Vodou in Brooklyn: Audio slideshow featuring the images and commentary of photojournalist Stephanie Keith who has documented a series of vodou parties involving Haitian immigrants who live in New York City. [via the never boring boing boing]
Trailer for the Waris Dirie biographical film “Desert Flower”
FILM: Desert Flower. Waris Dirie’s book of her escape from Somalia, rise to supermodel superstar-dom and later fight against female genital mutilation gets the Hollywood treatment. Ethiopian Liya Kebede stars.
Screenshot from Suresh Natarjan’s portfolio site on the Behance Network
PHOTOGRAPHY: Suresh Natarajan: Tanishq Aarka. India meets Africa.
Back in February, the Jamaican Broadcasting Commission banned from the radio songs that reference “daggering” and other acts of sex and violence. The controversy set to the one-drop reggae of the “Indiscretions Riddim” (featured on Heatwave’s Early Warming mixtape).
Indiscretion: Konshens – Straight Forward (Indiscretions Riddim)
But tonite mi just wah dagga
I’m a straight forward kind of bredda
Mi know mi seh wi coulda just chill tonight
But when mi see your body
Girl mi cyah badda
Mi just wah dagga
And leff all a di talking fi tomorrow
Tonite I wanna make you my baby madda (wooooh)
Tonite mi just wah dagga
Censorship: Busy Signal – Beep (Indiscretions Riddim)
just through di beep(beep)
I and I cyaan speak
warn to freedom of speech
just through di beep(beep)
we nah express weself inna di song
and now di beep fulfill it
just through di beep(beep)
I and I cyaan talk
cyaan tell mi fans everything inna mi thoughts
dem only waan mi music play pon sidewalk
certain things dem nah bright cause
“The BLK JKS homecoming slideshow” audio slide show from the Mail & Guardian site.
Music: BLK JKS are back in the States to tour in support of the debut album “After Robots” out now. Rolling Stone has called them “Africa’s best new band” and artists to watch in 2009. Here is a sampler track from their new album:
Photographers I Like: Speaking of BLK JKS, you’ve probably seen a tall gentleman on/back stage at their shows taking pics of the performances. Said gentleman would be Kwesi Abbensetts, an art photographer who beautifully captures the creative vibe of Brooklyn. He posts his work on the photoblog “Spaceship George“.
Screenshot from “Oroma” a photo essay on Mike Schreiber’s site. © M. Schreiber
Photography, more: Mike Schreiber, Oroma Speaking of photographers, here as some cool images of Oroma Elewa the editor and creative force of nature behind the magazine/site pop’africana (which site I have been criminally silent about). Mike Schreiber is another Brooklyn-based photographer with great work, check out his esays on M.I.A. as well as other music portraits he has shot on his site.
Promise of Africa Collective at New York Fashion Week
FASHION: Speaking of fashion, herewith highlights from the Arise: Promise of Africa Collective Spring/Summer 2010 show at the recently completed New York Fashion Week. It featured togs by David Tlale, Eric Raisine, Tiffany Amber and Jewel by Lisa.
Democracy in Dakar Trailer from Nomadic Wax on Vimeo.
Politics: “Democracy in Dakar” The intersection of hip hop, activism and politics.
African Underground: Democracy in Dakar is a groundbreaking documentary film about hip-hop youth and politics in Dakar Senegal. The film follows rappers, DJs, journalists, professors and people on the street at the time before during and after the controversial 2007 presidential election in Senegal and examines hip-hop’s role on the political process. Originally shot as a seven part documentary mini-series released via the internet – the documentary bridges the gap between hip-hop activism, video journalism and documentary film and explores the role of youth and musical activism on the political process
“Nosotros los de la Saya” (“We of the Saya”) from AbNomad Media on Vimeo.
Human Rights: “Nosotros los de la Saya” (“We of the Saya”) Afro-Bolivians struggle for official recognition.
WE OF THE SAYA (pronounced “sigh-yah”) is a feature-length cultural and social documentary about the marginalized Afro-Bolivian community, and their struggle to achieve recognition as a legitimate ethnic group in the new Bolivian constitution. In addition to enriching culture and music, this film will present the rise of an Afro-Bolivian civil rights movement. “We of the Saya” is an inspirational story about the Afro-Bolivian movement (and all Afro-Descendant movements in a broader sense), and their resistance to suffer more years of continuous marginalization.This is an inspirational story about self-determination and seizing the moment in order to improve a community’s way of life.
(In Spanish with subtitles)
Trailer for the film “Thomas Sankara, Upright Man”, now publicly available at California Newsreel
California Newsreel makes library of African film available to the public
California Newsreel is making this collection of feature films available directly to consumers — for the first time in its history, the Library of African cinema will be widely available on DVD for $24.95 each.
The collection includes widely celebrated feature films such as Ousmane Sembene’s “Faat Kine” (2001), Djibril Diop Mambety’s “La Petite Vendeuse de Soleil”, also known as “the Little Girl Who Sold the Sun” (1999), Zézé Gamboa’s “The Hero” (2004), Newton Aduaka’s “Ezra” (2007), Moussa Sene Absa’s “Ça Twiste à Poponguine” (1993), Joseph Gai Ramaka’s “Karmen Gei” (2001) and Mohamed Camara’s “Dakan” (1997).
The recent* arrival of “fat pipes” in Kenya courtesy of the new SEACOM sub-marine fiber optic cables has me flashing back to an article from 1998 that fundamentally altered my world view. It was titled “Africa Rising” written by John Perry Barlow. The subtitle of the article was “Everything you know about Africa is Wrong”. The article appeared in Wired 6.01 during the pre-Conde Nast, Lou Rosetto, super-optimistic, neon-hurt-you-eyes-design era of the magazine. During that time the magazine prided itself on presenting “idees fortes” (powerful ideas) to challenge conventional thinking on an issue. This was Barlow’s idee forte:
Most Africans stayed out of the loop of the 20th century and were not homogenized into the generica that is now much of the Northern Hemisphere, or what they call the North. And thus their continent – so intensely different from the rest of the world, so vastly different within itself – represents a huge and still unconnected battery of stored potential. All it would take for Africa to leapfrog into the wonderland of an information economy would be to attach the electrodes – get it wired, in other words – and then watch its huge voltage zap the gap. Or so went my theory.
The idee forte created a “eureka” moment in me when a whole new set of possibilities opened up in thinking about how Africa can develop itself. The internet, techno-libertarian frontier that it was in those days, could help individuals route around the sclerosis, incompetence and plain lack of resources of African instituitions and find ways to better themselves. Harness the power of the individual, and step out of the way.
It sounds like pan-glossian optimism to think that a continent that has so little (unreliable) electricity, a place so full of people who are hungry, sick and/or fleeing conflict should divert resources away from alleviating such chronic needs to build something for people to “surf” on. What attracted me so powerfully to his idea was that John Perry Barlow saw the enormous untapped potential in Africans themselves, while most (including Africans themselves) just see a continent full of basket cases in need of charity. I don’t think anyone would have predicted the explosive growth of mobile phone technology around Africa when it was first introduced. The launch of the Seacom fiber optic cables is a next phase in Barlow’s wiring of Africa; who knows yet what the impact of that will be?
The problems on the continent are so complex and intractible that institutions, government or otherwise, can’t possibly even conceive of solutions to them all. Development will best come from the bottom up. From individuals, families and communities thinking through how to solve their own problems, how to grow themselves, how to connect themselves to the world at large without physically leaving their communities. Connectivity harnessed to the wild innovation and creativity that one sees in the informal (jua kali) sector in particular and in African culture in general is one way Africa is going to lift herself up.
See also: Paul Kagame Information Technology Means No More Excuses
*Arggh! This post was supposed to be done the week the cable was switched on but has languished in the draft folder since. Better late …
I lived many years in southern California, spiritual home of skateboarding and thus am quite familiar with its roots in that state and its culture. So that is why I am so intrigued that skateboarding is what is the new new thing for kids in the black diaspora. New expressions of youth culture have typically flowed the other way; from the city to the suburbs from black kids to white kids, from black America to Africa. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes me wonder if hip hop (which has so dominated pop culture in the last 2 decades) is so played out that young black kids are now looking outside/beyond it for something new to identify with.
Screenshot from Jamil GS’ blog. © Jamil GS
Pictures of skate kids (the Bull Bay Bowl in Kingston, Jamaica) taken by Danish-American photographer Jamil GS.
Skate park at the recent Afro-Punk festival in Brooklyn. Photo by your humble servant.
Previously: Kitintale Skates 2008. Skate park in Uganda.
See also: Trailer for the Stacy Peralta-directed documentary “Dogtown And The Z-Boys” chronicling skateboarding roots in southern California where it drew inspiration from surfing, the tough latino cholo sub-culture of LA and the empty backyard pools in the ‘burbs that skateboarders first used to start figuring out how to do the high-flying-death-defying moves that are staples of the scene today.
Screenshot of “Cuba” series on Angela Boatwright’s site. © A. Boatwright
Angela Boatwright: Cuba. Image series of the hip hop scene in Cuba as highlighted on her newly re-designed site. I am a big fan of Angela Boatwright’s emotionally honest, raw music photography, Cuba’s hip hop scene with its outsider (politically aware) status is a natural fit for her style.
See also: New York Times: Cuba’s Rap Vanguard Reaches Beyond the Party Line
The situation among Afro-Cubans, about 60 percent of the population, is especially acute. They are considerably poorer than whites, according to studies. Among the reasons are that white Cubans are more likely to have relatives sending remittances from the United States, and whites hold the bulk of the jobs in the profitable tourism industry.
Afro-Cubans complain that they have inferior housing and are more likely than whites to be hassled on the streets by the police.
The rappers speak of these and other problems, often bluntly.
“What we sing, people can’t say,” said Mr. Rodríguez Baquero, who wore a blue bandanna to pull back his braided hair as he rapped on the sidewalk outside an overflowing club. “They think we are crazy. We say what they only whisper.”
Screen shot from BBC News photo essay on Congolese migrants in South Africa
PHOTO ESSAY: Congolese migrants in South Africa staged a La Sape fashion show as a way to increase understanding between their community and their Johannesburg hosts in the wake of the deadly violence against immigrants there in 2008.
Screen shot of Brazzaville sapeur slideshow on the First Post site. © D. Tamagni
SLIDESHOW: “Fashion Cult: The Congolese community that worships style. Images excerpted from a new soon-to-be-published photography book called “The Gentlemen of Bakongo: The Importance of Being Elegant” by Daniele Tamagni highlighting the Congo Brazzaville Sapeur scene.
Screen shot of trailer for the documentary “Good Fortune at the Transient Pictures website.
Good Fortune is a feature length documentary that explores how massive, international efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa may be undermining the very communities they aim to benefit. Through intimate portraits of two Kenyans battling to save their homes from large-scale development organizations, the film presents a unique perspective on the struggle to overcome world poverty.
There is a screening of Good Fortune on June 24th at Walter Reade Theater at The Film Society of Lincoln Center here in New York City as part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Screening details here.
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