A few of us are taking a break from daily blogging to enjoy what’s left of the northern summer, to transition into new jobs or catch up on offline relationships. BTW, there’s only so many times you can debate with people why we don’t care about Naomi Campbell’s diamonds. See you after Labor Day (for non-US readers that after September 4th). That does not mean we won’t be active on Twitter. Check out our various Twitter feeds to the right.
Ahead of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, I had blogged about the proliferation of nonsensical press reports claiming 40 000 women would be trafficked into the country during that event.
Shortly after the tournament ended, NPR reported on the startling lack of incidences of trafficking, given all the scare-mongering.
Then yesterday I was amused to read a transcript of an exchange during a meeting of the South African Parliament’s Justice portfolio committee between MPs and a government official. The gist is: no trafficking happened during the World Cup. Here’s an extract:
From an article in last week’s “Detroit Metro Times”: ‘… In the ’60s, Motown was so popular in Italy that Berry Gordy had his artists record translated versions of their songs specifically for the Italian market. Back then, the transistor radios of teens from Turin to Palermo were blaring such hits as The Supremes’ “Se il filo spezzerai” (“You Keep Me Hanging On“), Stevie Wonder’s “Solo te, solo me, solo noi” (“Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday“) or even The Four Tops’ “Gira Gira” (“Reach Out I’ll Be There”) …’
Image: John Edwin Mason
Woke up this morning with the sad news in my email inbox–from music journalist Gwen Ansell–that Ezra Ngcukana (b. 1954), the great Cape Flats jazz musician and a member of the Ngcukana jazz dynasty, had passed away. Ngcukana had been diabetic with high blood pressure. Ngcukana’s death is “… no doubt exacerbated by the sadness everybody in Cape Town is still feeling about Robbie Jansen. Ezra must have been devastated by that.”
The best tribute to Ngcukana’s genius I have seen (h/t: Suren Pillay) is this, posted earlier today, by the historian and photographer, John Edwin Mason, here .
– Sean Jacobs
Image: Paul Sika
“I’ve kept some distance from the 50th anniversary,” my friend says, “because I’m being doubted.” A few days ago he went online to check his voter eligibility status. My friend was born in Côte d’Ivoire and has always been Ivorian, nothing else. He travels back to Côte d’Ivoire for Christmas or, recently, to bury his parents, on his valid Ivorian passport. One would think this made him eligible to vote, but the voter rolls are the domain of a different agency. For more than a decade people from the north of the country, or whose last name suggests they might be from the north, have had trouble getting registered to vote. My friend is from the north. Several times in the past few years he has come to the consulate in New York armed with his passport, his old identity cards, various notarized statements, to make his case to the election officers who have deployed across the country and its diaspora. Now the file status gets posted online but the process behind it is as murky as ever. This time my friend found his name on the latest provisional voter list, subject to some unspecified further confirmation. This is better than last year, when his application was turned down. Being of a stubborn nature, my friend took the time to press his case. Many others didn’t bother.
The G.O.A.T. Muhammed Ali interviewed on the British TV talk show, “Parkinson’s”back in 1971, about whether he would like to be President of the United States.
That’s the only way to explain the “career” of the really bad rapper, Bangs (Sudan-born, Australian-based), that includes doing TV commercials, being mocked as “The 11th Hottest Rapper in the Game,” getting interviewed by hip hop journalists, and having a distribution deal.
Here‘s some background if you missed this mess. And Bangs, who mimics 50 Cent (check his laugh), is in on the joke as we can see in his breakout video “Take U to the Movies,” from last year as well as in the video, above, for his latest effort. Meet me on Facebook.
– Sean Jacobs
