Post by Laurent Dubois The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, is, if you think about it, a pretty nasty song. It dreams, in one of its more memorable verses, that the “blood of the impure” will “irrigate our fields.” It’s a rousing anthem, to be sure, and I myself can frequently be heard humming it […]
FESPACO, or as it known as by its full name, the Festival of Pan African Cinema in Ouagadougou, opened its 23rd annual edition Sunday. The theme: “African Cinema and Public Policy in Africa.” Created in 1969, it has become the largest film festival on the continent devoted to providing the space for African cinema and […]
Ah, the warm bath of public affection in the post-colony. French President François Hollande’s visit to Algeria this week was a little odd, on more than one count. Algeria is about the last place you’d think a French head of state would engage in what in American politics is called working the crowd and in […]
Rachid Khimoune grew up in a small mining town in Northern France where his Algerian parents had settled. It was there that he saw first hand the end of industrialisation: his father lost his job at the local mine and the family moved to the suburbs of Paris. The waves of urban immigration to the cities […]
On show at the Islamic Cultures Institute in Paris until January, 50 Years of Reflection, is an exhibition of the work of French-Algerian artist Halida Boughriet. It is one of many recent installments in France commemorating Algeria’s half-century of independence. Boughriet lives and works in Paris, where she has made videos, created installations, and continues […]
Yesterday, 72 year old French-born Algerian-Lebanese songstress Warda Al-Jazairia passed away. Known just as Warda to her millions of beloved fans, she leaves behind a legacy comparable to such musical stars as Umm Kulthum. Warda died in Cairo, her adopted home since the 1970s.
Paris 20ème, Sunday, 8 p.m. Shouts, people banging pots from the windows, children running in the streets—in our neighborhood of workers and immigrants everybody else is upstairs, glued to the television. A man—African by his accent—is declaiming from his balcony. In the empty backstreets, a woman comes up to us in tears, “it’s too beautiful—Hollande won!” In round two of France’s presidential elections, Nicholas Sarkozy is K.O.’d.
The new video for the song “Alf Hilat” by Moroccan lute player and singer Aziz Sahmaoui (he made his name playing jazz with the late Joe Zawinul), off ‘University of Gnawa’, his album (it came out late 2011) of “African” sufi devotional music from the border regions of Morocco and Algeria.
A quick survey of Western media suggests Tuareg nationalist claims don’t carry the same weight as Malian, Nigerian or Algerian claims on Tuareg territory. For example, the current violence in Niger and Mali are covered as either a humanitarian crisis (sympathy for Tuareg refugees), Gaddafi’s legacy (rumored weapons support for the rebels from his fallen […]
This item, below, from The Guardian’s (excellent) Sports Blog’s weekly round-up of Youtube videos (basically random stuff they dug up from the history of sports) can help get you into the mood for today’s last first round matches: With the Africa Cup of Nations in full swing, what better time to look back at some […]
