TAKALANI SESAME

Last week the children’s TV program, Sesame Street, celebrated its 40 year on air (in the United States where it was first broadcast).

My daughter, four, now favors Nick Jnr. but one and a half out of the first three years of her life was all about Sesame Street. (You can only lie for so long that there’s only one channel on TV.) Sesame is also a franchise so the program’s brand of liberal politics (hey what’s wrong with a little multiculturalism now and then?) that my daughter has been exposed to can also be seen in 125 countries. Like in South Africa where a local version (of course with stringent guidelines from New York City, of course) with its great includes an HIV-positive puppet (which has had the American right in a twist) as well as anti-pollution songs, like above.

So, to Sesame Street then, Happy Birthday.

WHO WILL BENEFIT FROM 2010?

Just as the football at the 2010 World Cup will be great, someone will make lots of money. It is not going to be local businesses for sure. This excellent 13 minute short documentary (“Trademark 2010″) for Dutch TV channel, VPRO, covers the fantasy that local people–small businesspeople, informal traders–will make money or get jobs during the tournament.

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BAABA MAAL LIVE

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I was watching and listening to this performance–recorded live last month on Los Angeles station, KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic” (musicians come to perform live on air for about one hour)–early today.  Maal is a genius.

Listen here.

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MUSIC BREAK / “THE BLACK ATLANTIC”?

Is this the 21st century Black Atlantic (minus the intellectualism or the race politics)? Yes it is Fally Ipupa, the Congolese superstar, and R&B singer, Olivia, who used to be on rapper 50 Cent’s G-Unit label.

Bling, fantasy, and immigrant culture in Europe and American R&B meet.

THE BLACKFACE USER GUIDE

It must be Blackface season. All manner of white people, whether people dressing up for Halloween, Australian TV variety shows, fashion magazines and even French TV programs think it is okay to put on Blackface.

The clip above–the latest incident of blackface–is from the French TV program, “Rendez-vous en terre inconnue,”" which sends celebrities to encounter “remote tribes.” The offending part comes about 1.20 minutes into the video; also watch the reaction of one of the few black people in the audience at 2:27.

I would recommend they all go read Gary Dauphin’s graphically illustrated Blackface User Guide.

“AFTER MANDELA”

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On the even of South Africa’s second democratic election in 1999 as Nelson Mandela made way for Thabo Mbeki, both foreign and South African media outlets could not contain themselves with the “What happens After Mandela?” questions.

That same nonsense is being peddled on the front page of The New York Times in a piece that does not tell us much. The piece is actually an excuse to promote a new book about Mandela’s time in prison (for which I will honor Mandela forever).   But this should have been in the Arts section instead of being offered as news analysis.

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CONFERENCE / ‘TUNING IN TO AFRICAN CITIES’

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Notice for an academic conference to be held in Birmingham, UK, in May next year:

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BLACK MADAMS

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Headline in South Africa’s The Times newspaper: “Black madams suck, say maids.” The story:

Black domestic workers would rather work for white madams than black “siesies” because they believe whites pay better. This is one of the findings by University of Witwatersrand sociology master’s student Xoliswa Dilata, who investigated the relationship between black employers and domestic workers in Soweto.”

Link

I am not surprised. They’re madams.

* The image is from photographer Edward West‘s series of ordinary black South Africans, “Casting Shadows” (2001).

PHOTOGRAPHY / ‘KINGSMEAD EYES’

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PATRIOTISM, NIGERIAN STYLE

Nigeria is hosting the Under-17 World Cup. That the host team’s captain may actually be 25 years old (!) has dominated news about the tournament. But that’s the least of the host’s problems:

Call to armed robbers: stop your crimes. Please. For a little while at least. Please.

Lawmakers in the Nigerian state of Ogun begged the thieves for a crime hiatus during the junior soccer World Cup hosted by the country, reported the Web site of Next, a publication of Timbuktu Media Group.

Criminal operations would sully the country’s name, said members of the state’s assembly. One lawmaker raised an alarm that the Isheri bridge, which links Ogun with the state of Lagos, had become a den of bandits.

“I want to appeal to the men of the underworld to suspend their actions and operations in the interim because of our foreign visitors currently in the state,” the lawmaker, Edward Ayo Odugbesan, said. “Then they can resume thereafter, because there is nowhere in the world where robbers and robberies could be stopped from their work.”

Source

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