Digital Diaspora Family Reunion.  Primarily the work of the filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris; remember Harris film, “The Twelve Apostles of Nelson Mandela,” about his South African step father. The DDFR is described as an “interactive, multimedia project,” where New Yorkers–mostly Africans and African-Americans–showing Harris their family photos […]

British filmmaker John Akonfrah will be artist-in-residence this Spring at New York University’s Institute of African American Affairs. He is joined by the Ethiopian-American musician Meklit Hadero. The institute has a number of events planned around these two with the theme “The African Diaspora And/In The World.” They’re described as being “at the forefront of […]

Thanks to HavePlentyMusic I saw that big time house producers experimenting with Kuduro for a few years, are perhaps finally ready for Coupe Decale (Click through to listen to the remix). Kind of full circle really, as I really think Bob Sinclair’s and similar productions were a big influence on the sound of Coupe Decale, […]

Our man Teju Cole’s novel “Open City,” set in post-9/11 New York City, is doing better than very well. The critics can’t stop raving about it. Now people need to buy it. A lengthy review in “The New Yorker” (reviewer James Wood writes: “Cole has made his novel as close to a diary as a […]

Pioneer Unit’s on fire. Yet another release by the Cape Town label, this time a collection of ‘lost tapes’ by Lesotho-born musician Konfab, who describes himself as a “presently disadvantaged, previously dissed and damaged, seriously pissed-off, with anger mismanaged, half-foreign, urbanised darkie.” This is one of the featuring collaborations (with AIAC favourite JAAK): [bandcamp track=3741264537 […]

Images by anthropologist Yasmin Moll. For more work by Moll, watch Fashioning Faith or read her recent contributions to The Revealer.

Last year, Chris Abani introduced Ghana-born writer and poet Kwame Dawes (who spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica) to a Lannan Foundation audience: And talked with him: