Earlier this year, Djiboutians marched the streets of their capital (where more than half of all Djiboutian citizens live), rallying against their sitting president who changed the constitution in 2010 allowing him to run for another term. It didn’t pan out as planned, with the president (who replaced his uncle as leader of the ruling […]

Today is the 51st anniversary of Malagasi independence. Things could have been better for its citizens. What with being governed by a former radio DJ and its army and with threats that Western governments and aid agencies will withdraw financial support. Anyway, we’re celebrating. For the sake of the Malagasy people. This is also the […]

I forgot. I wanted to give AIAC’s Boima a shoutout for his Ghetto Balms Mix Tape at The Fader. Download here. Now it is officially weekend.

Some new Ghanaian hiplife from PAPPYKOJO.

From that same interview that I have been so liberally cutting and pasting from this week—in Comparative Literature–the Communist poet and intellectual, Jeremy Cronin, talks about the conundrum for black intellectuals after the end of Apartheid: … For obvious reasons that I’ve already alluded to, a great premium is placed on unity and loyalty within […]

http://vimeo.com/20927993 Video for spoken word from Senegalese rapper Keyti–remember him? Keyti was one of the stars of Ben Herson’s 2009 documentary film about hip hop and politics in the Senegalese capital, “Democracy in Dakar.”  The video is directed by Magee McIlvaine. Via Nomadic Wax.

More from that 2008 Comparative Literature interview with my favorite Communist poet, Jeremy Cronin. Bua Komanisi: … A sense of audience has always been important for me. When I write a poem, or when I go back to an old poem, I try to listen to it with the ear of someone else, perhaps an […]

Rapper Stalley, late last year, channels Muhammed Ali. He could have done without the racial epithet.

The daily word of inspiration (cut and pasted from Contemporary Literature) from my favorite, comtemporary Communist, Jeremy Cronin: … At present I am inclined to make my poems much more actively disruptive within themselves, to foreground contradiction and paradox, to enact interruption, to celebrate the parenthetical, to make manifest the unresolved. In the first post-1994 […]

At the margins of this year’s Art Basel (15-19 June) and curated by Christine Eyene, FOCUS11 presents a group of African artists in the city of Basel, Switzerland this weekend. The selected artists (“reflecting new trends in Africa and the Diaspora”) are Nirveda Alleck (above is “Suspended Thought,” a 2006 photocollage by Alleck), Natalie Mba Bikoro, […]

With the 35th anniversary of the June 16, 1976 uprising by high school students in South Africa on our minds today (the uprising that started out in Soweto, triggered by the enforced instruction of black students in Afrikaans, ushering in a new era of resistance both inside and outside South Africa against white racism and economic exploitation), […]

Real World Records has just released (this past Monday) the new album “In Trance” by JuJu, a collaboration album between Brit Justin Adams and Gambian Juldeh Camara. This is the song “Nightwalk. Thoughts?

A clip from Ann Buford’s new film, “Elevate,” about four high school athletes recruited from Senegal to play basketball at upscale prep schools in the US. Then there’s “The Redemption of General Butt-Naked” directed by Eric Strauss and Danielle Anastasion. From the film PR: “… Once a brutal warlord who mercilessly slaughtered men, women, and […]

Johannesburg-based Tumi of Tumi and The Volume has released a mixtape. It seems to be in support of People Opposed to Women Abuse and was inspired by the story of rape victim Akona Ndungane. Among those getting the Tumi remix treatment are Mos Def (a fan of Tumi), the Beatles, John Mayer, Radiohead and Kanye […]