Off to Paris with my wife for one week. So no blogging till then. Meanwhile for things French enjoy this vintage clip where the Paris DJ, Cut Killer, mixes Edith Piaf and KRS-One from Mathieu Kassovitz’s early 1990s film ‘La Haine‘ (the French answer to ‘Do the Right Thing’). When I am back I hope [...]
Archive for July, 2007
Hiatus
Posted in film, La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz, Music on July 29, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Beautiful Things on Fridays
Posted in art on July 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The art of Delphine Diallo, French-Senegalese, based in New York City. Her influences include the Malian photographer Malick Sidibe, Zak Smith and Margaret Kilgallen.
Kalakuta Republic
Posted in Music, Nigeria on July 25, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
‘Fela Kuti was idolised as a rebel and martyr in Nigeria – yet in the west, we know him only for his Afrobeat music and his 27 wives,’ writes Alex Hannaford in the UK Guardian. Thanks to Suren Pillay for alerting me to the article.
Public Opinion
Posted in New York Times, Portrait of Sub-Saharan Africa, Public Opinion on July 25, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Public opinion surveys are big business in Africa and the New York Times has joined the fray. Today the paper published the results of a public opinion survey — ‘a snapshot’ — of 10 sub-Saharan African countries. The poll conducted under the supervision of the private Princeton Survey Research Association International was sponsored by the [...]
Wire-less in Rwanda
Posted in Internet connectivity, New York Times, Rwanda on July 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The New York Times‘ Sunday Busines Times has published a report by one if its reporters Ron Nixon on an initiative to increase internet connectivity in Rwanda. In 2003 the Rwandan government signed a contract with a US company Terracom to ‘lace Rwanda with fiber optic cables, connecting schools, government institutions and homes with low-cost, [...]
Le Petit Senegal
Posted in Harlem, immigration, Le Petit Senegal, Little Senegal, New York on July 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The New York Times published a short feature in its Sunday “The City” section on Little Senegal, the area on Frederick Douglas Boulevard between 116th Street and 125th in Harlem. According to the reporter Nana Kankam ‘… in the five-year period ending in 2005, the number of African-born immigrants living in central Harlem increased by [...]
Dennis Brutus, ‘the world’s troubadour’
Posted in Books, globalization, poetry, South Africa on July 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The irrepressible South African scholar, activist and poet, Dennis Brutus was recently featured on New York’s Democracy Now! news show.The occasion was the United States Social Forum in Atlanta, and the always frank Brutus had a lot to say about political developments in South Africa. Here’s the relevant segment from the transcript (the interview was [...]
Angola has oil
Posted in kuduro, Music, Os Lambas on July 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Accra has hiplife. Johannesburg has kwaito. Luanda has kuduro. Kuduro literally translates as ‘stiff bottom’ in Angolan-Portuguese. A percussion-driven hybrid of Zouk, ragga, techno and house, birthed in Luanda and Lisbon in the late 1980s, and with followers and crews all over the Lusophone world (it’s big in Brazil), the genre may still make up [...]
‘Don’t you want to help save Africa?’
Posted in Books, Nwanku Kanu on July 18, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Nigerian author Uzodinma Iweala (debut novel: Beasts of No Nation) is angry about Western attitudes about the continent — like another young African-born artist, the Somali-born hop hop artist K’Naan a few days ago.In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Iweala — who was featured in the Bono-edited Vanity Fair “Africa” issue — expands [...]
The Washington Post and AIDS in Zimbabwe
Posted in Zimbabwe on July 17, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Last Friday the Washington Post ran a report by its Johannesburg correspondent Craig Timberg on AIDS in Zimbabwe.To quote Timberg: ‘It’s not only the prices of bread and eggs that are out of control in Zimbabwe, land of 4,000 percent inflation. For the man inclined to cheat on his wife, these are trying times. Keeping [...]
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