Minister Faust's Blog, page 2

COMEDIAN ALI HASSAN ON HOW IMPROV ARTISTS KNOW THE SECRET OF LIFE AND COMEDIANS DON’T (MF GALAXY 161)

HOW BIZARRE CAREERS BEFORE COMEDY MADE HIM READY, WHY HOSTING CANADA READS WAS THE IDEAL TRAINING GROUND TO HOST CBC Q, WHEN A COMEDY MC SHOULD PURPOSEFULLY TANK HIS OWN PERFORMANCE

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I am a pernsnicketty cat—some would say difficult—and I have been known to argue at length that no one should ever use the expression “laughed out loud” because all laughter is out loud, by definition. So that means if I can overcome my boundless rage enough to invite the host of a national radio programme called Laugh Out Loud, I must really be impressed. And I am.

But Ali Hassan actually grabbed my attention not by MCing that showcase for Canadian comedians, but rather for his excellent work as an interviewer and guest host on CBC Radio’s q. I liked his voice, I liked his rapport with guests, and I liked his questions—but what totally floored me was that he easily and accurately dropped a reference to KRS-One during an interview without explaining it. I thought, I have got to contact this dude. So I did, and that’s what led to today’s conversation about the art, craft, and business of stand-up comedy and interviewing.

Hassan is a Pakistani-Canadian comedian, actor, and chef from Montreal. He’s toured Canada and performed at Just for Laughs and the Winnipeg Comedy Festival; he’s performed across the US and the Middle East, and took his one-man show Muslim, Interrupted to Scotland for the planet’s biggest comedy festival, the Edinburgh Fringe. He’s been in the movies Breakaway, French Immersion, and Goon!, and on TV he’s on Odd Squad, Man Seeking Woman, Game On, Cardinal, Designated Survivor, and FUBAR: Age of Computer.

Hassan spoke with me by Skype on February 2, 2018. We discussed:

How the ethics and personalities of stand-up are so different from those of improv comedyThe bizarre array of careers he attempted and what he learned from them that prepared him for comedyHow hosting Canada Reads was the ideal training ground to host CBC qWhen a comedy MC should purposefully tank his own performanceHow to teach inexperienced journalists the most important quality for their job, andWhen you should leave interviewing permanently
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DEIDRA RAMSEY MCINTYRE ON SCIENCE VS. WHITEWASHING EGYPT (MF GALAXY 160)

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It’s been well over two thousand, three hundred years since an actual Egyptian sat on the throne of the Nile Valley’s greatest civilisation. Since then, only foreigners have controlled Kemet, the true name for Egypt. And yet control over Kemet remains a fierce battle to this day.

On the one side are Eurocentrists who, to build their racial self-esteem, and to justify the massive crime of imperialism against Africa, have spent the last three hundred years Whitewashing the civilisation into something that their own Greek and Roman ancestors never claimed.

On the other side is everyone who embraces the historical record, physical anthropology, comparative linguistics and culture, and, of course, DNA. They recognise what most of Hollywood, Arabs in Egypt, and the Western academic establishment refuse to: that Kemet was an African civilisation from its farmers to its pharaohs.

Previously on MF Galaxy I’ve had a range of guests discussing African Egypt, including Molefi Kete Asante, Martin Bernal, Richard Poe, and Runoko Rashidi. Today I’m delighted to add a new authority to the roster: Deidra Ramsey McIntyre. She’s a programmer, tech-writer, journalist, entrepreneur, and teacher. She’s been a cross-disciplinary writer on Kemet for years, bridging genetics, culture, and ancient documents to demonstrate the Africanity of the Nile Valley civilisation.

McIntyre is also the administrator of the Facebook group Africa: Ancient Kemet & Nubia connection group. She creates succinct infographics about Kemet’s Africanity, and writes at length about Kemet on Quora.

McIntyre spoke with me by Skype from her home on February 22, 2018. We discussed:

Why pop culture such as the massively successful Black Panther movie won’t be enough to stop the academy from Whitewashing KemetThe major reason why so many Westerners cling to the belief that Ancient Egypt was non-African, despite the wide-ranging evidence that proves them wrongThe savage attacks that Eurocentrists mount against even White academics who simply discuss the factsThe Whitewashing of Tutankhamun by National Geographic, and which iconic sculpture from Ancient Kemet is actually a Eurocentric fake
Along the way, we discussed a range of topics, some of which don’t get explained in our conversation. So, a few notes:

The name Kemet means “the black land” as in its rich soil, but also, according to Black Athena author Martin Bernal in an interview with me from years ago, “land of Black people.” The name “Egypt” is an English rendering of Aigyptos, a Greek corruption of the ancient Kemetic name “Het-Ka-Ptah.”Cheikh Anta Diop was a Senegalese nuclear physicist and Egyptologist, author of many works including the classic The African Origin of Civilisation: Myth Or Reality?The White Crown is the name given to the gourd-like crown of southern EgyptZawi Hawass is an Arab Egyptologist and former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs in the Arab Republic of EgyptFinally, while discussing the cultural significance of Black Panther, I quoted what it had earned the day our discussion. As of March 18, 2018, the day I’m recording this episode, Black Panther had earned $1.18 billion globally.The fictional Wakandan panther god Bast is the actual ancient feline goddess Bast, Baset, or Bastet from Ancient Kemet, and the Wakandan script seems mostly based on Tifinagh, an ancient Berber script spread over Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Libya, and Algeria.
Deidra Ramsey McIntyre’s Quora Articles on Kemet
Nefertiti bust a forgery

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REX SMALLBOY ON NO JUSTICE FOR TINA FONTAINE AND COLTEN BOUSHIE (MF GALAXY 159)

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Many Canadians, Indigenous and settler alike, were furious to learn the back-to-back verdicts in two murder cases. Juries declared Gerald Stanley not guilty of killing 22-year-old Colten Boushie, and Raymond Courmier not guilty of killing 14-year-old Tina Fontaine. The cases exposed how our colonial justice system makes it easy to exclude Indigenous citizens from juries and how rarely families can expect those who kill their loved ones to go to prison.

Some people protested in the streets. Some people protested with their art. Some people wept for the dead and for the future of their children. And some people did all three.

One such man is Rex Smallboy, the former leader of War Party, one of the country’s most successful hip hop bands ever. The motivational speaker and award-winning artist from Alberta’s Maskwacis Cree reserve released the song “Hey They Killing Us” immediately after the jury freed Tina Fontaine’s killer. You’ll hear it later in this show in which Smallboy discusses:

The level of anxiety he faces at the thought of his children simply going out of the houseThe angry reactions some settlers, including a friend, gave him for discussing the racism that Indigenous Canadians experience dailyHis fears that Colten Boushie and Tina Fontaine will be forgottenWhat he wants more than anything elseThe one place in Canada he’s found where Indigenous and settler Canadians live together with respect and kindness, and what it’s going to take to fix the country
Rex Smallboy spoke with me by Skype on March 6, 2018. During our discussion he referred to Hobbema, the former settler name for the Maskwacis Cree reserve 70 km south of Edmonton.

Jury says Tina Fontaine’s killer can walk free
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BLACK PANTHER REVIEWED! THE PAN-AFRICAN PANEL OF ARTISTS, ORGANISERS, AND ACADEMICS RESPOND (MF GALAXY 158)

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Marvel’s Black Panther is a global sensation. As of Saturday, March 3, 2018, only two weeks and two days into its release, the Ryan Coogler/Joe Robert Cole film has grossed $US898 million worldwide. Within its first week it had outgrossed what DC’s Justice League took three months to earn, and the entire US runs of Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, The Incredible Hulk, the first Captain America, and the first two Thor films. It had the fifth-highest opening of all time and the third-highest four-day opening ever.

Of course, money isn’t everything, but the astonishing success of a film that is 100% obviously Africentric, starring African characters played by African actors, written by two African writers and directed by an African director, is game-changing. It negates in sky-writing every Hollywood executive who ever claimed that US-made movies about and by Africans could not make money outside the US.

And this is within the same 12-month period in which the African-made, Africentric film Get Out, shot on a budget of a paltry $4.5 million, earned a quarter of a billion dollars globally.

We’ve all seen the photos of African-Americans and African-Canadians wearing gorgeous African clothing to watch the premiere of the movie, and it’s clear that the film is inspiring generations of young and older global Africans the way that Star Wars inspired filmmakers and fans worldwide.

There are countless articles and podcasts and interviews about Black Panther, and some people have posted Wakanda curricula online—in fact, mine will be online at ministerfaust.com soon. And obviously the film has its detractors, too.

To discuss the film I asked a wide range of global African writers, filmmakers, academics, and political organisers to tell me their own experience of the film, its characters, its social significance, and its likely impact on Africentric filmmaking. On today’s episode of MF GALAXY, you’ll hear:

Zig Zag Claybourne , author of The Brothers JetstreamScience fiction short story writer K. Ceres Wright , DeWayne Copeland , co-creator and producer of the superhero web-series CV NationFounder and editor in chief of Black Girl Magic literary magazine Kenesha Williams Buk Arop , president of the South Sudan Development FoundationScience fiction novelist and horror filmmaker
A reminder that this show is 100% spoilers.

Janelle Monae - “Django Jane”
Zacari + Babes Wodumo - “Redemption”
Ghanaian Architect David Adjaye
African-American Artist David Hammons
Ethiopian Artist Julie Mehretu

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BLACK PANTHER REVIEWED BY THE E-TOWN WAKANDANS (MF GALAXY 157)

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Maybe you’ve been chained at the centre of the earth and the mole-people have been jamming your wifi since you got there, and that’s why you don’t know about the breathtaking Marvel blockbuster Black Panther. If so, I don’t know how you’re hearing this podcast, but my sympathies to you and I’ll try to lower a pitcher of lemonade on a long rope.

But for everyone else, as of February 21, not even a week after opening day, the $200M-budget movie has earned $441 million worldwide. The idea that a completely Africentric science fiction film with a pan-African cast, set in a fictional African country, with no major European stars, and written and directed by Africans, could achieve one of the biggest opening weeks ever was, even a few years ago, unthinkable. You could even say the idea of that success itself was Africentric science fiction. And now, it’s reality.

Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole wrote it, Coogler directed it, and Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, and Letitia Wright among many others starred in it, and it’s outstanding. Story-wise, in many ways it’s an Africentric Star Wars but set on Earth. The film inspired massive anticipation, far more than I ever would have guessed, and many African movie goers attended wearing gorgeous continental clothing to celebrate and posted their photographs to prove it.

But with so many people expecting so much, including some people who know very little about superheroes and science fiction, it’s inevitable that many people expected this action movie to do things that action movies can’t and shouldn’t do: that is, provide a saintly portrait of perfect people behaving nicely and checking off every box on their personal, political, cultural, and artistic agenda. Lemme tell you: no movie ever will do that, unless it’s two hours of rock-hard dullness.

This is an action movie with a mind, Marvel’s most intellectual, most feminist, and clearly most African. So I sat down at the African Safari Somali restaurant in the neighbourhood of Kush, Edmonton on February 18, 2018, with a group of brilliant and accomplished friends of mine: YA author Natasha Deen, arts organiser Darren Jordan, HIV activist Morenike Olaosebikan, Black Women United co-founder Junetta Jamerson, and Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta David Shepherd, to discuss the movie and its social significance. And let me be clear, our discussion is 100% spoilers.

Today and next week, as a special gift in honour of African History Month, I’m releasing the extended versions of this show absolutely free. Just go to Patreon.com/mfgalaxy to download more than 40 minutes of extended content, no charge. Of course, if you want to support MF GALAXY, please become a sponsor and access all the other bonus content.

A correction—I refer to the Great Djenne Mosque of Mali as being in Timbuktu, but that was silly of me, because of course the Great Djenne Mosque is in, where else, Djenne. Timbuktu is a separate city.

15 Black Panther Easter Eggs Only True Fans Caught

Rolling Stone: The Black Panther Revolution
 
Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan hope to make film about Malian King Mansa Musa – the richest man in history

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MANSA MYRIE ON THE HISTORICAL AFRICAN MARTIAL ARTS ASSOCIATION (MF GALAXY 156)

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Continuing our programming for Black Panther Month ahead of the local and international review panels for the Marvel blockbuster, we’re delving deeper into historical African martial arts, or HAMA. If you loved the exciting, aspirational vision of a fictional African technostate with its own fighting arts, MF Galaxy is your show to learn about actual combat systems from the continent.

Yes, you know about East Asian martial arts such as Chinese kung fu, Korean tae kwon do, and Japanese judo, but what about Sudanese Nuba wrestling? Or stickfighting from Ancient Egypt called Tahtib or from Zululand called Nguni? Or Madagascari boxing called moraingy?

To discuss those forms and more, I spoke with Mansa Myrie. Originally from Red Deer, Alberta, Myrie is the Chief Operations Officer of the Historical African Martial Arts Association, a new and international organisation whose aim is to promote verifiable information about and practice of historical African fighting arts and warfare.

Myrie spoke with me from his home in Hamilton, Ontario by Skype on January 17, 2018. We discussed:
The defining features of HAMA systems such as Ghana’s dambe, Madagascar’s moraingy, and Egyptian tahtibThe similarities between the Senegalese wrestling system of Laamb and Nuba wrestling from Sudan and South SudanThe three core arts of Ancient Egyptian warfare and which of them you can start to learn today, andHow and why Myrie began researching historical African martial arts, and why he’s so focused on separating myth from reality Along the way, he mentions “the Hamitic hypothesis” and the Hyksos. The Hamitic hypothesis was a 19th century European myth that survives to this day—a European racial esteem fantasy to claim that a range of African civilisations including Ancient Egypt were actually European. The Hyksos, or more properly known by their Ancient Egyptian name Heka Khasut, were other African invaders from the west and east who at times dominated the country.

Historical African Martial Arts Association
HAMAA YouTube Channel
HAMAA Facebook
Moraingy (Madascar)
Moraingy - Research
Da’Mon Stith
Da’Mon Stith’s reading list for HAMA
Dr. Adel Boulad, founder of Modern Tahtib
Dr. Adel Boulad video
Bor Wrestling Association of Canada
Nguni stick fighting
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BLACK PANTHER MONTH: BALOGUN OJETADE, MASTER OF WEST AFRICAN MARTIAL ARTS (MF GALAXY 155)

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This is Black Panther Month on MF GALAXY and with all the excitement surging about the Marvel movie about the Wakanda super-genius, superhero, super-fighter, the time is right to go beyond fictional African martials arts and discover authentic, deadly African martial arts from across the continent and across history.

Most people in the West think of the phrase “martial arts” as referring to East Asian fighting systems such as kung fu, karate, and tae kwon do, without realising that “martial arts” means any combat system. And certainly every culture in the world produced its own combat systems or its people would have been assimilated or annihilated.

So it really should not be a surprise that the African continent, home to humanity and birthplace of civilisation, should have scores of martials arts, ranging from the wrestling, sword systems, and stick fighting of Ancient Egypt, to the range of West African fighting arts, and that’s where we begin today.

Balogun Ojetade is a fascinating man with a remarkable history. The African-American playwright, filmmaker, and Steamfunk novelist is also a master of martials arts from Yoruba civilisation, an area covering Togo, Benin, and part of Nigeria. He runs the international African Martial Arts Institute whose headquarters are in Atlanta.

The school features a trio of West African systems he groups under the name Egbe Ogun, and seeks to promote African histories and cultures though demonstrations, lectures, workshops, classes, films, plays, and music. Egbe Ogun is a formidable system, and its experts are more than capable of meeting fighters from any other art head-on.

On January 18, 2018 Balogun Ojetade spoke with me by Skype from his home in Atlanta. We discussed:
His own remarkable origin story of being introduced to West African martial artsThe body movement that is at the core of all martial arts whether its practitioners know it or notWhy students can and should be taught to fight with knives as soon as possibleHow his educational approach differs from the typical mode of East Asian fighting schools, andHow Egbe Ogun fits into the Africentric culture of Atlanta, despite how the public school system in that city attempts to stop students from identifying with their West African heritage To hear nearly half-an-hour of patrons-only bonus content from our conversation, visit mfgalaxy.org to click on the Patreon link to become a sponsor for a dollar or more per week.

By funding MF GALAXY, you get access to all extended editions of the show including this one with West African martial arts master Balogun Ojetade discussing:
What any martial artist who wants to survive needs to know about martial arts uniformsThe only way to know if a martial artist is actually effectiveThe degree to which the community embraces his work, andWhat Ojetade did when a Brazilian jujitsu fighter barged into the Afrikan Martial Arts Institute and challenged him in front of all his students The African Martial Arts Institute
facebook.com/Afrikan.Martial.Arts
Twitter @Baba_Balogun
Tumblr.com/blog/blackspeculativefiction
The Yoruba martial art of Gidigbo 7 African Martial Arts You Probably Didn’t Know Existed SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE ON iTUNES
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Is Photovoice for you?

If you're thinking about presenting to any audience, photovoice may be for you. Here are some useful links:

A how-to manual


What is photovoice?




How to write captions for photovoice
 

 
Youth Photovoice






DreamGirls



Community participation after spinal cord injury



Reducing stigma



Family shelter

A party is not a Party. Are you gathering to dance, or to win?

Whether you're holding a rally or a progressive social gathering, your #1 mission must be organising the people who show up.

It's a lot of work to get all those people in one place, but if they don't DO anything afterward, so what? You just taught them that gathering together doesn't solve or produce anything. Or you made them believe that the purpose of gathering is to have a party, and that, magically, just gathering will solve their problems because "They" will understand and take action (whoever "They" are). 

So figure out your S.M.A.R.T.* goals as early as possible, long before game day. Once you know WHAT you hope those people will do, and HOW MANY of must act to be effective, you can figure out HOW you will measure whatever they do. That's the only way to know if you're successful. Realistic goals about productivity followed by stats!
And your goals must include building the power and vision of participants to improve themselves and their communities in tangible, measurable ways. So on game day, what reading lists, podcast lists, and video lists do you have available and online? What books do you have for sale?
What sign-up sheets for which upcoming actions have you got handy and online? How, over time, will you teach them to create, refine, and test their own SMART goals and build sustainable and accountable organisations and alliances?
How are you asking and tracking what attendees think is most important to do and how to achieve it? When their goals fall outside your mission but are aligned with its values, what organisations can you refer them to?
In other words, how will you personally (and as a group) avoid teaching them to believe that rallies + gatherings ALONE are sufficient to create solutions and dazzling new opportunities?
How will you personally (and as a group) ensure that you don't waste your efforts by drawing people together without ways to mobilise them into short, medium, and long-term training and action? So clarify your S.M.A.R.T. goals. Win.
*S.M.A.R.T. goals are: Specific (simple, sensible, significant).Measurable (meaningful, motivating).Achievable (agreed, attainable).Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).

HUGH MASEKELA (MAAXERU-EM-HETEP) PRO-DEMOCRACY CRUSADER + BRILLIANT MUSICIAN FOR THE AGES (MF GALAXY 154)

REPRESENTING SOUTH AFRICAN CULTURE, TRIUMPHING OVER DUTCH-ENGLISH NEO-NAZISM

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What were the weapons in the arsenal of a man who survived a vicious racial dictatorship to emerge as an international ambassador for his people and his craft?
In the case of Hugh Masekela, who returned to the ancestors on January 23, 2018, the answer is two-part: a gramophone, and a Louis Armstrong trumpet.

Born outside Johannesburg in 1939, Masekela began playing music at age three--by way of winding his grandmother's gramophone and singing along. In his career, his own music would fuse South African mbaqanga, bebop, funk, and Nigerian Afrobeat.

His prolific six decades of making music took him around the world and granted him the personal victories of playing with such titans Abdullah Ibrahim, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Zensi Miriam Makeba, and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. His single “Grazing in the Grass” in the early 1970s topped the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash” on the US charts.

Humble and down-to-earth, yet deeply intelligent with a sweeping international perspective on art, politics, economics, and justice, Masekela was difficult to put in a single category. He didn’t even call himself a jazz musician.
After the Neo-Nazi apartheid regime banned his music, Masekela was forced to live in exile.

He compared the effects of Apartheid to the effects of the European Holocaust against West and Central Africa, in that each operated by “making people lose their identity—that’s why families were broken up, so people lose their roots and self-esteem…. But it’s very difficult to take away in-grown culture from a person. It has failed throughout the ages.”

As if living in exile and the domestic banning of his music weren’t enough repression, his 1969 album Masekela was returned by a North American distributor “because they felt it was too radical.” But that didn’t make him hesitate to work with and befriend other radical artists and activists, including the late, brilliant Nigerian co-founder of Afrobeat, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

Masekela eventually toured internationally with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Zensi Miriam Makeba, and Ray Phiri, was featured in the 2003 documentary Amandla!, released the autobiography Still Grazing, and remained active in humanitarian causes such as the Lunchbox Fund which serves meals to students at Soweto schools.

I was privileged to interview Hugh Masekela by telephone in September, 2000 before he performed in Edmonton, and meet him when he arrived. If you go to MFGalaxy.org and click today’s show notes, you’ll find a playlist of Hugh Masekela songs and videos that speak for themselves or accompany parts of our conversation.

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Hugh Masekela: “Stimela” (spoken word + music piece on the exploitation by Dutch and English coal barons of South African miners)


Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba: “Soweto Blues” (with commentary)

Hugh Masekela: “Bajabula Bonke” (“The Healing Song” classic version with explanatory prelude)

Hugh Masekela: “Bajabula Bonke” (“The Healing Song” live performance)

Hugh Masekela: “Bring Him Back Home”

Hugh Masekela: “Grazing in the Grass”

The Guardian on Hugh Masekela
Documentary Song of Songololo featuring Mzwakhe Mbuli






Lyrics to “Soweto Blues”by Stanley Kwesi Todd and Hugh Masekela

The children got a letter from the master
It said, no more Xhosa, Sotho, no more Zulu
Refusing to comply they sent an answer
That's when the policemen came to the rescue

Children were dying, bullets flying
The mothers screaming and crying
The fathers were working in the cities
The evening news brought out all the publicity

Just a little atrocity, deep in the city
Soweto blues, soweto blues
Soweto blues, soweto blues

Benikuphi ma madoda
(Where were the men?)
Abantwana beshaywa
(When the children were throwing stones)

Ngezimbokodo mabedubula abantwana
(When the children were being shot)
Benikhupi na
(Where were you?)

There was a full moon on the golden city
Looking at the door was the man without pity
Accusing everyone of conspiracy
Tightening the curfew, charging people with walking

Yes, the border is where he was awaiting
Waiting for the children, frightened and running
A handful got away but all the others
Hurried their chain without any publicity

Just a little atrocity, deep in the city
Soweto blues, soweto blues
Soweto blues, soweto blues

Benikuphi ma madoda
(Where were the men?)
Abantwana beshaywa
(When the children were throwing stones)

Ngezimbokodo mabedubula abantwana
(When the children were being shot)
Benikhupi na
(Where were you?)

Soweto blues, soweto blues
Soweto blues, abu yethu a mama
Soweto blues, they are killing all the children
Soweto blues, without any publicity

Soweto blues, oh, they are finishing the nation
Soweto blues, while calling it black on black
Soweto blues but everybody knows they are behind it
Soweto blues, without any publicity

Soweto blues, they are finishing the nation
Soweto blues, god, somebody, help
Soweto blues
(Abu yethu a mama)
Soweto blues