AfricaIs aCountry

Found Object, No. 11

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Found Object, No. 11

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAwOqtiVVCI&w=500&h=307&rel=0]

Corrected: A rare film clip (there must be more where this came from), posted on Youtube in September 2010, of the Don Cherry Trio live in Paris in 1971. Cherry, an American, is on piano and cornet and is accompanied by South African bassist Johnny Dyani and Turkish percussionist/drummer, Okay Temiz.  All three called Sweden home at that time. Cherry is singing in Xhosa; probably one of Dyani’s compositions. Cherry later appeared on Dyani’s 1978 album, “Song for Biko.” Separetely Dyani and Temiz formed the group Xaba with another South African Mongezi Feza. Dyani died before playing a show in Germany in 1986. Chimurenga Magazine‘s most recent issue has an interview by Aryan Kaganof with Dyani.

Further Reading

Slow death by food

Illegal gold mining is poisoning Ghana’s soil and rivers, seeping into its crops and seafood, and turning the national food system into a long-term public health crisis.

A sick health system

The suspension of three doctors following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son has renewed scrutiny of a health-care system plagued by impunity, underfunding, and a mass exodus of medical professionals.

Afrobeats after Fela

Wizkid’s dispute with Seun Kuti and the release of his latest EP with Asake highlight the widening gap between Afrobeats’ commercial triumph and Fela Kuti’s political inheritance

Progress is exhausting

Pedro Pinho’s latest film follows a Portuguese engineer in Guinea-Bissau, exposing how empire survives through bureaucracy, intimacy, and the language of “development.”

The rubble of empire

Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.

Atayese

Honored in Yorubaland as “one who repairs the world,” Jesse Jackson’s life bridged civil rights, pan-Africanism, empire, and contradiction—leaving behind a legacy as expansive as it was imperfect.

Bread or Messi?

Angola’s golden jubilee culminated in a multimillion-dollar match against Argentina. The price tag—and the secrecy around it—divided a nation already grappling with inequality.