I wasn’t familiar with the work of photographer Candace Feit before browsing the web recently, following up on the online presence of a South African organisation I hold in high regard. (The organisation/project/incubator is based in the village of Nqileni, which — this just a side note — has the most beautiful football pitch.) One […]
There are many things in life that really don’t matter all that much, but are very intriguing. The line between a person’s privacy and how to inappropriately disturb it by sticking one’s nose where it’s not invited is thin on a good day. It was this conundrum I was battling with, and a little bit […]
The rapper Awadi was a founder of a Senegalese’s brand of political hip hop. As ‘kola wrote on this blog, Awadi was at the forefront of a 1990s social movement that helped to galvanize a youthful constituency to help elect Abdoulaye Wade as the new president in 2000. “Of course, after [Wade] got the presidency, […]
Malian rapper Mokobe ripped into French perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain’s comments about “hard working blacks” in his recent video, “Ca passe tout seul.” Now Burkinabé MC Art Melody takes on Nicolas Sarkozy and other “chefs d’états.” That’s a sample of Sarkozy’s infamous Dakar speech at the beginning of the song about how Africans have “not fully entered […]
Christoph Schlingensief’s utopian vision for an opera village in Burkina Faso, where a stage, rehearsal space, school, hospital, hotel, church, and large communal kitchen, would be constructed for the community to produce work and live within was grand and commendable but as Kerstin Eckstein and Michael Schönhuth of [the German paper] Der Zeit see it, perhaps not […]
Not your usual music break. The song that got the Burkinabe reggae singer Sams’K Le Jah into trouble with the authorities in his home country where Life President Blaise Compaore has been in power since 1987 after he plotted the murder of his predecessor, Thomas Sankara. More recently Compaore has had to cope with widespread […]
Produced in a limited edition [and costing $1,720.00], with each piece unique, the ‘Muse Two Artisanal Recycled’ bag marries the savoir-faire of Yves Saint Laurent leather goods with the artisanal handiwork of women from Burkina Faso. H/T: Matt Kirwin
By Elliot Ross, Guest Blogger We don’t give Africa a pass just because we are Africans. It’s a mistake to respond to blanket negative coverage with blanket positive coverage. Africa is overexposed not underexposed. We just get the wrong kind of exposure. The words of Ugandan journalist Angelo Izama at a recent, wide-ranging conference on the […]
Photographs by Andrea Frazzetta In late February, a month before violent protests by the military in Burkina Faso prompted President Blaise Compaore to dissolve his government, an enthusiastic crowd swarmed Place des Cinéastes in the capital city, Ouagadougou, as well as a dozen other sites, as part of Fespaco 2011, the Pan-African Film and Television […]
