Image of Peter Beard on the shores of Lake Turkana, 1965. From Guardian web site.
Controversial diarist, artist, photographer, writer, conservation activitist Peter Beard links my two worlds in New York City and Kenya. I always thought he was a Kenyan, a Kenya Cowboy to be sure but Kenyan none the less. Growing up, I remember his photography and the publicity it generated around wildlife conservation. The picture of him on the shores of Lake Rudolph (Lake Turkana to the kids) with half of his body in the mouth of a crocodile has always been part of my visual landscape.
In truth Peter Beard was born in these United States. He first developed an interest in Africa through visits to the Museum of Natural History in NYC. After graduating from Yale, he moved to Kenya working on game conservation, as documented in his book “The End of the Game“. The book featured the carcasses of mostly elephants that were dying in Tsavo from a combination of drought and overpopulation brought on by population pressures. Here in the US, Beard hung out with the art/social elite of NYC. Beard’s US base in Montauk (far east Long Island) was the place folks like Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel, Richard Avedon, and Jackie Kennedy spent time. He also counted luminaries like Mick and Bianca Jagger, as well as Francis Bacon among his circle of friends.
Excerpts from “Peter Beard: Scrapbooks from Africa and Beyond”
Beard’s mixed media diaries and installations make use of a lot of the ephemera of Kenya’s past and present. From coins, to images of Presidents Kenyatta and Moi, from old photos of colonial Kenya to current images of the land, people and animals of Kenya, there is so much that that is part of my visual and cultural landscape. That his work was inspired by artists like Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon, and his fashion images were featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair, places him squarely in the art scene in the New York of the 60s and 70s.
What one cannot deny about the work of Beard is that he appreciates the raw beauty of Kenya and incorporates it in his art. He can see the beauty of a Turkana woman untouched by modernity and say that it is the same beauty as that of a Vogue model. That bold viewpoint, informed by his life-long love of nature and natural history, challenges the connotation of Africa as that “dark” and primitive place and links the notion of beauty in Westernized, modernized, removed-from-nature New York with that of Africa (and all nature in general).
Beard, after all, is the man who introduced the world to one Iman Abdulmajid, claiming he had discovered her while she was herding camels in the Northern Frontier District (North Eastern Province to the kids). Iman’s arrival on the beauty scene of the early 1970’s completely and irrevocably upended the notion of African beauty in the world of fashion, which is pretty revolutionary come to think of it.
Paradoxically, apart from the Maasai and Turkana who live in the wild (in nature), the rest of us modern Africans are “doomed” for our wanton reproduction and desire for progress. In the debate over the battle of man vs nature in the competition for resources, Beard falls firmly on the side of nature. This quote from the film “Peter Beard: Scrapbooks from Africa and Beyond” in the mid-90s seems to imply that diseases like AIDS are nature’s retribution for our profligacy:
“Coming to Kenya is coming to unspoiled, and unscrewed up by human beings (at least in the 50’s), … a frontier that extends right back in time to the Stone Age. Human beings are not going to stop, they don’t know when to stop. The only thing that can stop them are these diseases that everyone is spending all their money to fight. We are sucking the juices out of the earth to fight the diseases that nature wants us to have because we are too greedy and we have taken over too much.”
This is a position that is hard to abide considering that as post-colonial Africans we are free to screw up our environment (or not), without the moralizing of people whose ancestors destroyed their environment and big chunks of other peoples’ to boot. It is the romantic, outmoded “Out of Africa”-era fetishistic attraction to Africa the primordial and the repulsion at Africa the modern with its complex, intractable problems that makes it hard to have unalloyed admiration for Peter Beard’s art, as much as he has contributed ecologically, culturally and visually. However, I suspect that is the essence of the man, who while decrying the superficial nature of modernity, has no problem doing fashion shoots for magazines that embrace that same superficiality. The world is full of contradictions.
Screen shot of Earth Wind and Fire performance from WNET site
First half of a January 1973 show from the SOUL! series entitled “Elements” features a performance by soul/jazz/funk-playing Earth Wind And Fire. Cool: the song “Mom” from the album “Last Days and Time”. Also cool: Verdine White’s Hendrix-esque bass solo (talk about slapping the bass!) Check out Philip Bailey’s pan-African red, green black outfit (yikes!) and all the fly outfits in the audience. In secondary school you could tell my exercise books and geometry kits; they were the ones with the Egyptian symbols on them (the ankh featured prominently) copied from EWF album artwork.
The second half of the show features Broadway star Linda Hopkins and the Soul Quintet (featuring a young Mtume). This is absolute soul gold.
Description of SOUL! from the WNET web site the New York City PBS station which aired the series from 1968 to 1973:
This entertainment-variety-talk show was not only a vehicle to promote African-American artistry, community and culture, but also a platform for political expression and the fight for social justice. It showcased classic live musical performances from funk, soul, jazz, and world musicians, and had in-depth, extraordinary interviews with political, sports, literary figures and more. It was the first program on WNET to be recorded with the then-new technology of videotape, and most of the shows were recorded in real-time—not live, but unedited.
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.
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.
rappin hood, one of brazil’s premier hip hop artists, states simply, “i’m black”. it seems an unremarkable assertion in a land where more than half of brazilians can claim african descent; where samba and capoeira have heavy doses of african influence. the largest population of african descendants outside africa lives in brazil. we all believe the mantra repeated, unchallenged, across latin america “there is no racism”. but after watching the latest episode of “wide angle” on PBS brazil in black and white, that turns out to be a profoundly complex statement. brazil is finally waking up to the realization that poverty in brazil has a color: that color is black. the government under luiz inacio lula da silva is trying to right that wrong by instituting affirmative action to get more blacks in colleges/universities and in the corporate world. but while the problem is clear, the solution isn’t; who is “black” in a country that is so racially mixed? how do you decide who is black, without creating arbitrary standards?
and this is not just a brazilian problem. a multimedia presentation from the miami herald “a rising voice: afro-latin americans” shows that things are changing all across latin america, as this most racially diverse region re-examines the notion of identity and its effect on social and economic equality.
racial identity and racism in latin america are quite different from the brand that i am familiar with that splits cleanly along the black/white divide and affects all on the wrong side of that line equally (badly). in africa or america you are black or white (which confuses some mixed race kids as they are neither). but in latin america being black is sometimes a choice; based on social/cultural factors as well as pigmentation. this means more nuanced definitions of darkness. to wit:
“To many Dominicans, to be black is to be Haitian. So dark-skinned Dominicans tend to describe themselves as any of the dozen or so racial categories that date back hundreds of years — Indian, burned Indian, dirty Indian, washed Indian, dark Indian, cinnamon, moreno or mulatto, but rarely negro.
The Dominican Republic is not the only nation with so many words to describe skin color. Asked in a 1976 census survey to describe their own complexions, Brazilians came up with 136 different terms, including café au lait, sunburned, morena, Malaysian woman, singed and “toasted.”"
whatever the labels, the resulting racism means that black people are overrepresented in the favelas and jails, and underrepresented in the corporate world, and in colleges/universities.
black latin americans are starting to re-assert their blackness/africanness. in addition to fighting for affirmative action afro-brazileiros, it includes doing things like preserving garifuna culture in honduras or activism to ensure land where quilombos or freed slave settlements were established are preserved as such.
“i’m black”. it’s a simple label, but it is a label that belies the the mind-boggling diversity of the people who claim it. also it doesn’t highlight the often conflicted relationship black people all over the diaspora have with that label and its connotations. i am most fascinated to see how public policy in places like brazil will be used to re-dress black racism and inequality.
in 1971 eric monte and mike evans wrote a script for 2 characters who first appeared on the show “all in the family”. those 2 characters were spun off into the sitcom “the jeffersons”. in 1971, eric monte and mike evans pitched a humorous story about a black family struggling to get by in the cabrini-green projects of chicago where monte grew up. in 1974 that script became “good times”. tired of fighting norman lear and the show writers on how to keep the show true to the reality of inner city life, he quit the show after the first season and went on write the semi-autobiographical “cooley high”. that seminal film was spun off into a tv show called “what’s happening!!”; although monte had minimal involvement with that show, beyond writing the initial script.
it is amazing to think how much impact one man had on changing the tv landscape, post civil rights struggle. before he appeared there were few significant real black characters on television. after he left, aside from the cosby show, no other show on network tv has broken new ground in portraying the realistic AND positive experience of being black in america (monte even claims he gave the idea of that show to cosby executive producer marcy casey). and like many revolutionaries, he did not benefit from the fruits of his efforts. when this npr interview[audio] was done in 2006, he was living in a homeless shelter, blackballed from hollywood for being “hard to work with” (read: fighting against stereotypical black characters, fighting for control over the direction of shows he had created).
Posted: May 5th, 2005 | Author:kamau | Filed under:television | Comments Off
africa has a deep scar on its heart from the effects of colonialism, ethnic hatred, and competition for resources. the only way to heal that scar is to confront the pain it causes and somehow try to move past it.
that is the metaphor roiling around in my head after watching “sometimes in april” on pbs last night. thankfully, raoul peck’s movie was not a gorefest depicting the slaughter, but more how individuals are trying to cope with and transcend the pain of having lived through those 90 days in 1994.
geographically, rwanda is in the heart of africa. that metaphor scales from the individual to the whole continent. i am not sure if that was the message behind the film, but it resonates very strongly with me for that reason.
p.s.: peck has a unique ability to visually represent modern day africa on the screen … with the beat up renaults and peugeots, the scattered clothing on the streets, the sets, etc. even though “sometimes …” had that “made for tv” feel in the strength of its story (characters not very well developed), visually the film was top notch.
p.p.s.: i was also struck by the pan-african nature of the cast, drawn as it was from rwanda, south africa, nigeria and the uk. not sure how to react to this, although a part of me feels that this is an african story, it should be told the most effective way possible, by africans regardless of their origins.
Posted: April 20th, 2005 | Author:kamau | Filed under:television | Comments Off
in 1932 solomon linda recorded a song called “mbube” (zulu for lion) in the isicathamiya style for gallo records in johanesburg south africa. the song’s melody was based on that of a traditional song sang by zulu women during (after?) a lion hunt. thus began the saga of one of the world’s most recorded pieces of music, one that highlights the gap between the law and ownership of cultural artifacts like music.
while the current debate is being held in the context of technology (the “rip, mix and burn” ethic that is at the confluence of computers, file sharing and the internet) the story of”mbube” or “the lion sleeps tonight” as it is more commonly known plays out against the backdrop of apartheid and racism.
wnet’s independent lens aired a documentary on monday night, which narrated the efforts of solomon linda’s family to get compensation from american composer david weiss and others for use of the melody in their compositions (the lion sleeps tonight is used in disney’s broadway presentation of the lion king). they have had limited success so far despite the high profile that south african journalist rian malan has brought to the cause in his writing and activism.
Posted: April 3rd, 2005 | Author:kamau | Filed under:television | Comments Off
when The Africa Channel launches this july on us cable systems it plans to devote its 1200 hours of programming to showcase the other africa, the one that exists and thrives even with all the war and disease. the other africa that americans may not know about.
“Historically, if there had not been interest in the place, the colonial powers would not have plundered it or built the empires that they did,” Mr. Makawa said. “Modern-day Africans say it’s different now. They want to be heard and they want to participate in the global economy, but they can’t participate if people don’t know who they are.” james makawa one of the channel’s founders.
