Last week in Bolinas, CA, my friend, Kora McNaughton (she lives in Santiago), got me onto the music of Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux. (Interview–in English–from 2010 here.) I have her new album (a gift) to prove it. Too bad I won’t be in the city Monday night when Ana Tijoux performs at SOB’s.
Weekend Special, July 29*
July 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment
“The Bang Bang Club,” the Hollywood film about the four real-life white photographers who built their fame taking pictures of political violence in black townships in early 1990s South Africa, was released in South Africa this week. Most reviewers here (and in the UK) were lukewarm about the fim. Now journalists in South Africa are picking up on how the film treats some of the Bang Bang Club’s black colleagues. Here’s Philippa Garson, a colleague of the Bang Bang Club writing in The Mail & Guardian:
What bothered me most about ‘The Bang Bang Club’ was the distorted depiction of Abdul Shariff, who was caught in the crossfire and shot dead in Katlehong in January 1994. He is portrayed in the movie as a gawky young novice who eagerly asks to join the Bang Bang Club. After the group reluctantly allows him to tag along, he is killed in a gunfight in a graveyard in Soweto. In reality Shariff was an experienced and respected photographer who would never have asked to join the Bang Bang Club! It was irresponsible to portray him in this way. “In retrospect maybe it was a mistake, but it was unintended,” [the film's director Steven Silver] says. For all those people who knew Shariff, this was certainly no small mistake.
And here’s columnist Fred Khumalo in The Sunday Times:
… [I]t sickened me to see Alf Kumalo, one of the greats of SA photography, making a cameo appearance as an avuncular has-been whose only contribution to the narrative is giving the Marinovich character a warm welcome to The Star’s photographic department. And – ah, yes – he also gets to admonish a young township radical who rails against members of the Bang Bang Club “profiting” from the suffering of black victims. According to the movie, Kumalo did not share a single nugget of photographic wisdom with the young bucks. Those who worked at The Star, and other photographers who interacted with the Bang Bang Club in the field, will tell you tales to the contrary.Those of us who have been around for some time in this crazy trade of words and pictures know that Oosterbroek, for one, spent many hours learning from Kumalo – about the finer points of photography, but also survival tips in the hot spots where the younger man was robbed of his wife’s car, was shot and generally abused by fighters across the divide. There were others too: photographers Walter Dhladhla, Elmond Jiyane and Juda Ngwenya, to mention a few, who, because of their knowledge of the townships and the languages spoken there, were always eager to help photographers and journalists not familiar with the terrain.
Meanwhile, the paper for the black middle class, The City Press, just copied Bill Keller’s review from The New York Times.
Music Break / Zaki Ibrahim
July 27, 2011 By 1 Comment
The other day, we were wondering where all the female African MC’s were at. Give us some time to come up with a proper answer (serious, where are they?), but we think South African Zaki Ibrahim is one of the few. Beats for this track (and cameo in the video) are by Canadian house DJ and producer Nick Holder.
Hemingway and Toto
July 27, 2011 By 3 Comments
Imagine that Hem was forced to teach Creative Writing at an MFA programme, and Phil Sawyer, the song-writer for Toto, was enrolled in his class. And like every MFA whiteboy in Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, or Billings, Montana, Sawyer’s got some woman he’s pining for somewhere, and some others in the programme he’s gaming. But…he’s still thinking of her. Out there, going about the business of achiving the Greater Good of Womankind, NGO-ing in dusty, walk-a-mile-to-get-the-day’s-water-supply, female-circumcision land.
Hem’s in trouble already with administration: he threw a chair at a kid in his 6-9PM poetry workshop (why has his career come to this – to praising terrible alliterations? Why do these people think alliterations are good?). The chair-flinging incident was quickly named a ‘diabetic fit’ after an inquest by an internal committee (though the whole class sees him sucking on sweets throughout workshop, and the rapidly diminishing contents of a bottle of Black Label in his office), and he was given a mandatory year of ‘medical leave’. But here he is, with the same fools, and the haunting sense of failure that sent him into a rage.
Then, suddenly, Hem gets invited to run a study abroad programme, in Kenya. He’s got no illusions: study abroad and MFA? It’ll be babysitting 20 idiots, all nurturing the assurance that they will find their Big Break, write the iconic story about Africa, become famous. But Hem’s stuck with admin’s request – he’s this close to losing his Handicapped Parking spot. He’s shrewd – after all, he’s attached himself to a succession of rich bitches, each richer than the last, who hand-maidened him along. He earmarks some of the funding for a TA – Phil Sawyer. Of all the fawners, Phil excels in an exceptional way. It’s like this limp biscuit has no sense of selfhood, but one seen through others (Hem remembers the therapist-speak from the last forced marital counseling encounter). He feels a glint of recognition.
Phil will gladly take care of the 20 morons, and imagine it to be an honour.
Medea is a Malian woman
July 27, 2011 By 2 Comments
By Dan Moshenberg
Did you hear about Medea? You know, the woman who killed her two kids? It turns out, according to the Associated Press, she lives in Mali, and her name is Coumba, or maybe Tabita. At any rate, she’s 18, a domestic worker in Bamako, and she did the unthinkable. She killed her child.
Why? Why does a woman do “the unthinkable”? There’s the question. According to the AP, it’s because women in Mali are trapped. A poor country where abortion is illegal, where contraception use is rare, women are forced first into abusive, low paying jobs, and in particular domestic work, and then suffer rape and pregnancy. They must then rely on the kindness of strangers to help them pull through. The result? For women in prison, the top three crimes are theft, assault, infanticide.
Mali is indeed a hard place. It suffers crushing poverty, is surrounded by weak and poor countries, is landlocked, and, perhaps most significantly, is on the verge of a population tsunami. Mali has one of the highest rates of annual population growth in the world. The capital, Bamako, may be the fastest growing city and, not surprisingly, is becoming one of the most expensive. This means the gap between haves and have-nots is also increasingly, quickly and massively. As if that weren’t enough, Mali is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to climate change. According to a recent report, Mali is hotspot for food insecurity due to climate change.
A dismal picture. And an incomplete one.
‘Live from the Continent’
July 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment
South African artist Spoek Mathambo gets the Tim & Barry treatment for their online music channel dontwatchthat.tv. (Watch it here.) Spoek will be playing in New York (Damrosch Park Bandshell) on August 7, by the way, as part of the ‘Live from the Continent’ line-up. Other guests are Blitz the Ambassador and Iyadede. DJ’s for the night are Boima (if he can make it back from the continent in time) and the Ahficionados.
July 26, Liberia
July 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The oldest republic in Africa, Liberia–formed in 1847–celebrates its independence today. Chances are Dumyarea, the song we wrote about earlier will pump from stereos and in cars, but there’s more. Right now you have two major styles Gbema and Hipco (the co is for Colloquial), and sometimes they mix. All of the songs on youtube are a few years old (because that’s how long it takes to upload a video from Liberia — Ha!).
Friday the Cellphone Man – Simple Mistake, a previous big hit in the folk style Gbema:
Music Break / Stromae
July 25, 2011 By 2 Comments
Stromae seems determined to turn every song on his 2010 album Cheese into a hit. A video like the one above will no doubt help. I’ve always been surprised by articles digging for his ‘Rwandan roots’ (e.g. “in Africa, I am considered white”), for in Belgium we just know him as the dude from Alors on Danse (and its hilarious ‘making-of’ you must have seen by now).
Maid in Public: Nafissatou Diallo Speaks
July 25, 2011 By 5 Comments
By now, anyone who’s been following the case knows that Nafissatou Diallo’s exclusive interviews with Newsweek and the US television network, ABC, have changed the manner in which ‘the maid from Guinea’ has been portrayed by news agencies and reporters. Newsweek and ABC must be giddy that they got the exclusives – but giving up her anonymity, or controlling her ‘story’ was hardly ever in her hands. French news already published Diallo’s identity with in a week, after prodding out information about her from such reliable sources as a New York City taxi driver who had a regular run by Sofitel; the New York Post; (a tabloid run by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corps) claimed that she made money on the side through prostitution (Diallo’s lawyers are now suing the Post for defamation, while the newspaper stands by its story).
DSK’s lawyers, who used their agency and access to The New York Times et al to slander Diallo a few weeks ago have yet again used their public platform, The New York Post, to release the following statement yesterday: “Ms. Diallo is the first accuser in history to conduct a media campaign to persuade a prosecutor to pursue charges against a person from whom she wants money.”
That’s a silly claim – not only because both defendants’ and prosecutors’ sides have appealed to ‘the public’ as long as there have been legal cases conducted in public, and a fourth estate to disseminate information regarding cases generating public interest. DSK’s lawyers already did so, with incredible aggression that showed their dedication to their client, and illustrated the power accessible at the fee scale a man like DSK is able to pay. That Diallo now appeals to the public, using a different set of emotional appeals from those employed by DSK’s defense, is hardly novel.
Planet of Hip Hop
July 25, 2011 By 3 Comments
Cape Town-based Driemanskap’s ‘I will make it’ is not new, but the video for the track is. We threw 5 questions to Damian Stephens, founding partner of Pioneer Unit Records, the independent hip hop label to which Driemanskap is signed. He is also a music producer (as Dplanet) and one half of an audiovisual ‘band’ called Pure Solid (the other half is Anne-Sophie Leens, who directed the video above).
