The brilliant rapper Guru, who also recorded as Gang Starr (with his music partner, the equally talented DJ Premier) and known for his series of “Jazzmatazz’’ albums released between 1993 to 2007, died this early week of cancer at the age of 48. Good obituaries by first Guru’s brother in The Boston Globe, then by […]
What’s up with John McCain’s home state? The state legislature has just passed an immigration law that basically targets the state’s Latino population for random stops and demands of their ID’s. As my man, Siddhartha Mitter, remarked yesterday: Apartheid nostalgics will be pleased to learn that the Pass Laws have been dusted off and reinstated, […]
I spotted this crude graffiti on a wall of a part-construction site on 12th Street in Manhattan, between 5th Avenue and University Place, a few blocks away from my office. I don’t get it.
In Argentina members of that country’s military dictatorship that conducted a “dirty war”) against its people way back in 1978 still go to jail for their crimes (this week actually), while in South Africa Apartheid’s generals and government ministers get amnesty and fat pensions, holiday homes in Wilderness, mansions in Pretoria’s suburbs, find Jesus and […]
Next week (April 26), Brooklyn’s Kon and Amir will release “Off Track Vol III: Brooklyn, ” which includes remixes of obscure some African, mainly Nigerian, disco from the 1970s. Here’s a preview.
The photographer Mario Epanya wonders what a “Vogue Africa” magazine would look like. The pictures are beautiful, but do Africans really want or care about their own version of a magazine with a very problematic relation to race and things continental? For some background, see here ), here, here and here. Oh and here are […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjddFpAp6z0&w=480&h=295] This blog does not waste any opportunities to post visuals of Mulatu Astatke performing. Via Mochilla, where there is a lot of other videos of our favorite artists like Bilal and Jackson Conti.
Whatever The New Yorker’s rationale for commissioning a piece on Tyler Perry, the “critic-proof” producer and director of black popular theater and television (he is a darling of the mainstream), but it is good take on the race, sexual, moral and class politics of this present-day Oscar Micheaux who has formed a lucrative alliance with […]
I am tired of doing this. Because it is getting predictable. The top-heavy and scattered Tribeca Film Festival starts tomorrow. There’s three Africa-related films on the schedule (correct me if my research was shoddy): a short from South Africa (“Father Christmas doesn’t come here“), a documentary about Rwanda’s genocide and a film that looks like […]
I am still on my pre-World Cup binge. Brazil remains odds on favorites to win Africa’s first World Cup two months from now. BTW, it’s old news now but Brazil can also count on local support in South Africa: they’re South African fans’ favorite other team. Brazil play two group matches in Johannesburg–against North Korea […]
How much do young South Africans, especially college students, know about their history? Not much, if these videos are any indication.
A major retrospective of David Goldblatt‘s photographs opens next month at the Jewish Museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. (Previews are next week). I am especially looking forward to it since I had a small consultancy role working with the Museum and did some of the audio guide for the exhibition. The details.