AfricaIs aCountry

Shabazz Palaces and Kahlil Joseph

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

Shabazz Palaces and Kahlil Joseph

By
Tom Devriendt

Although the effect of blending the music by Shabazz Palaces and the images of documentary-in-the-making Tough Bond escapes me, for now, I am looking forward to seeing the end results (both of the documentary and the Shabazz Palaces first full album Black Up). Shabazz Palaces sure know how to pick their directors.

Remember the video for their ‘Belhaven Meridian’ by Kahlil Joseph:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMZKPaSF0GE

Kahlil Joseph, who in his turn also shot a magnetic short film for Brazilian musician and actor Seu Jorge (featuring a cover of Roy Ayers’s ‘Everybody Loves the Sunshine’ and Kraftwerk’s ‘The Model’):

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.