Things I have read quickly, seen or watched, listened to, been forwarded, did not really have the time to think about properly, here for your reading pleasure: * On Freedom Day, last Tuesday, South Africa’s government released this picture of the country’s president, Jacob Zuma, taking an Aids test. He tested negative. (The test was […]
British fashion photographer Rankin sets out on 'his own personal journey' to understand South Africa. The result is actually quite good.
The first group of people who called themselves Afrikaners were Orlams people, who would be called coloured in South Africa today.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt6otC_a_ZY&w=480&h=295] The video for the first single, “Go Away,” off the album “Dark or Blue” by South African rappers, Teargas. Ma se kind. Good popcorn music.
FIFA and the South African organizers of the World Cup unveiled the official World Cup tune: It's called "Waka Waka."
[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/10636093 w=500&h=281] I want to see more of this film: The slam poet, Capela, is shown in a clip from the new short, “Slam Video Maputo” by Austrian director, Ella Raidel. The film explores “… the making of self-image of Mozambique where its popular culture mirrors the intersection of global and local cultures.” — Sean […]
[vodpod id=Video.3322857&w=450&h=370&fv=] Priceless footage of 1980s Community Arts Project in Durban, which, according to one of the founders, artist Bruno Brincat, was “… an idealistic arts project that was ahead of its time and got nixed by the apartheid authorities.”
An incendiary piece of video art, more like a short film–of raids, profiling and state terrorism–done by director Romain Gravas, for a new M.I.A. joint, “Born Free.” It was initially posted on Youtube yesterday, but taken down for “the violent and sexual images.” On Vimeo, not a mass video viewing site, it has had over […]
The poetry of Ronelda Kamfer sheds light on the still marginalized lives of South Africa’s “brown communities.”
An Evening with Shelley Barry Wednesday, April 28, 2o1o At the next disTHIS!, South African filmmaker Shelley Barry will share a mixture of old, new and works-in-progress. Shelley, a wheelchair user as a result of taxi violence in her native country in 1996, made her frst film in 2003 while on a film scholarship in […]
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 […]
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.
[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.
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 […]
Jacob Boersema, a Dutch PhD student who works on Afrikaner identity in postapartheid South Africa, recently told me about a new film, “Black Butterflies,” about the life of Ingrid Jonker, the late Afrikaans poet (she committed suicide in 1965), whose work gained renewed interest after Nelson Mandela read one of her poems during his inaugural […]
[vodpod id=Video.3327165&w=450&h=370&fv=] Live performance in Rennes, France, by the Dubai-born, Iraqi-Canadian rap MC, who is now a solo performer but for a while fronted the hip hop band, Euphrates. It is worth your 50 minutes. (BTW, Narcicyst has a Masters degree in Media Studies.) Via Ben Herson.
Once you get pass Julius Malema’s ramblings or the fact that whites play the victim card so well, it is easy to forget who the real victims of the new South Africa are. Land is one way to find out. As political scientist Allison Drew recently reported in an analysis of political developments in South […]
An ode to Busi Mhlongo, the South African singer, composer and danger.
Early last year, the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University, Bloomington announced that it would publish a scholarly and peer-reviewed journal called “Black Camera.” The first issue is out and contains articles from South African media scholar, Keyan Tomaselli (from the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Durban) and Eileen Julien, a comp lit professor at Indiana […]
Bhekumuzi Luthuli was the foremost exponent of Maskandi music. Internationally Paul Simon has borrowed from maskandi for his "Graceland" in the 1980s. So does Vampire Weekend.