The International Center for Photography (ICP) is located in the heart of Manhattan, at the corner of West 43rd Street and the Avenue of the Americas. Nearby, Times Square’s mirages—brilliant expanses of neon fantasies, some spanning the length of several stories and the breadth of entire city blocks—summon passers-by with images of athletes, models, slick […]
The opening scene: Soul Brother No. 1 dressed in a skin tight matador-cum-gimp suit, drop-kicking the mic, screeching, roaring, galvanising a Congolese crowd into pure hysteria, while chanting ‘I’m black and I’m proud’, so camp as to be almost melting. This is Zaire ’74, the little known concert to accompany the mega-fight Rumble in The […]
Got caught up in other stuff yesterday, so this week’s Bonus Music Break comes a day late. “Sister Deborah” Owusu-Bonsu calls herself a “creative hustler” and yes, she is the sister of FOKN Bois’s Wanlov the Kubolor, which helps explain the video above.
Guest Post by Ryan Brown On a warm July morning in 1965, South African writer Nat Nakasa stood facing the window of a friend’s seventh floor apartment in Central Park West. In the distance he could likely just make out the outline of the Empire State Building, a sharp reminder of just how far he […]
‘Come Back, Africa’ (1959) is an explosive film; a strongly political piece, its show the hardship, joy and pain of township life, otherwise closed to the world by the Apartheid regime’s strict hold. Enriched through Lionel Rogosin’s collaboration with the Drum writers Lewis Nkosi and Bloke Modisane on the script, the film possesses a ‘Kafkan […]
2011 was the 25th anniversary of Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” I don’t have to remind you of the album’s significance. It is hard to imagine now the impact of that album, but it did a lot of things: it resurrected Simon’s stalled career, was the first “World Music” album to be a crossover hit, won Simon […]
We suspect there’s a good chance this video would have been taken down by now if the proposed #SOPA law would have been passed. But since #SOPA’s not here yet: it is a recording (and an edited-down version) of the 2011 documentary by Finnish director Mika Kaurismäki about the life of Miriam Makeba.
In January next year Film Forum will screen the restored film classic “Come Back, Africa” (1959) by the late American director, Lionel Rogosin. The screening will coincide with the 100th anniversary of South Africa’s ruling party, the ANC. The film’s title is from an ANC slogan (“Mayibuye iAfrika!”). In case you need reminding, this film is a […]
In January this year Chimurenga Magazine proposed a soundtrack for Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s 1961 novel, L’Aventure Ambigue, which they dubbed “Francophone Africa’s answer to China Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. The songs selected here follow Samba Diallo’s journey from the Glowing Hearth koranic school to Paris and back to West Africa – featuring Rail Band, Miriam […]
Rare footage of Miriam Makeba performing her standard “Malaika” (a Kenyan love song in Swahili) on Italian television in 1969. Meanwhile, the song has been covered by a lot of people–like Angelique Kidjo, Boney M(yes Boney M) and old school Kenyan musicians like Fadhili Williams–but film director Nerina Penzhorn swears by another South African singer […]
