Music Break. Booker T. Jones
October 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Uganda’s Guantánamo
October 31, 2011 By 7 Comments
By Dan Moshenberg
Last week Ingrid Turinawe, the leader of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) Women’s League, in Uganda, was sent to the infamous Luzira Prison.
Everywhere one looks, there are “infamous” prisons. For the United States, for example, Guantánamo, with its regime of torture and its regimen of violence, is but the tip of a national iceberg. Every country has at least one. In Uganda, it’s Luzira Prison.
‘The right ideology’
October 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Musicians don’t only talking about rims or energy drinks.
Video shot (by SOUNDTRACKS) in San Francisco (in August 2011) of a jet-lagged Seun Kuti opining on “The Arab Spring.”
Bonus. Live footage from his summer gigs in San Francisco:
Occupy Africa
October 31, 2011 By 1 Comment
How do Africans–ground zero for resource extraction by the world’s 1%–feel about the now global ‘Occupy’ movement? Thus far it’s mostly restricted to South Africa (according to OWS’s own data collection) and to small once-off protests by mostly white, middle class South Africans.* But now they’re joined by Senegalese musician Baaba Maal. That’s Maal above–in the video sound bite–talking about 99% with Okayafrica’s Allison Swank.
BTW, Maal could have added that Africans have been going on about global Apartheid for a while. If you take the anti-privatization social movements of the early 2000s in South Africa, the role of activists like Dennis Brutus, the various World Social Forum meetings held in Dakar last year and Nairobi before that, the AIDS movement, the films of Abdourahmane Sissako (‘Bamako‘) or the protests against Shell in Nigeria, etcetera.
Viva Kinshasa
October 31, 2011 By 3 Comments
One of the most exciting films to come out of the continent recently is the Congolese gangster noir, ‘Viva Riva!’ Sean already blogged about it here when it just started to attract a lot of hype. I saw the film at the Durban International Film Festival earlier this year, where it seemed to polarize the audience. Some felt it was entertaining and authentic, while others felt it was “socially irresponsible”. I found myself thinking the former. True to its genre, the film is a stylish rough-and-tumble tour of Kinshasa. There is violence and sex, but not to the point where it feels excessive or contrived. It’s a gangster film after all.
We follow Riva (Patsha Bay Mukana), a charming hustler who steals a truckload of fuel from some Angolan gangsters and returns to Kinshasa to make money off it. There is a shortage of fuel in town and word quickly spreads of Riva’s acquisition. He becomes hot property and everyone wants a piece of him. Throw a corrupt army official and a femme fatale into the mix and you’ve got yourself a thrilling ride through Kinshasa’s bustling streets.
Writer/director Djo Tunda Wa Munga, who has been called “an African Tarantino” has his filmmaking roots in the documentary genre. He was born and bred in Kinshasa and it shows. Kinshasa is not just a backdrop to Riva’s story, but a living, breathing character in the film. ‘Viva Riva!’ has been doing the rounds internationally and has thus far won an MTV award for Best African Film and six awards at the 7th African Movie Academy Awards.
I recently caught up with Djo Tunda Wa Munga in Amsterdam at the Africa in the Picture Film Festival, where he scooped the Best Feature Film Award. I sat in/hijacked Serginho Roosblad’s interview with him for Radio Netherlands Worldwide and asked a couple of questions of my own. Serginho graciously offered this interview to AIAC.
Is ‘Viva Riva!’ in a way a story about Africans who have emigrated and the experience of alienation when returning to their hometown?
Music Break. Bonus Friday Edition
October 28, 2011 By 1 Comment
5 for le weekend.
“Propaganda” one of a series of songs/videos made by The King’s Will –one half of the UK duo is Musa Okwonga, whose family migrated from Uganda. The song is a homage to PR and advertising pioneer Edward Bernays:
