These photographs (above and below) by South African Rushay Booysen (from Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape province) forms part of the “Africa Uploaded: Experiences Through The Lens” (offline) exhibit next month–December 7 till 31, 2010–in the United Arab Emirates “… curated by Annabelle Nwankwo-Mu’azu and under the patronage of Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka.” The […]
The Black American writer, James Baldwin, draws parallels between oppression in South Africa, Algeria and the United States.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4riYn1SozWo&w=500&h=307&rel=0] The young Lagos, Nigeria-band Che and the Continuous Highlife Evolution’s striking “Civil War.” As the band puts it on their Facebook page, “… Some people in Africa have known only civil war all their lives; while for many other Africans the daily life is as difficult, as tough, as unpredictable and dangerous as if […]
Last month, Mali’s trio SMOD (consisting of DJ Sam, Ousco and Donski) released a second single, Les Dirigeants Africains, taken from their new self-titled album. Sure, producer Manu Chao’s stamp is all over it, but SMOD’s lyrics and director Chris Macari* make up for that. And if you think DJ Sam looks a bit like […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNFRVmtz1GA&w=500&h=307&rel=0] South African artist Lesego Rampolokeng, who grew up in Soweto, performing his “Fela Sermon” live in Barcelona in 2003. (If you want to appreciate the full Rampolokeng, I can recommend his album “End Beginnings” with the Kalahari Surfers, released in 1993.) Via Chimurenga Magazine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccj2BH25c0I A few of us live in the United States, so we thought we should act proper and recognize today’s holiday. We also can’t pass up an opportunity to stuff ourselves. We’ll leave it to the “The Addams Family” children to educate us. Via Carolina Gonzalez
Young Kenyans are not cynical, detached brand obsessed hedonists and want to take a personal stake in the affairs of the country.
I needed an excuse to post that picture and this audio since. Via David Lane.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQFwxw57NBI&w=500&h307&rel=0] Yeh, we do politics even when we dancing. And we have a thing for David Cameron.
Writer Imraan Coovadia, on lit magazine n+1‘s blog, writing about the tenplate for “the South African story” in Western media: … In the run up to the [2010] World Cup even usually intelligent publications like Harper’s and the London Review of Books were replicating the hoariest clichés in sight. Each magazine had rented out space to its […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8ffzI2czHs&w=500&h=307&rel=0] The wages of identity politics. When the memory of the 19th century radical American leader and thinker, Frederick Douglas, was enlisted (hopefully unsolicited) for a commercial for 1970s TV ad for afro hair gel.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqrQCRxD-u4&w=500&h=307&rel=0] Rapper Young Kay is “a leader of the younger urban music scene in Malawi.” [via blogger Justin Kraus, who is relocating to Malawi from South Korea.]