M & G Soul Food Diner, 125th Street Harlem

PHOTOGRAPHY: Invincible Cities, Camilo Vergara photos of the “unmaking of a ghetto” taken in Harlem from 1970’s to 2007.

ILLUSTRATION: Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas

Screenshot from Aperture web site

PHOTOGRAPHY: The Black Panthers: Photographs of Stephen Shames. Great book.

PHOTOGRAPHY: WNYC Culture: Streetshots Jamel Shabbazz at work in Central Park.

Screenshot from 21st Century Maroon Colony website
FASHION: 21st Century Maroon Colony Fall/Winter 2007 Collection. Great photography/styling highlighting this streetwear fashion collective repping the “Afro-triangle”. Not sure about pangas as props, though, (too much of a negative connotation to me, given the panga-executed violence in Kenya recently) [via EA collective]

Screenshot of slideshow on website for “Curse of the Black Gold”
PHOTOGRAPHY: New book: Curse of the Black Gold: 50 years of Gold in the Niger Delta [quicktime movie]. Photography and audio commentary on the impact of oil on the land and people of the Niger Delta.

Screen shot from slide show on “Very Best of Ethiopiques” web site

Recently the songs of Mahmoud Ahmed (Ethiopiques Vol. 1) have been on heavy rotation here at casa forota. It is amazing that Ethiopia and Kenya are neighbors, but I know next to nothing about this amazing 3,000 year old culture. In fact, a straight line that runs through Isiolo and Lamu forms a cultural barrier for those, like me, who have a world view shaped by all south and west of that line.

In truth, that isolation is the result of the geography of Ethiopia (fortress-like highlands), but also a chauvinistic attitude towards outsider cultures, African or not. The results of this isolation can be seen in the Ethiopian music of a period that began in the 1960’s and ended in 1974, a time when the country’s capital was called “Swinging Addis”. Like all the youth of this time everywhere, Ethiopian musicians were influenced by rock, jazz and funk, even though their music is not quite recognizable as such. It is completely unique, completely Ethiopian: hypnotic, weird, soulful, passionate, irresistible. Until recently, modern Ethiopian music was for locals only consumption, although that is slowly changing thanks to the brilliant Ethiopiques series. Mulatu Astatque did receive some notoreity recently, when his music featured prominently in the Jim Jarmusch film “Broken Flowers”, and legends like Mahmoud Ahmed have been touring the west playing to more than just Habesha crowds.

Source: Francis Falcet in an excellent 2 part interview about the musical history of Ethiopia:
part one
part two

GO SEE: if you live in the NYC area, there will be a free concert at the Damrosch Park Bandshell near Lincoln Plaza featuring Mahmoud Ahmed, Alemayehu Eshete and Gétatchèw Mèkurya, details here.

screenshot from Jim Chuchu’s site
PHOTOGRAPHY: jim chuchu {photography}. Photographer, animator, musician Jim Chuchu’s photography site. [via Ntwiga]

MUSIC: Iwinyo Piny: Just A Band. Music and visuals by aforementioned Jim Chuchu who is also a member of JAB. Band member Dan posts on kenyananimation blog their thinking process in creating the video. He also discusses how JAB had a rough time pitching this video to Kenyan TV stations: one Program Manager responded that they couldn’t air it as it would alienate their viewers since it was 5 years ahead of its time. You know you are doing something right when you get a response like that. [kenyanimation blog link via paula callas].

screenshot of Ian van Coller’s photo essay, “Interior Relations”
PHOTOGRAPHY: Ian van Coller: Interior Relations (portraits of black South African domestic workers taken in the homes of their white employers).

BOOKS: Chinua Achebe and the great African novel: it’s been 50 years since “Things Fall Apart” was published.

FILM: Tropa de Elite (The Elite Squad). High concept: “City of God from the police perspective, but with more brutality and violence and less nuance”. Director Jose Padilha meant to shoot this story as a follow up to his acclaimed documentary “Bus 174″, but chose to fictionalize it based on interviews and a book by 2 ex-BOPE cops. Raises some serious moral questions about how to combat out of control urban crime in townships/favelas/slums that have been criminally ignored by governments. Showed (not so) recently at Tribeca film festival, not sure when it will get wide release.

Creole. The result of the collision of Africa and Europe. In music, that collision has created what John Ryle called the soundtrack of modernity, which links the Swedish middle-aged man who loves Miles Davis with the Japanese youth who wants to be a b-boy. The result of that collision along with the almighty dollar now form part of the DNA of this thing we call global culture.

Is it the need to reconcile the technological and the human, tradition vs. modernity, civilization vs. primitivism, the seemingly mutually exclusive past and present that gives the culture created by africans all over the diaspora its vitality (soul) and its universality? Whatever, but as the sampling of the media i have been consuming in the last couple of weeks shows, the results are always interesting.

screenshot of opening scene of “Basquiat“

Q (”Interviewer”): Do you consider yourself a painter or a Black painter?
A (Jean-Michel Basquiat): Oh, I use a lot of colors, not just black …. It’s more a Creole, you know … what I mean by Creole is that … it’s a mix of Africa and Europe … you know in much the same way an African in Haiti speaks French.

cover of “BEYOND DESIRE” exhibition catalog

Inherent in all desire is a measure of fantasy, which guides our eye and forms or deforms our image of the ‘other’. Here fashion is a superb gauge. It is accessible, driven by unlimited fantasy, free from any form of politically correct thinking, decorative and superficial, yet, at the same time, it is deeply rooted in our cultural and social subconscious. BEYOND DESIRE shows how two cultures can each adopt the visual language of the other as their own and how their respective longings are projected through fashion and clothing in their fantasy image of this ‘other’.

BEYOND DESIRE: INTRODUCTION by Kaat Debo

gnarls barkley: going on
the styling of this video is a kind of “DRUM/soweto” meets “london working class/punk” aesthetic. the look was actually inspired by an, um, inspired fashion spread created by brooklyn photographer clayton cubitt and stylist rene garza called lagos calling
there is an non-pixelated/cleaner version of the video here.

jorge ben: ponta de lanca africano

Jorge Ben drew from the sambas of the hillside slums of Rio de Janeiro and American rhythm and blues to create an original style. He created the most organic fusion of North and South American forms of African music. This affinity is being demonstrated again by the enormous popularity of rap music in the slums, and only in the slums, of Rio. Jorge Ben was also a highly original lyricist who combined street language with images drawn from African and Christian mythology and esoteric literature.

Arto Lindsay in liner notes for “Beleza Tropical”.

herewith, in no particular order some observations on ideas, trends, programs, music, magazines of note for 2007 here at casa forota, organized as a randomly ordered year end list.

print: the new african literary renaissance. as heralded in the bono-edited “africa” issue of vanity fair. personal highlights:
chimamanda adichie wrote about Biafra in 60’s nigeria so vividly one would have thought she lived through the time.
ishmael beah described the crushingly depressing experience of being a child soldier in liberia (somehow he managed to survive and transcend it). dinaw mengestu intimately described the dream-crushing experience of being an african immigrant/expat in washington DC [video] in a way a lot of us can relate.

music: east african urban music arrives: although i have limited exposure to music from home, i was quite impressed with collections like urban africa club and nomadic wax’s nomadic mixtape vol. 2 east african hip hop beatdown where music from artists like necessary noize, professor jay, peter miles, xplastaz and others highlighted the fact that east african music has reached a creative watershed where hip hop/dancehall + sheng + bongo flava = globally aware music that distances itself from the pejorative term ‘local music” that has hung over the imitative music available until quite recently.

ideas: the term “afropolitan” enters my lexicon. as described by author taiye tuakli-wosornu a nigerian-ghanaian writer based in New York City, an afropolitan has a hard time answering the question “where are you from?” why? they have lived in multiple places outside africa (boston, brixton, berlin), claim some part of the continent as home (metaphorically) but inhabit a physical/mental space that encompasses all the places they have lived.

print/web: quality africa-related lifestyle/entertaiment magazines online and off: colures, kitu kizuri, jamati, mimi magazine and pan-african clutch magazine all published to highlight the doings of afropolitans in the worlds of art, music, film, fashion, business. trace (now a fashion mag) and clam were there before, but they still best capture the cutting edge of this quintessentially 21st century experience.

music: global album of the year. migration/globalization are annihilating all kinds of cultural/racial/whatever barriers. with “kala“, maya arulpragasm just dives into it all, equally embracing bhangra, dancehall, africa, australia, digeridoos, hip hop, punk, bollywood, politics, guns, violence, boys to create an album that is a hallmark of the dizzyingly disorienting cultural times we now live in. personal highlight: “hussel” a collaboration with ghanaian/brit afrikan boy sounds to me like the de facto soundtrack for new (illegal) immigrants from everywhere hustling and grinding to get a foothold in their new homes, all while trying to evade deportation.

film: ousmane sembene RIP. [ny times registration req’d] the father of african cinema, all other african directors will be measured against him. he was driven by the insight that film was the most powerful method to convey education/entertainment to africans without the formal education to read books. one of the tragedies of his passing must be that his films commenting on post-colonial african society/politics (xala, moolade, faat kine) were never seen widely outside art movie houses in cities like new york and paris during his lifetime. i managed to catch xala at a recent sembene retrospective here in NYC. if you missed it, some of his films are available on netflix.

race/television: pbs’ brazil in black and white. overt racism is receding everywhere (”it never existed in brazil”, as they like to say). however, social/economic exclusion of black folks in brazil and elsewhere is as plain as day. but how to redress this inequality using policy when there has been generations of racial mixing with african descendants and the identification with “blackness” is sometimes a personal/cultural choice, versus a genetic one? relatedly: the debate in the US on a certain presidential candidate’s blackness.

art/museums: “eternal ancestors, the art of central african reliquary“. brilliant exhibit at the metropolitan museum in NYC that displays sculptural pieces that fired the imaginations of the early 20th century art avant garde (among them picasso). inspired by these innovative, expressive religious artifacts from central africa, these artists found a way to break modern art from its representational (renaissance) roots. the exhibit runs until march 2nd, 2008 go. see it.

in a photo project called the black house photojournalist colin jones spent 3 years (1973 to 1976) in the harambee housing project in northern london. description of the project from a recent exhibition of the images:

This tall, dilapidated terraced house on a busy main street in Islington, had became a hostel for troubled young black men run by a charismatic Caribbean migrant, Brother Herman Edwards. The project was often visited by the police and always in strife with neighbours over too much noise and overcrowding. Many of the youths photographed embraced their portrayal in the media as iconic delinquents, reinforcing their status as outcasts. Never officially named The Black House, the building was given this name both by residents and by newspaper editors as an easy headline. At this time, the first generation of Afro-Caribean young people to be born in Britain were encountering problems with schooling, employment and the law – Jones’ photographs put a face to this news story.

via the last issue of straight no chaser

recently finished “half of a yellow sun” by afro-lit’s current superstar chimamanda ngozi adichie. i devoured the first 300 pages of the book in one sitting; rare given my magazine article-like attention span. her writing is as vivid as the documentary images of children with kwashiorkor, the most enduring legacy of the biafran war (visual or otherwise).

Did you see the photos in sixty-eight
Of children with their their hair becoming rust:
Sickly patches nestled on those small heads,
Then falling off, like rotten leaves on dust?

Imagine children with arms like toothpicks,
With footballs for bellies and skin stretched thin.
It was kwashiorkor — difficult word,
A word that was not quite ugly enough, a sin.

You needn’t imagine. There were photos
Displayed in gloss-filled pages of your Life.
Did you see? Did you feel sorry briefly,
Then turn around to hold your lover or wife?

Their skin had turned the tawny of weak tea
And showed cobwebs of vein and brittle bone;
Naked children laughing as if the man
Would not take photos and then leave, alone.

highly recommended read.

“It wasn’t so much Iman’s blackness that defied the fashion world of 1975; it was that she was African. She might as well have been from the moon. Not only did an African have no precedent in the business of good looks, but this one exuded an authenticity that made just about everyone else seem compromised in some way — including black Americans.”

from the book “I am Iman“, on her arrival in new york in 1975 and her effect on the fashion world in general, and the dynamics between africans and black americans in particular.

iman abdulmajid was a diplomat’s daughter and political science student at univ. of nairobi when she was “discovered” by peter beard; she must have had an inkling of how much her arrival on the fashion scene would have in upending long held views of africans, as the primitive, unsophisticated other, incapable of fitting into mainstream notions of beauty.