Missoni Resort 2011 Collection. Mod fashion with a nod to “tribal” (Ndebele) style.

(via the always interesting katebomz tumblr)

PHOTOGRAPHY: Jason Florio: 930km African Odyssey. Portraits of chiefs and elders taken while on a 2009 walking trip of Gambia.

Screen shot from Greg Constantine’s site. © G. Constantine

PHOTOGRAPHY: Greg Constantine: Slum Warriors: Kenya’s Nubians. Kibera’s 100,000 strong Nubian community has lived there for over 100 years on land give them as compensation for fighting in the Kings African Rifles. “Nubian” is not officially recognized as a Kenyan tribe, so unless they are “vetted” at age of 18 to get Kenyan ID cards they become essentially stateless.

PHOTOGRAPHY:: Zwelethu Mthethwa: Inner Visions. Studio Museum in (the sweet village of) Harlem brings together a number of Mthethwa’s large scale images. Go see.

Zwelethu Mthethwa: Inner Views brings together three series by South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa (b. 1960). “Interiors” and “Empty Beds” document the domestic lives of migrant workers around Johannesburg, South Africa, while “Common Ground” focuses on the shared experience of natural disasters in urban areas, featuring houses in New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina and on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, after wildfires.

See Also: Talk between Mthethwa and Okuwi Enwezor last year at Aperture gallery at the launch of Mthethwa’s monograph.

Zwelethu Mthethwa and Okwui Enwezor from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.

A while ago, NPR did a feature on Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum as part of a series of the 50 greatest voices of all time. I sat up when I heard the orchestrastration behind her voice that sounded familiar. I sat all the way up when correspondent Neda Ulaby, in reminiscing about her Syrian father’s love for Kulthum’s music, used the word tarab which, translated into Arabic means ecstasty (the emotion, not the drug). And you could hear that ecstasy as the mostly male voices on the live recordings of her songs shouted their approval when Kulthum would hit a particularly high emotional note.

In East Africa, taarab refers to a specific form of sung poetry. Per an excellent interview with anthropology professor Kelly Askew the roots of the music are in Zanzibar, where 19th century Omani sultan Barghash brought Egyptian musicians to perform court music like he had seen in travels in India and elsewhere. Classical (Zanzibari) taraab is epitomized by groups such as Ikhwani Safaa or the Culture Music Club; their sound influenced by mid-20th century Egyptian pop music as well as the firqah orchestras of Egyptian film.

Askew also posits an alternate theory that taarab grew organically from the interaction of African/Arab/Indian sailors who plied the Indian Ocean. The music evolved as a synthesis of the cultures of these places and the people who came into contact with each other. The various flavors of taarab seem to bear this theory out. In towns like Dar es Salaam and Tanga in Tanzania, it is more vocal-oriented and flavored with the ngoma (rhythms) of ethnic groups like the Chagga, Nyamwezi, Sukuma. Over time is has also incorporated dansi or urban/western sounds like the foxtrot, cha cha and Cuban as well as Congolese rumba. Mombasa taarab is more influenced by Indian Bollywod film music and incorporates classical Arab musical structures. Mombasa bands are also much smaller and the ngoma are inspired by Giriama and Digo rhythms.

While taarab themes mostly concern themselves with matters of the heart, in Nyerere’s Tanzania it provided culturally neutral ground (together with Kiswahili) that helped Tanzanians stitch a national identity beyond tribe, something that other (East) African countries would do well to emulate.

SEE ALSO: Taarab legend Bi Kidude performs with the Culture Music Club of Zanzibar.

The result, as Magnin’s book copiously documents, was a cultural episode during which African pop culture defied its hidden or secondhand status (always a Western cliche, but sometimes a legitimate label) and busted out all over the place. But not in terms of the now commonplace imagery, of “native” Africans in traditional dress bobbing and keening for the benefit of CNN. Instead, what Sidibe documented was an after-hours declaration of confident self-styling, influenced by Western modes, but made fresh by free adaptation.

More:

Confidence, energy, and complexity of spirit are not concepts routinely applied to African culture these days. The continent, with few exceptions, is viewed either as an intractable problem, a fractious war zone, or the place where all the deadly virus come from. Sidibe’s photography—culled from his constant forays into clubs of Bamako from 1948 to 1976—counteracts this dour and borderline racist narrative, in the most effective way possible: by showing people having a good time on their own terms.

Nuit de Noel, 1963. © Malick Sidibe. From Artnet site

Images from day 1 of the 2010 edition of the Afro-Punk Festival in the County of Kings. There were fewer attendees (remote location? entry fee?) but a strong artist billing (I caught sets by The 54, the always ribald Ninjasonik, God Forbid, kid punks The Bots and punk OGs Bad Brains)

In the aftermath of watching the ‘Brains I believe that HR and Dr. Know have had the same deep impact on popular music AND the black experience as George Clinton and Bootsy Collins did, but in totally different music worlds.

Without knowing a damn thing about his life off stage you could see and hear that this dude is about one complicated brother and his complexity matched our own, those of us that is who were young black and trying to figure out what it meant to be Black in post Civil Rights America before hip hop provided us with the collective answer. But for those whose identity questions could never simply be answered by joining the hip hop or crossover r&b, or jazz neo-classicist camps, for those who embrace the chaos, confusion and flux of the rainbow, HR and Prince and their later acolytes, Fishbone’s Angelo Moore and Living Colour’s Corey Glover, functioned as heralds, dark angels sent to scream and shout that yes it was possible to be in love with being Black and have mad love for Joe Strummer and Johnny Rotten too.

Greg Tate on Bad Brains’ Paul Hudson (aka HR).

See Also: “Stick Up Kids”, The Time-esque ’soul/funk from Bad Rabbits who played the festival on Sunday. Currently in heavy rotation here at casa forota.

For all of us who cannot be in Mzansi right now in a Jo’burg club dancing/listening to kwaito/house apres the latest World Cup match here is Secousse SA Kwaito House Mix by Moroka from the Secousse Sound System. Mix contains classic and new “chunes” from the South African music scene. Stumbling on RSA kwaito/house like this is always exciting here at casa forota since I have found it so hard to find and buy any South African music in my usual online/offline places.

“Kwaito in the streets of Alexandra Township” © Krisanne Johnson

Refugee: In above puff piece, former refugee Iman makes a great point about what women displaced by the Congo conflict need. No, not charity but help to end the war (as funded by conflict minerals from that region), so that they can re-build their communities. Not sure if the whole fair-trade cellphones concept will take off, though.

Photography: Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler: Bicycle Portraits

The Bicycle Portraits project was initiated by Stan Engelbrecht (Cape Town, South Africa) and Nic Grobler (Johannesburg, South Africa) early in 2010. Whenever they can, together or separately, they’re on the lookout for fellow commuters, and people who use bicycles as part of their everyday work, to meet and photograph. They’re finding out who rides bicycles, why they ride bicycles, if and why they love their bicycles, and of course why so few South Africans choose bicycles as a transport option.

The two photographers (bike enthusiasts from Cape Town) are using the startup Kickstarter (creative project funding platform) to raise funds to make their project into a hardcover book.

Screen shot from National Geographic site of James Nachtwey photo essay. © J. Nachtwey
PHOTOGRAPHY: South Africa: Mandela’s Children National Geographic photo gallery by James Nachtwey focusing on South Africa post-independence.

The swenkas are a small group of Zulu working men which formed in South Africa following the abolishment of Apartheid.
These well-dressed men are proud and considered to serve as an inspiration to others. On Saturday nights, these men leave their work clothes behind and don highly fashionable quality suits to impress a judge, who is a randomly picked. Traditionally, the prize for the most stylish suit is cash, but on special occasions such as Christmas, the winner may receive a goat or a cow. This traditional fashion show still happens today, but it is unclear as to precisely when it was instigated. The men follow certain set values of Swanking, such as physical cleanliness, sobriety and above all self-respect.

It is not clear what the precise roots of the swenka culture are. There is the acapella Iscathamiya music, where the performers, inspired by African-American ragtime/jazz fashions took a sense of formality and elegance. Also like migrants everywhere else the workers needed to buy swanky outfits for their return home to show those they had left behind that they had made it in the big city, regardless of what the daily reality was (is) of life in the mines, the construction sites, and white homes where they worked. Regular competition seems to have raised it all into an art form and a subculture.

The three video clips below highlight the various threads that make up Swenka.

Mini-feature on the Zulu ISICATHAMIYA choir competitions in Johannesburg

“artsworld” feature on Iscathamiya choral and Swenka fashion competitions in Johannesburg

Trailer for 2004 documentary “The Swenkas” by Danish director Jeppe Ronde. Synopsis here

Screen shot from Vice magazine site featuring the Swenkas. © M. Shoul

See also: Vice magazine: Swanky Swenkas Snip from article from Adolphus Mbuyisa on swenking:

I am one of the organizers of the Joburg swenkas. I don’t know how many suits I own, maybe 20 or 30. If I see a suit I like, I simply must have it. I also have lots of shoes, ties, and shirts. It is important for everything to match if you want to win a competition.

….

I live in a room in Soweto. My family is very supportive of me and my clothes. They don’t mind that I spend so much money on suits—they are proud of me and they like it when I look smart.

Screen shot from designer Paul Smith’s web site

Speaking of Swankiness, See Also: Underscoring the power of the imagination in subcultures like the Swenkas and sapeurs, fashion designer Paul Smith has a new fashion line for spring/summer 2010 called “Mainline” influenced by Congo Brazzaville’s sapeurs:

See Also: Through all this I can’t help but think of Hugh Masekela’s song “Coal Train” (aka “Stimela”) about a train carrying men from the hinterlands of southern Africa (all of Africa these days?) who uproot themselves from their homes, lands and loves in the pursuit of dreams of wealth and comfort. The dreams that crash into the reality of migrant life and that are rekindled in Swenka fashion and Iscathamiya music/performance.

Hugh Masekela: “Coal Train Live”