“Who is the President of the United States of America?” Side-splitting Nigerian comedy skit.
A Big Issue
July 29, 2010 By 6 Comments
This TV (web?) spot was shot for Cape Town, South Africa-based magazine “The Big Issue.” You may have spotted the magazine on a visit there being sold by homeless (or destitute) people on the streets of that city; especially at traffic lights in the city center and on main roads in its mostly white middle class suburbs.
Here’s the description for the spot from the film directors at Butterfly Films:
Review: ‘Héritage Congo’
July 28, 2010 By 1 Comment
Guest Blogger, Tom DeVriendt
Pitcho Womba Konga hails from Congo but moved to Belgium at the age of seven. As an artist he is a co-founder of Skinfama, a Brussels-based collective instigating urban hip-hop culture. You might know him from his 2003 solo album Regarde Comment or from that other beauty he dropped earlier this year, Crise de Nègre (with the addictive single ‘Anges Noir’). But this month he got us hooked to the Héritage project.
Baboons and Bananas
July 28, 2010 By 9 Comments
By now you might well have heard about the apology published by the London Review of Books last week. Complaints had been made to the LRB about a particular piece of writing by RW Johnson, the ‘man in Africa’ for what is probably the UK’s leading literary publication.
Reporter Gary Younge, writing in The Guardian, summarized the events of the last week the best here and here.
Here’s our quick recap though.
Monday Blues
July 26, 2010 By 5 Comments
The latest video by the original hip hop artist Gil Scott Heron–who is back.
This is “I’m New Here.”
Via Ghetto Bassquake.
Cheryl Koralik’s Heat of Darkness
July 26, 2010 By 2 Comments
Cheryl Koralik’s images of Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, and Burkina Faso are a panoply of black and white – containing a beauty that is hard not to find deeply alluring. “Masques,” Koralik’s series of twelve images from Francophone West Africa, and “Notes from Africa” offer a range of full ceremonial dress, masks, dust, and wondrous sights, transforming the viewer–if not the gaze.
Music Fridays
July 23, 2010 By 1 Comment
Mos Def is back. Which means I am happy. This for Ski Beats’ new album coming out in September.
Toxic Mess
July 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment
As The Guardian reports today oil trader Trafigura has been fined €1 million for attempting to transport toxic waste to Ivory Coast in 2006.
Trafigura had initially chartered the ship Probo Koala, used to transport hundreds of tonnes of chemical slops to Amsterdam, in July 2006. When told it would have to pay the clean-up costs, the ship transported the material to Abidjan. The company was further charged with concealing the danger posed by the waste; it was only when “thousands” in Abidjan became ill and 16 people died after Trafigura “dumped [the waste] over the fence” – rather than arrange for special disposal – that the mess was discovered.
