Well, the snowstorm in Boston will be shortening the length of the conference, and the performance by Debo Band has been cancelled. However, Harvard’s Africa Remix Conference will be on and live today, Friday, February 8th.

A lot of interesting folks will be presenting, including a keynote speech by Francis Falceto, the owner of the Ethiopiques record label. I am presenting in a panel called Producing Global Sounds, and will be talking about my experiences and practices as a 2nd-generation Sierra Leone diasporan and DJ. If you are conveniently in the Boston area you probably don’t have to go to work, so stop by!

For those of you who don’t want to brave the weather, or don’t live within reasonable distance from Cambridge, Massachusetts, follow the conference on twitter with the hashtag #AfricaRemix starting at 8:30am Boston time. The presentations are being recorded and will eventually be posted on the web, so we will share them with you in some form at a future date.

Further Reading

Writing while black

Percival Everett’s novel ‘Erasure’ raised questions about Black middle-class complicity in commodifying the traumas of Black working-class lives, but the film adaptation leaves little room to explore these tensions.

The Mogadishu analogy

In Gaza and Haiti, the specter of another Mogadishu is being raised to alert on-lookers and policymakers of unfolding tragedies. But we have to be careful when making comparisons.

Kwame Nkrumah today

New documents looking at British and American involvement in overthrowing Kwame Nkrumah give us pause to reflect on his legacy, and its resonances today.