Boima blogged here recently about UNICEF’s efforts to raise awareness about the drought in the Sahel; what he described as “a step in the right direction towards facilitating genuine empathy, and away from the sensationalistic portrayals that have come to define awareness campaigns.” Then there are campaigns like this one by the French Action contre la Faim (ACF or Action against Hunger). We don’t want to sound like a broken record, but here, unfortunately, we go again.
‘We found love in a hopeless place’
May 9, 2012 By 32 Comments
The central point of this song and music video by violinist Lindsey Stirling (the singer is one Alisha Popat) begins with an invocation of a familiar trope: Africa is a hopeless place. But African love springs eternal. So much so that it has the ability to save and teach privileged people from the west, who arrive with fancy hopes of ‘saving’ picturesque Africans. Hell, I’m sure you could even save the elephants if you spent long enough prancing around them playing the violin and the elephants somehow managed to resist the temptation to grind you into the dust with their massive feet (note to American celebrities). And people love this kind of thing. By late last night, this video had nearly half a million views since it was first posted on Youtube on Monday, May 7.
Yuna
May 8, 2012 By 6 Comments
Malaysian singer-songwriter Yunalis Zarai sings here in the classic tradition of seafaring island people: the lyrics use the metaphors of water, swimming, and voyaging as an invitation to love. What is different about her words is that it is typically the male figure who approaches the woman, captured in the ‘island’ figure, and the invitation is for her to leave her safety, and be engulfed by the intemperate, vast, and living thing that surrounds her. Instead, Yuna’s words are aimed towards a boy, to whom she beckons. [Read more...]
Brownface
May 4, 2012 By 15 Comments
Ashton Kutcher, known for his unusual savvy when it comes to investing in tech companies, and for actually being a presence in those spaces (attending conferences and personally meeting startup founders), must know that many of those technical companies have key employees or founders of South Asian descent. So imagine the surprise of many when Kutcher appeared in ‘brownface’, and offended legions. The Indian diaspora in the US were left asking: “Why is it totally unacceptable to do blackface, but ok to do brown/yellow face in the US?” Even Gawker, known for being on top of the game, posted a somewhat inane take on the issue, taking no particular stance. [Read more...]
The Commonwealth Book Prize Shortlist
May 4, 2012 By 2 Comments
The Commonwealth Book Prize has just announced its shortlist. (Diarise: regional winners to be announced 22 May and overall winner on 8 June.) It promises to be a wonderful, wonderful collection of novels; and I’m excited to read many on this list over the summer. What does this list illustrate? At the risk of being knocked over the head for being a harbinger of re-hashed postcolonial critique, I’m still going to say it: does the Commonwealth Other consist solely of (largely white) South Africans and Indians, with a smattering from elsewhere (including a Zambian: yeay!; a Sri Lankan: a shoutout to the ancestors!; and a Pakistani)?
The 19th New York African Film Festival: ‘Black Africa, White Marble’
April 11, 2012 By 7 Comments
From the opening scenes of Black Africa, White Marble, we learn that Brazzaville, in Republic of Congo, is the only capital in Africa to still carry the name of a European. While Pietro Savorgnan di Brazza’s far more famous contemporary, Henry “Dr. David Livingston, I presume” Stanley, is remembered as the handmaiden who ushered in King Leopold II’s barbarity, this film’s near-hagiographic treatment of Brazza’s life reveals a different direction that the relationship between Africa and Europe might have traversed. [Read more...]
The 19th New York African Film Festival: ‘Restless City’*
April 9, 2012 By 1 Comment
Towards the final scenes of Restless City, Jessye Norman’s solo soprano voice scales the great buildings and the conveyor belts of vehicles, between all of which a small red scooter navigates, carrying the slim bodies of Djibril and Trina. They are here, in this city, with all their desires clenched in their mouths. It is Norman’s voice, following the music composed by Richard Strauss to the poetry of Herman Hesse, that lifts our two immigrants’ desires up on the currents of her song, skylarks freed into the night sky.
George Clooney’s Sudan movie
March 17, 2012 By 3 Comments
Now that George Clooney got arrested (and got out on a nominal $100 fine) along with a few other campaigners while ‘raising awareness’ on war crimes in Sudan, people who should know better (like NAACP president, Ben Jealous) are drawing comparisons to those who protested outside the Apartheid South Africa’s embassies and consulates. Jealous even added that this was a message to the Sudanese president, who will undoubtedly be moved by the thought that the ”United States Congress is watching.” Not surprising Sudan’s Embassy took little time in mocking Clooney. They released a statement calling Clooney’s arrest a “show that could possibly earn him yet another Golden Globe.”
‘Maasai Cricket Warriors’
March 16, 2012 By 11 Comments
The Maasai bear the weight of being one of the original noble savage dream tribals that the British and the Germans salivated over (in India, the Sikhs play the role of the exotic, animal protein-loving warriors, whose aggression got recruited into the Crown’s loyal service). The Maasai are such a standard-bearing cipher for all that ‘modernity’ regards as unadulterated, wild masculinity that a recurrent news story in Northern Euro/Brit tabloids is one where some random white European woman visits East Africa, meets the fabulousness that is the Maasai/Samburu warrior, and takes him back to her cold homeland. Then, there’s the inevitable photo of him bagging groceries at the local Aldi or Tesco (and his whole masculine juju is gone.) But here’s something different: the British newspaper The Telegraph, and US magazine The Atlantic (online) are running photographic galleries of strapping “Maasai Warriors” in full beads-and-braids regalia playing cricket. [Read more...]
Sathima Bea Benjamin’s Windsong
March 16, 2012 By 3 Comments
Last year, Sean and I happened to be at a conference in Toronto where Dan Yon was showing his film on Sathima “Bea” Benjamin, the Cape Town-born jazz singer. Although she is one of the formative figures of South African jazz music, it is her estranged husband, jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, who is far better known. The film, “Sathima’s Windsong” (2010) moves back and forth between New York City, where Benjamin was a long-term resident, and Cape Town, where she began singing as a young girl during the forced removals instituted by the Group Areas Acts. The narration bridging the two cities, and Benjamin’s multitude of losses (and gains) is interspersed with the melodic imaginative leaps that only a voice such as hers can bridge. Only her voice lies between two cities, and immeasurable, oceanic longing: her song making tentative vocal incursion and excursions, in and out with the tide and forces beyond her control.
