African music/style icon Oumou Sangare is back with a new album called “Seya” (Joy). The production values of this video remind me of the stuff I see on the screens of the TVs in the African stores here in NYC, but it highlights some wicked Malian fashion. It also shows bits and pieces of how the intensely rich fabrics that Sangare wears come about, following Sangare around as she purchases fabric, takes it to get dyed and distressed before being tailored. Most cool.
SEE ALSO: Speaking of fashion, here are highlights from The African Fashion Collective show at the recently completed Fashion Week here in New York City. The show included designs from Xuly Bet (who used another music/style icon, Grace Jones, as one of the models), Stoned Cherrie, Momo and Tiffany Amber.
African Fashion Collective Fall 2009 runway show at the New York Fashion Week
In February of 2006, Torgovnik traveled to East Africa to report on a story for Newsweek, coinciding with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the outbreak of HIV/AIDS. While in Rwanda, he heard an interview with Odette, a survivor who was raped during the Rwandan genocide and as a result of that rape, had a child and contracted HIV/AIDS. She described how her entire family had been killed and recounted the terrible abuse she experienced. Odette’s horrific story led Torgovnik to return to Rwanda to work on a personal project about women who, like her, were left pregnant as a result the militia’s heinous crimes. Over the next three years, he made repeated visits to photograph these women and their children, and record their heart-wrenching stories.
Posted: February 21st, 2009 | Author:kamau | Filed under:internet, music | Comments Off
Sean Jacobs of Africa is a Country is doing an ongoing series inviting fellow bloggers, friends, etc to submit a 10 song playlist. It can be what they are currently listening to, all time favorites, whatever. I was very honored that he requested me to create a playlist, so I sent him a list of the stuff that is on heavy rotation on my iPod (downloads and iTunes purchases). Check out the post here (Sean managed to wangle a picture out me, no easy feat given how camera shy I usually am). And definitely look around “Africa is a Country” when you are done. There is a lot of afromedia goodness, commented on with Sean’s wry humor.
Posted: February 21st, 2009 | Author:kamau | Filed under:music | Comments Off
BLK JKS are returning to NYC a year after their breakout visit to these United States in 2008. They are playing two shows in NYC, one on 3/13 at Union Hall in BK and another the next day (3/14) at Santos Party House in Chinatown/Tribeca. Already have tix for the 3/13 show, and am contemplating seeing them again the next night given how much excitement they have generated here at casa forota with their post-everything sound. Go see.
Here is a BLK JKS short film that was um, filmed last year when they were here, if you aren’t excited yet [via Africa is a Country].
“There is a wonderful Malik Sidibe picture in our show of a couple dancing at a Christmas party, a barefoot girl in a full-skirted party cress looking like the most gorgeous model dipping, with one of her legs raised, and a guy totally dapper guy, just grooving,” said Vince Aletti, curator of “This Is Not a Fashion Photograph,” currently at the International Center of Photography. “When you think about an image like that, you hope that there is some better sense of Africa available to people than some romanticized colonialist, stuck in amber, image of bracelets and long necks.
So … in a previous edition of weekend music I labeled DJ Mujava’s song “Township Funk” as kwaito. That isn’t exactly correct. While Johannesburg is the home of kwaito and the local version of house that has morphed from it, a distinct strain of house (pitori) has been bubbling under in Pretoria for a number of years. DJ Mujava’s now global hit is the point of the spear breaking pitori house out of the clubs, streets and matatus of Pretoria, taking it to the rest of the world. for which i am most glad. Herewith a sampler of south african house including kwaito, pitori house and just plain old house.
Guerilla photographer JR is known for creating, ahh, guerilla art installations from images that he has taken of otherwise invisible (read: poor) people around the world. He recently completed a series of photos of women in Kibera and created an installation on the roofs, hillsides, and passing trains there. Quoth a blog entry from The Wooster Collective on the installation:
… after more than a year of planning, 2000 square meters of rooftops have been covered with photos of the eyes and faces of the women of Kibera. The material used is water resistant so that the photo itself will protect the fragile houses in the heavy rain season. The train that passes on this line through Kibera at least twice a day has also been covered with eyes from the women that live below it. With the eyes on the train, the bottom half of the their faces have be pasted on corrugated sheets on the slope that leads down from the tracks to the rooftops.
Samuel Fosso’s image series “African Spirits”. Screen shot from Foam magazine site
The current issue of Foam Magazine includes a portfolio of Samuel Fosso’s current work, “African Spirits“, wherein the chameleonic portraitist takes on the form of a variety of African despots and African-American icons (the image of Malcolm X looks like the original). Peeped a copy of the magazine at the newsstand; the images are printed in gorgeous black and white, although at $30 a pop, looking is all I can afford to do in these times.
