Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 368

5 Questions with a filmmaker–Newton I. Aduaka

Acclaimed Paris-based Nigerian filmmaker Newton I. Aduaka started his film career in the UK in the 1990s. His first feature, the award-winning and much talked-about, Rage (2000) was the UK’s first hip hop movie and the first film by an independent black filmmaker to be released on the national circuit. Aduaka has screened his films at film festivals around the world and has won numerous awards, among them the Golden Stallion of Yennenga (the award for best film) at Fespaco 2007 for his second feature, Ezra, and the FIPRESCI International Critics Award for his third, One Man’s Show at FESPACO 2013. His fourth feature Oil on Water, (currently in development) was selected to be part of the Cinéfondation’s Atelier at Cannes in 2014.

1) What is your first film memory?

I’ve been asked this question often and each time I think of a scene with two lovers trapped in a burning building, arms wrapped around each other as they desperately try to find an escape through the flames. The scene is accompanied by swelling orchestrated music. I believe this was the climax of the film. I do not remember the title to this day, but each time I’m asked this question, this scene or snippet of a scene appears whole in my minds eye, accompanied by the soundtrack. It was a Bollywood movie; that I know. It was 1975 at a cinema called the Plaza with its huge auditorium in Apapa, Lagos. My mum and I cried a lot. That I remember.

2) Why did you decide to become a filmmaker?

It wasn’t so much a decision as, by successive moments of chance events and experiences. I was a science major at high school. The usual story: I was being groomed to become an Astrophysicist… hence “Newton”! Cinema was something that was not an option, growing up in Nigeria back then, I had no clue that it was even a career. It never crossed my mind. I had dabbled in music; formed a school-band with three classmates and we went as far as recording an album. I was 14. I was part of that generation that, given half a chance, left the country in droves in the mid-eighties. I remember there was this catch phrase: “I’m checking out!” The country was under the iron grip of one of the many military dictatorships. The soldier boys had occupied and clamped down on schools and universities. The socio-political and economic fabric of the country was in tatters.  I arrived to stay at my aunt’s in the run down North Peckham estate in London, which was then called “Home away from home” because of its sizable Nigerian community of exiles. I shot my first feature, Rage, there. The United Kingdom was a country under another form of iron grip, Thatcherite England. The Brixton riots had happened 4 years prior and the term ‘multiculturalism’ was the buzzword. I was lost and confused doing petty clandestine work, but I had the distinct sense that a new chapter of my life was about to begin. A year later, a friend had asked me to accompany him on an open day visit to a college offering a foundation course in film, video and photography. I went along, listened and fell in love. I went on to attend the London Film School, a very international film academy that exposed me to true World Cinema by virtue of my colleagues who had ended up there from all corners of the world. Filmmaking immediately made sense to me; it reconciled my interests in the arts and sciences. Astrophysics is the study of the nature of the universe. Cinema, for me, is the study of the nature of being.

3) Which film do you wish you had made?

The film I am preparing: Oil on Water, an adaptation of the novel by the acclaimed writer, Helon Habila.

4) Name one of the films on your top-5 list and the reason why it is there.

Memories of Underdevelopment by , from 1968. For me, it is a profound and complex study of alienation in times of seismic shifts. An attempt to make sense of, and reconcile, the nature of memory, identity and reality in a life that is in state of flux. And an exploration of the numbing psychic shock that comes in times of great historic transformation, as what is known is swept away and uncertainty/reality sets in.

It is one of the seminal works of cinema that inspired my filmmaking. I guess, personally, my response to the film comes from having lived through a traumatic civil war and the military dictatorships that came after. The protagonist is a character I don’t particularly sympathize with, a complete hypocrite, but the filmmaker finds a way to make you empathize. Not that one accepts or tolerates the character’s behavior, but through him, one is asked to confront that part of one’s nature, which is difficult to accept, which we constantly evade and which becomes part of one’s subconscious fears.

5) Ask yourself any question you think I should have asked and answer it.

Is Cinema important?

Yes… if it has something to say. And I don’t mean in terms of a message, and definitely do not mean peddling some moral or political stance for that matter. For me, it is important if it illuminates or resonates something that makes up the essence of this thing called human nature. Essentially, truth.

Do the Rusty Radiator Awards make a difference?

At the beginning of December 2014, Norwegian NGO SAIH – The Norwegian Students and Academics International Assistance Fund – announced the winners of its second annual Rusty Radiator Awards at an official ceremony in Oslo. SAIH advocates for a complex understanding of injustice and to fight against the ‘[l]ack of knowledge and bad consciousness’, which they see as reasons for the common belief ‘in simple solutions when confronted with an unjust world’.

2014’s Rusty Radiator Awards follow SAIH’s success with the clips ‘Radi-Aid: Africa for Norway’ (for a critique, see David Jefferess’ article as well as a blog post on the site of the organization in work for in Berlin) and ‘Let’s save Africa! – gone wrong’ as well as the 2013 Rusty Radiator Awards (see our response).

The Awards appear successful in sparking a dialogue about how aid communication can be less racist and stereotypical, but regarding SAIH’s goal to portray global (and local) injustice in a more complex manner, the Awards fall short.

Let’s have a look at the two videos nominated by an international jury and considered the best and the worst by the voters of 2014’s Radiator Award. The South African charity Feed a Child was awarded as the ‘charity producing the most clichéd and unhelpful fundraising video’. Here’s the video:

The video shows a wealthy white woman treating a Black child like a dog, and the boy behaving just like a well-behaved dog that likes its owner. In the epilogue of the video, we read ‘The average domestic dog eats better than millions of children’. The Rusty Radiator Award Jury’s comment was as follows:

‘Completely “White Saviour”. David had to turn it off after 10 seconds. Racism isn’t something of 200 years back, it’s something very present in South Africa today. […] The message doesn’t justify using the same stereotypes to both raise awareness and steal agency. The poor are already depicted as incapable of their own rescue, now they are being compared to dogs.’

There was a big debate around the video in South Africa when it first came out (see here, here and here) and it was eventually withdrawn by the charity (who sort of apologized for it).

It is indeed painful to watch this violent and racist clip. Yet, while it portrays children and Black people as without agency, it unintentionally provides a damning critique of both the aid industry as well as post-Apartheid South Africa. While the inequality of the relationship between the Black child and white adult is crystal clear, it is portrayed as devoid of explicit (physical or verbal) violence. Both parties seem to be perfectly fine with the way things are. However, it can also be read as offering a metaphor for what life is like in South Africa for the majority of people: that the dogs of rich people actually do eat better than millions of (mainly Black) children. By completely exaggerating the relationship between ‘donor’ and ‘recipient’, it constitutes a pertinent critique of welfare as well as development aid practices. Contextualised in South Africa’s recent history, it goes beyond a metaphorical statement: non-white South Africans had to serve their white masters and mistresses like dogs. However, with this is a wishful reading of the ad: we are aware that Feed a Child’s intention was neither an anti-racist, anti-capitalist critique of present-day South Africa nor an attack on charity work as such. Instead, the video appeals to the viewers: ‘Help feed a starving child. SMS ‘child’ to 40014 to donate R20’.

Save the Children UK’s ‘Most Shocking Second a Day Video’ was awarded the Golden Radiator Award ‘which goes to the charity offering the most innovative and empowering vision’. Here’s the video:

The goal of the video is to raise awareness and money for children in Syria; it shows a young girl in different everyday situations at the beginning, but halfway through the clip the fear and violence of war enters the scene. The Jury argued for the quality of this clip as follows:

‘Any advocacy ad that can put you in the middle of the situation instead of casting people and situations you’d never imagine is a good one. […] You feel for the little girl as if she was someone you knew next door or your children went to school with. It emphasises the universality of suffering and empathy, and breaks racial stereotypes about who suffers.’

The makers of the clip portray the UK as a place of happiness and light-heartedness; the war scenes are surprising and out of place. This is achieved through various means: The settings the girl appears in (practicing the flute, being pinched by ‘granny’, school uniform etc.) and the evident British accent. Here, the issue of racialised bodies is noteworthy: a child with blue eyes and light skin was chosen. We wonder whether it would have worked as well had the child been black or worn a headscarf. This brings us to the question of whether the makers of the ad (as well as the jury and voters of the Golden Radiator Award) had in mind that many young non-white and poor people in the UK actually grow up in conditions of violence and constant insecurity. Street violence in deprived neighbourhoods comes to mind, but also racist policing: black people are up to 28 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.

Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti’s points out ‘if we want to work towards ideals of justice, we need to understand better the social and historical forces that connect us to each other’. In the clip we cannot identify any hints of relationality. While the South African ad may be interpreted as – albeit unintentionally – portraying poverty and wealth, humiliation and exploitation as related, the UK one does not tell us who is responsible for the suffering of the child or who profits from it. Here, we could ask who is providing the weapons for the Syrian war and who has supported the Assad regime for years and years. The UK is one of the world’s top five arms exporters and the current government continues to grant licences to Syria for dual-use chemicals that could be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons. This would also bring up de Oliveira Andreotti’s question, how the consumers of advertising would react ‘if they realized that bringing justice to others meant going against [one’s own] national/local interests.’ Would the people that Save the Children addresses as potential donors also contribute if a clip moved beyond a humanitarian relation and problematised the relationship of wars abroad with the UK’s industrial-military complex?

SAIH’s work is laudable in that it constitutes Western auto-critique for which satire is a very useful tool. It has managed to put the issue of stereotypes of the global South on the agenda in development aid circles, as well as the general public in the global North. But while the portrayal of people and societies in the Global South is questioned by the Rusty and Golden Radiator Awards, the assumption remains untouched that it is these people and societies that have deficits and have to change.

SAIH makes clear that they do not really want to move beyond the dominant structures: ‘We, as a development organization, are not opposed to development aid’. Indeed, none of the clips asks us to question relations of power or to politically engage in transformative endeavours. The subtexts of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ clips thus remains the same. The Awards make us believe that it is possible to produce non-racist, non-discriminatory advertising in a policy field so deeply entrenched in the history and present of global colonial racism – you just have to be clever and creative. However, if we merely criticise development aid for using stereotypes, we fail to understand the connection between the concept as well as practice of development and the legacy of colonialism and racism. The Awards thus run the danger of stabilising the underlying structural violence of relations between the global North and South, between poor and rich, by applauding cosmetic repairs of the surface.

This year’s awards were accompanied by the video clip ‘Who wants to be a volunteer’, made in collaboration with the South Africa-based company iKind. The satirical film mocks Western stereotypes of Africa and brings up the issue of charity-mania. It holds the mirror up to the self-centredness of Western volunteers (see the really great scene in which the volunteer takes a selfie) when engaging with what is commonly portrayed as altruistic. While at first glance one might have the impression that the clip also criticises Western voluntourism in African countries as such, SAIH states that ‘[t]he video is not a critique of youth travelling to Africa to work as volunteers, but rather of the simplistic exotification of the continent that still dominates today’. Just like the Awards, it is not a critique of existing power relations and stark global inequalities, but of representation.

Yet tourism and its sub-form “voluntourism” from the global North to the global South are inevitably implicated in racialised cultural and economic exploitation of formerly colonised peoples. Of course, non-exoticising voluntourists and volunteers are nicer than overtly racist ones, but materially there is little difference as they are part of, and perpetuate, the existing unequal relations between global North and South. As much as we enjoy watching SAIH’s clips and sympathise with their attempts of changing the image of Africa and development, their critique does not go deep enough to address the quintessential questions of inequality and power in the North-South context.

A longer version of this essay was published in Pambazuka News No. 707, 18.12.2014.

Disclosure: Africa is a Country’s Boima Tucker served on the 2014 and Caitlin Chandler on the 2013 Rusty Radiator Awards Jury.

Do the Rusty Radiator Awards Make a Difference?

At the beginning of December 2014, Norwegian NGO SAIH – The Norwegian Students and Academics International Assistance Fund – announced the winners of its second annual Rusty Radiator Awards at an official ceremony in Oslo. SAIH advocates for a complex understanding of injustice and to fight against the ‘[l]ack of knowledge and bad consciousness’, which they see as reasons for the common belief ‘in simple solutions when confronted with an unjust world’.

2014’s Rusty Radiator Awards follow SAIH’s success with the clips ‘Radi-Aid: Africa for Norway’ (for a critique, see David Jefferess’ article as well as a blog post on the site of the organization in work for in Berlin) and ‘Let’s save Africa! – gone wrong’ as well as the 2013 Rusty Radiator Awards (see our response).

The Awards appear successful in sparking a dialogue about how aid communication can be less racist and stereotypical, but regarding SAIH’s goal to portray global (and local) injustice in a more complex manner, the Awards fall short.

Let’s have a look at the two videos nominated by an international jury and considered the best and the worst by the voters of 2014’s Radiator Award. The South African charity Feed a Child was awarded as the ‘charity producing the most clichéd and unhelpful fundraising video’. Here’s the video:

The video shows a wealthy white woman treating a Black child like a dog, and the boy behaving just like a well-behaved dog that likes its owner. In the epilogue of the video, we read ‘The average domestic dog eats better than millions of children’. The Rusty Radiator Award Jury’s comment was as follows:

‘Completely “White Saviour”. David had to turn it off after 10 seconds. Racism isn’t something of 200 years back, it’s something very present in South Africa today. […] The message doesn’t justify using the same stereotypes to both raise awareness and steal agency. The poor are already depicted as incapable of their own rescue, now they are being compared to dogs.’

There was a big debate around the video in South Africa when it first came out (see here, here and here) and it was eventually withdrawn by the charity (who sort of apologized for it).

It is indeed painful to watch this violent and racist clip. Yet, while it portrays children and Black people as without agency, it unintentionally provides a damning critique of both the aid industry as well as post-Apartheid South Africa. While the inequality of the relationship between the Black child and white adult is crystal clear, it is portrayed as devoid of explicit (physical or verbal) violence. Both parties seem to be perfectly fine with the way things are. However, it can also be read as offering a metaphor for what life is like in South Africa for the majority of people: that the dogs of rich people actually do eat better than millions of (mainly Black) children. By completely exaggerating the relationship between ‘donor’ and ‘recipient’, it constitutes a pertinent critique of welfare as well as development aid practices. Contextualised in South Africa’s recent history, it goes beyond a metaphorical statement: non-white South Africans had to serve their white masters and mistresses like dogs. However, with this is a wishful reading of the ad: we are aware that Feed a Child’s intention was neither an anti-racist, anti-capitalist critique of present-day South Africa nor an attack on charity work as such. Instead, the video appeals to the viewers: ‘Help feed a starving child. SMS ‘child’ to 40014 to donate R20’.

Save the Children UK’s ‘Most Shocking Second a Day Video’ was awarded the Golden Radiator Award ‘which goes to the charity offering the most innovative and empowering vision’. Here’s the video:

The goal of the video is to raise awareness and money for children in Syria; it shows a young girl in different everyday situations at the beginning, but halfway through the clip the fear and violence of war enters the scene. The Jury argued for the quality of this clip as follows:

‘Any advocacy ad that can put you in the middle of the situation instead of casting people and situations you’d never imagine is a good one. […] You feel for the little girl as if she was someone you knew next door or your children went to school with. It emphasises the universality of suffering and empathy, and breaks racial stereotypes about who suffers.’

The makers of the clip portray the UK as a place of happiness and light-heartedness; the war scenes are surprising and out of place. This is achieved through various means: The settings the girl appears in (practicing the flute, being pinched by ‘granny’, school uniform etc.) and the evident British accent. Here, the issue of racialised bodies is noteworthy: a child with blue eyes and light skin was chosen. We wonder whether it would have worked as well had the child been black or worn a headscarf. This brings us to the question of whether the makers of the ad (as well as the jury and voters of the Golden Radiator Award) had in mind that many young non-white and poor people in the UK actually grow up in conditions of violence and constant insecurity. Street violence in deprived neighbourhoods comes to mind, but also racist policing: black people are up to 28 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.

Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti’s points out ‘if we want to work towards ideals of justice, we need to understand better the social and historical forces that connect us to each other’. In the clip we cannot identify any hints of relationality. While the South African ad may be interpreted as – albeit unintentionally – portraying poverty and wealth, humiliation and exploitation as related, the UK one does not tell us who is responsible for the suffering of the child or who profits from it. Here, we could ask who is providing the weapons for the Syrian war and who has supported the Assad regime for years and years. The UK is one of the world’s top five arms exporters and the current government continues to grant licences to Syria for dual-use chemicals that could be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons. This would also bring up de Oliveira Andreotti’s question, how the consumers of advertising would react ‘if they realized that bringing justice to others meant going against [one’s own] national/local interests.’ Would the people that Save the Children addresses as potential donors also contribute if a clip moved beyond a humanitarian relation and problematised the relationship of wars abroad with the UK’s industrial-military complex?

SAIH’s work is laudable in that it constitutes Western auto-critique for which satire is a very useful tool. It has managed to put the issue of stereotypes of the global South on the agenda in development aid circles, as well as the general public in the global North. But while the portrayal of people and societies in the Global South is questioned by the Rusty and Golden Radiator Awards, the assumption remains untouched that it is these people and societies that have deficits and have to change.

SAIH makes clear that they do not really want to move beyond the dominant structures: ‘We, as a development organization, are not opposed to development aid’. Indeed, none of the clips asks us to question relations of power or to politically engage in transformative endeavours. The subtexts of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ clips thus remains the same. The Awards make us believe that it is possible to produce non-racist, non-discriminatory advertising in a policy field so deeply entrenched in the history and present of global colonial racism – you just have to be clever and creative. However, if we merely criticise development aid for using stereotypes, we fail to understand the connection between the concept as well as practice of development and the legacy of colonialism and racism. The Awards thus run the danger of stabilising the underlying structural violence of relations between the global North and South, between poor and rich, by applauding cosmetic repairs of the surface.

This year’s awards were accompanied by the video clip ‘Who wants to be a volunteer’, made in collaboration with the South Africa-based company iKind. The satirical film mocks Western stereotypes of Africa and brings up the issue of charity-mania. It holds the mirror up to the self-centredness of Western volunteers (see the really great scene in which the volunteer takes a selfie) when engaging with what is commonly portrayed as altruistic. While at first glance one might have the impression that the clip also criticises Western voluntourism in African countries as such, SAIH states that ‘[t]he video is not a critique of youth travelling to Africa to work as volunteers, but rather of the simplistic exotification of the continent that still dominates today’. Just like the Awards, it is not a critique of existing power relations and stark global inequalities, but of representation.

Yet tourism and its sub-form “voluntourism” from the global North to the global South are inevitably implicated in racialised cultural and economic exploitation of formerly colonised peoples. Of course, non-exoticising voluntourists and volunteers are nicer than overtly racist ones, but materially there is little difference as they are part of, and perpetuate, the existing unequal relations between global North and South. As much as we enjoy watching SAIH’s clips and sympathise with their attempts of changing the image of Africa and development, their critique does not go deep enough to address the quintessential questions of inequality and power in the North-South context.

A longer version of this essay was published in Pambazuka News No. 707, 18.12.2014.

Disclosure: Africa is a Country’s Boima Tucker served on the 2014 and Caitlin Chandler on the 2013 Rusty Radiator Awards Jury.

A Reflection on Bantu Khamuladzi and the birth of Malawian Hip Hop

In 1994, Malawi’s longtime dictator Hastings Banda was dethroned from the palace of Sanjika and relegated to Mudi House, sandwiched between two roads that lead to the referral Queen’s Hospital, the latter revealing not only Malawi’s connection with pax Britannica but Banda’s fixation with aspirations normally associated with the British royal family.

After 30 years of manufactured consent built on four solid pillars – Unity, loyalty, Obedience, and Discipline (towards Banda), Malawi was ready to move on without the Old Lion. On the streets, yellow party colours had replaced Banda’s now somber colours of black, red, and green. 30-year-old bottled expressions were ready to explode — just months earlier, the margnalised had carpe-diemed by breaking into a chain of stores owned by Banda for such luxuries like soft drinks and bagged rice.

As teenagers during that critical juncture, we were experiencing our own kind of freedom. With liberated airwaves (and borders, it would seem – African-American pop music filtered into Malawi through cheap audio tapes via Dar-er-Salaam), we found an outlet for our angst through hip hop music. The thug theology of Tupac resonated with a closeness that was almost palpable. News of his death had some of us in real tears.

Future key members of the Bantu Khamuladzi (Bantu Comrades), Wandumi and Zimbiri, first met at a boarding school. The Khamuladzi, like most of the rappers then, began by mimicking songs heard from imported tapes. Ebonic accents were mastered and rap albums memorized, much to the admiration of some. But that parroting soon gave way to actual rhyme writing as they strove to outdo each other in what are still called battles.

Later, they discovered the Wu Tang Clan. While Tupac’s poignant lyrics painted censored dreams of a ghetto child, Wu Tang showed hip hop as a blank slate, with endless possibilities. Post-secondary school, they stuck with hip hop, forming a band, with Wandumi and Zimbiri as the key guys.

Their first album, Roots and Revolution, came out in 2001, inspired by such acts like Dead Prez. By then, they were an assortment of rappers and hangers on. The first single featured the late Stonard Lungu, Malawi’s own Bob Dylan, in a song originally composed by Malawi’s guitar maestro, late Daniel Kachamba, long connected with Gerhard Kubic, the foremost African music scholar. In a country without a formal music industry and without distributors, the album was sold almost on a record/per/demand method. It was rap rebel music that became an instant classic amongst their underground fans.

Later, the Bantu Khamuladzi would undergo a rebirth and embrace fully their Africanness, in as far as that was interpreted. Their second album Umunthu (Ubuntu) was an inspired potent brew containing thoughts of Biko, Ali, Nkrumah, sung in Afro-Jazz. It reinterpreted culture as never been done before in Malawi. A radio station called Power 101, with a 101% dedication to urban music and a core target audience of 15 to 35, would give them a much needed outlet.

Their rebirth did not happen in a vacuum. Bantu Khamuladzi were exposed to music of a different kind at the French Cultural Centre. When the likes of Ishmael Lo, Habib Koite, Angelique Kidjo and Tiken Jah Fakoly came in town, Bantu Khamuladzi had front row seats.

Fans of Afropop will remember how TFI, in an attempt to gain some cultural credibility, selected the then unknown Khadja Nin in 1996 as its summer act, catapulting her to world fame. Something similar happened in Malawi when the local television selected Khamuladzi’s beautiful music video ‘Afrika’ as its poster video. Hitherto, music videos had been dull affairs of people dancing on green lawns. Afrika featured Malawi’s prominent feature, the lake. For the first time, a music video had a budget and an impressive wardrobe.

Post Television Malawi, their fame grew across Malawi, peaking in 2006. The colourful African-inspired clothing worn in their videos would lead Khamuladzi to start a fashion label that was to dent Malawi’s landscape. Aptly named Khalidwe (cultural), the clothing would be embraced by urban Malawians with almost a vengeance. It soon also inspired a horde of copy cats, all of them with cultural names.

 

Around 2008 their fast decline was in motion. Chief amongst the causal factors was their refusal to incorporate business minded people in their ventures. Profits were not reinvested, orders were delivered late, quality was compromised, and more time was spent in recording studios on solo projects.

Still, the machine they had almost invented is still in motion. While it lacks density (none of its participators has sought to really take time and study ways of the ancestors and marry them with modernity), it has managed to turn itself into a serious business.  Today, Malawians refer to just about any African-inspired clothing as Khalidwe and modern hip hop and dance hall music in now sung in ChiChewa, Malawi’s main official language.

Recently, I met Wandumi who is now back in the studios to record. For him, unfortunately, structures are still not in place for him to succeed. Not that it will stop him from making music. As a fan, all I can do is raise a clenched fist. The machine they helped invent is not perfect but it helps fellow Africans engage with what it means to be African, limited though that may be.

A Reflection on Bantu Khamuladzi and the Birth of Malawian Hip Hop

In 1994, Malawi’s longtime dictator Hastings Banda was dethroned from the palace of Sanjika and relegated to Mudi House, sandwiched between two roads that lead to the referral Queen’s Hospital, the latter revealing not only Malawi’s connection with pax Britannica but Banda’s fixation with aspirations normally associated with the British royal family.

After 30 years of manufactured consent built on four solid pillars – Unity, loyalty, Obedience, and Discipline (towards Banda), Malawi was ready to move on without the Old Lion. On the streets, yellow party colours had replaced Banda’s now somber colours of black, red, and green. 30-year-old bottled expressions were ready to explode — just months earlier, the margnalised had carpe-diemed by breaking into a chain of stores owned by Banda for such luxuries like soft drinks and bagged rice.

As teenagers during that critical juncture, we were experiencing our own kind of freedom. With liberated airwaves (and borders, it would seem – African-American pop music filtered into Malawi through cheap audio tapes via Dar-er-Salaam), we found an outlet for our angst through hip hop music. The thug theology of Tupac resonated with a closeness that was almost palpable. News of his death had some of us in real tears.

Future key members of the Bantu Khamuladzi (Bantu Comrades), Wandumi and Zimbiri, first met at a boarding school. The Khamuladzi, like most of the rappers then, began by mimicking songs heard from imported tapes. Ebonic accents were mastered and rap albums memorized, much to the admiration of some. But that parroting soon gave way to actual rhyme writing as they strove to outdo each other in what are still called battles.

Later, they discovered the Wu Tang Clan. While Tupac’s poignant lyrics painted censored dreams of a ghetto child, Wu Tang showed hip hop as a blank slate, with endless possibilities. Post-secondary school, they stuck with hip hop, forming a band, with Wandumi and Zimbiri as the key guys.

Their first album, Roots and Revolution, came out in 2001, inspired by such acts like Dead Prez. By then, they were an assortment of rappers and hangers on. The first single featured the late Stonard Lungu, Malawi’s own Bob Dylan, in a song originally composed by Malawi’s guitar maestro, late Daniel Kachamba, long connected with Gerhard Kubic, the foremost African music scholar. In a country without a formal music industry and without distributors, the album was sold almost on a record/per/demand method. It was rap rebel music that became an instant classic amongst their underground fans.

Later, the Bantu Khamuladzi would undergo a rebirth and embrace fully their Africanness, in as far as that was interpreted. Their second album Umunthu (Ubuntu) was an inspired potent brew containing thoughts of Biko, Ali, Nkrumah, sung in Afro-Jazz. It reinterpreted culture as never been done before in Malawi. A radio station called Power 101, with a 101% dedication to urban music and a core target audience of 15 to 35, would give them a much needed outlet.

Their rebirth did not happen in a vacuum. Bantu Khamuladzi were exposed to music of a different kind at the French Cultural Centre. When the likes of Ishmael Lo, Habib Koite, Angelique Kidjo and Tiken Jah Fakoly came in town, Bantu Khamuladzi had front row seats.

Fans of Afropop will remember how TFI, in an attempt to gain some cultural credibility, selected the then unknown Khadja Nin in 1996 as its summer act, catapulting her to world fame. Something similar happened in Malawi when the local television selected Khamuladzi’s beautiful music video ‘Afrika’ as its poster video. Hitherto, music videos had been dull affairs of people dancing on green lawns. Afrika featured Malawi’s prominent feature, the lake. For the first time, a music video had a budget and an impressive wardrobe.

Post Television Malawi, their fame grew across Malawi, peaking in 2006. The colourful African-inspired clothing worn in their videos would lead Khamuladzi to start a fashion label that was to dent Malawi’s landscape. Aptly named Khalidwe (cultural), the clothing would be embraced by urban Malawians with almost a vengeance. It soon also inspired a horde of copy cats, all of them with cultural names.

 

Around 2008 their fast decline was in motion. Chief amongst the causal factors was their refusal to incorporate business minded people in their ventures. Profits were not reinvested, orders were delivered late, quality was compromised, and more time was spent in recording studios on solo projects.

Still, the machine they had almost invented is still in motion. While it lacks density (none of its participators has sought to really take time and study ways of the ancestors and marry them with modernity), it has managed to turn itself into a serious business.  Today, Malawians refer to just about any African-inspired clothing as Khalidwe and modern hip hop and dance hall music in now sung in ChiChewa, Malawi’s main official language.

Recently, I met Wandumi who is now back in the studios to record. For him, unfortunately, structures are still not in place for him to succeed. Not that it will stop him from making music. As a fan, all I can do is raise a clenched fist. The machine they helped invent is not perfect but it helps fellow Africans engage with what it means to be African, limited though that may be.

Viva Riva! director, Djo Tunda Wa Munga, on African self-representation, and opening a production company in “chaos”

“A filmmaker processes images absorbed through his environment and upbringing,” says Djo Munga (41), who was hailed as one of Africa’s most promising filmmakers, after the release of his first feature back in 2011, the gangster thriller Viva Riva! Laced with violence, crime and eroticism, the film is the first to come out of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in over 28 years and tells the story of a charming and ambitious street hustler, Riva (Patsha Bay Mukuna), who is on the run from a crime boss after fleeing Angola with a truckload of stolen fuel.

Here’s the trailer:

“The film was a success. People would say ‘He made a film in Congo! What a hero!’ But that’s because of the perception of chaos in the Congo. Media builds perception and expectation; so people have the idea that it’s mad to do a film in the Congo,” he says. “Why is it mad?”

As the county celebrates 54 years of independence, the narrative of the DRC continues to be consumed by rebels and soldiers, poverty, bad governance, war and endless chaos. Shooting a film in the DRC instead of Europe or America meant hard work, creativity and building infrastructure sorely lacking in a country with little political stability and a strained economy.

“People were so surprised when we filmed Viva Riva! because we were organised. People thought it would be chaos. But what is chaos?” asks Munga.

“We have lots of [informal] taxi drivers in Congo who work really long hours for low wages. We struck a deal with them; they worked for us for three months, and doubled their salary. If you build a system of organisation you get productivity,” he says. Although there was a good deal of international muscle (the assistant director was Canadian, the sound engineer was Swiss and the director of photography was French) all the assistants were Congolese.

“It takes time to implement a production company in an environment that is not designed for such a structure. You need to constantly rethink the model, the concept and your goals,” says Munga, his task made more difficult as there are no movie theatres in the Congo.

Former President Mobutu Seko shut down the film industry in the 1990s, and as a result Munga says the new generation lacks the ‘emotional memory’ of cinema. While Viva Riva! was being screened in theatres overseas, Congolese watched the action on a local TV station. “People don’t have nostalgia of something they don’t know,” he says. “Congo is not a place that looks at the past.”

The DRC is one of Africa’s richest mining countries; minerals including copper, cobalt and diamonds are abundant. Colonized by Belgium in 1908, the DRC gained their independence in the 1960s. Munga was born about a decade after independence, during a time of economic decline due to dependency on the international market. The 1980s saw Belgium pull development programs, which furthered the deterioration of their economy. It was in this environment that Munga’s parents sent him and his eight siblings to be educated in Belgium at the tender age of ten.

“When I graduated 17 years after, I went back to Congo and could see the effect that a lack of education had, we were on the end of a war as well. But you have the structure of a society that you’ve known since you were a child, you still have those links to your community,” he says.

Hailed as an ‘African trailblazer’, the industry is certainly keeping a keen eye on him, while is more concerned with African filmmakers being curators of their own experience. “You don’t create new images. Humans don’t work like that. You have a history of images. Your environment shapes your profile. However he insists “there are no stories that come out of me from Belgium”.

He compares the work of making films and documentaries to a museum curator, selecting a certain told history, processing ideas, which allow the viewer to experience selective perceptions of a people, countries and cultures.

“When it comes to Africa, who is the curator? When it comes to the images we see about Africa, who is the curator? BBC, Aljazeera, Channel 4? There’s a chain of people working around these images. People look at Africa now, not taking the history of oppression into consideration,” he says.

Munga is known for producing a quartet of short films Congo in Four Acts (2009), Ladies in Waiting (2009) and directing the documentary State of Mind (2010), which deals with overcoming national trauma after decades of violence and unrest in the DRC. He is currently shooting a documentary about two Norwegians who were jailed in the Congo for the murder of a taxi driver.

Africa Cup of Nations Memories: When Sudan scored their first AFCON goal in 32 years

Sudan had entered AFCON 2012 with 23 home-based players, all playing in Sudan. It was the first time they had qualified since 2008, and before that it was 1976. We were thrown into a group with Ivory Coast, Angola and Burkina Faso.

We lost the first game 1-0 to Ivory Coast and had to get something out of the Angola game in Malabo to have hopes of progressing. Manucho scored four minutes in and Sudan were one down. Sad, disappointed, hurt. But now Sudan had to score, something we haven’t done in AFCON in 32 years. But then in the 36th minute – Al Hilal Omdurman forward Mohamed Ahmed Bashir leapt in between two Angolans and headed home a Mudathir Kareka cross. It was Sudan’s first AFCON goal in 32 years, an incredible moment. The commentator lost his voice, tears everywhere, even my father expressed tears of joy, we had waited years to see our nation score at AFCON. After losing 3-0 three times in 2008, this moment was definitely one to treasure.

Our 23 home based players were written off before the tournament had begun, but they fought like lions that day. 2-2 it ended in Malabo, and Sudan were in with a chance of qualifying but had to beat Burkina Faso in Bata in the last match and needed Ivory Coast to defeat Angola 2-0 in the other match. Sleepless nights lay ahead, the thoughts of the last day scenario were just lingering in my head 24-7. Could Sudan really qualify to the quarter final and be amongst the last eight? This would definitely be a dream come true.

Match day – flags, shirts, scarfs were out, prayers performed, awaiting kick off, stood in front of the TV and I sang my heart out as the national anthem was being played. We knew its was going to be difficult, but not impossible. 33 minutes in the wonderful Mudather Kareka skips past Bakary Kone and finishes past Soulama. At EXACTLY the same moment, Emmanuel Eboue put CIV in front vs Angola! The whole family knelt in prayer, we started to believe, adrenaline was pumping, heart beating fast.

Bony then doubled Ivory Coast’s lead! As it stands – Sudan Qualify! The atmosphere in my living room that day was amazing. As time went on, we knew we were going to make it. In the 79th minute, Akram Salim send a long ball to Kareka who rounds Soulama and doubles Sudan’s lead. I couldn’t believe it, I started running around my house like a headless chicken – Sudan were heading for the last eight! The game ended 2-1 and Sudan qualified. That day (30 January 2012) remains one of the best days in my life. Sudan did the unthinkable! First quarter final apperance since 1970 when we were crowned champions – could we repeat that triumph?. That day i started to think everything was possible – one of the best moments of my life.

Abdul’s is one of the winning entries in our AFCON Memories competition with AMS Clothing, and he wins a national team jersey from the AMS range.

Thanks to AMS Clothing, kit suppliers to the national teams of Sierra Leone and South Sudan, for providing prizes for our AFCON Memories competition. We caught up with AMS founder Luke Westcott, and asked him to explain a bit more about how AMS got started, what makes it distinctive, and where it’s heading.

“Founded in late 2013, AMS recognised the social, as well as commercial opportunities presented in the hugely popular, yet largely informal football industry in Africa. This recognition came about after traveling to Africa and discovering that the only football apparel available for purchase at a reasonable price were low-quality, counterfeit products. Many of these products were the national team apparel of each respective country we travelled to. This led to the idea of becoming the official national team suppliers, and then providing the respective national football federations with the opportunity to offer their official products to the domestic market, at a price that meet the market demands. This means that fans can purchase official products, featuring cool designs, at a fair price, whilst supporting their national football federation in the process. Furthermore, we also supply the international market through the AMS online store and a few other retailers. This allows us to raise revenue and expand to further countries.

“The main focus we highlight to FA’s as to why they should choose us is the opportunity we provide them to effectively commercialise on the popularity of the national team. Many of the smaller federations never receive revenue from apparel sales, even when they are supplied by major sportswear brands. Many of these brands do not make apparel available for purchase, and if they do, it is often at a price that is way too expensive for most people in the domestic market. Furthermore, all our designs are customised and are created to the specifications of the FA. We never use boring template designs, and always try to design something interesting that will be popular with local fans.”

Tunde Owolabi brings Aso-Oke weaving to the gallery

Tunde Owolabi is the determined creative force behind the recently exhibited “Aso Oke – The Woven Beauty,” which was on show at Red Door Gallery in Lagos in November 2014. The exhibition is the result of a two year creative research foray for Owolabi, a Lagos-based multimedia artist who sought with the exhibition to spotlight the textile making tradition of the Yorubas:

AIAC decided to sit down with Owolabi to learn what drives him on this mission:

What drove you to commit a full two-year, self-funded exploration of this specific textile, Aso Oke? 

My fascination with Aso Oke started a few years ago. I was shooting a lot of weddings and other occasions. The rate at which people were using the fabric, and the creativity involved in the production was intriguing. It was colorful, regal and beautiful. I started to study the patterns, I noticed you could create just about any pattern you wanted! The initial designs were mainly linear but these days, all sorts of designs and motifs are created. So I decided to probe further by finding where they are being made. This lead me to a village in Oyo state in southwest Nigeria called Isehin. The village said to be where this art originated from and where I met the local weavers and some elders who shed more light to my curiosity.

Tell us more about Isehin.

It is a community where almost every household has a weaver or two. Production time frame now is based on the kind of design and its intricacy. In the past, the process was tedious with a six-month time frame, as everything was done from scratch. Presently it takes two weeks to three months depending again on design and type as the materials are now imported. The weavers businesses have expanded so much in the last couple of years especially with the growth in the wedding industry. The weavers are now employed by entrepreneurs with the interest and capital to maintain the quality of Aso-Oke as worn by our forefathers while imbibing the new trends. Like any business, there are low and high demand periods with weaving being their main economic activity, complaints of quiet times abound. If more people invest in them and find a way to mechanize the production without adulterating the tradition, we will have more economic gains for the weavers and the country at large.

What mediums did you employ for your exhibition and why? 

Watercolor, acrylic, oil paint, these are the media employed to create striking colors, texture and form for the paintings exhibited at the Aso Oke exhibition. Most of them depict traditional Yoruba dressing and how it is combined, using Aso Oke.

 The paintings exhibited include Aso Ebi Bella, an oil/acrylic on  canvas painting, inspired by trends of uniformed dressing by young and old women and men posting their style on Instagram. This image shows three modern day ladies dressed in the same kind of fabric with a vibrant yellow Aso Oke head tie, each one  tied  to show their individuality. The painting also makes an homage to  another dying Yoruba textile, an indigo dyed cloth produced by women also found in this Southwest region, Adire. It’s patterns adorn as the backdrop.

For the photography part of the exhibition, I wanted to show the beauty of Aso Oke using conceptual art, styled for fashion and also show the audience where the fabric came from and how it is made, using images and sound with purpose of immersing the audience into the space of the weavers in their community. Some of the fashion photography were reminiscent and an ode to the vintage styles of 60s and 70s where ladies dressed elegantly in “Oleku,” a style where the wrapper is tied above the knee, like a mini skirt with a blouse and head ties.

As I did not think 2D art forms were enough to do justice to the subject matter, I went further and created installations, a loom that was adorned with a collage of Aso Oke pieces, and a sculptural mixed media of a Yoruba chief in his cap and his four wives, made from metal, cane, and a combination of sixty-year old 100% original traditional cotton — all fused with contemporary Aso Oke. On the opening night, there was a performance of how Aso Oke is woven on the loom by a weaver, the performance part left the audience in awe.

Lastly, there was a fifteen minute self produced documentary on the history of Aso Oke’s, allowing visitors to learn first hand from those who own the culture and tradition, letting them into their world and sharing with them their heritage.

Lastly, what contemporary cultural concerns do you hold for the future of Aso Oke?

Colonialism in itself already endangered the production of local fabrics in Nigeria, but recently the Chinese started doing more damage by producing more than the wool used to weave Aso-Oke by cheaply reproducing and importing their own Aso Oke which is sold in the Nigerian market at a relatively cheaper price. This affects the local weaving maker as many are not astute on the difference as a cheaper price point is attractive. China has the technology and labor power to produce in large quantity. If we do our part along with state involvement in empowering these weavers, we will win the war against the Chinese [imports] and people will know better to patronize produced in Nigeria for sustainability.

Aso Oke is our tradition, our heritage, and we need to take ownership – having people notably like Maki Oh, Molbaks Alasooke, and others who have taken the art to a new and modern level is a positive step for the sustainability of the art. I hope my exhibition and work is an educative experience that informs people of our heritage and importance of cultural preservation. It is within this theme that I hope to continue in.

To keep up with Tunde, follow his work on www.studiomo.com.ng

Credit: All media belongs to Tunde Olowabi

Why would a Black American root for Ghana’s soccer team over USA?

This post on The Outer Drive got me thinking about blackness and football, but first and foremost American blackness and football. (Not to say that nations and borders can confine blackness but in terms of this discussion, it will be something directly related to American blacks. Yet I still find an issue with limiting blackness on these terms.)

John’s call to examine one’s roots, as well as to find a rooting interest, is something I feel very strong about. I believe that it is important for black fans, particularly American ones, to self determine when it comes to fandom. We see this every World Cup when a number of black Americans understandably have a disconnection with the United States and look for another team that at least looks more like them. This is usually roundly criticized by supporters of the US team when they quickly remind you that you are not from Ghana, South Africa, etc. If there is one thing the dominant culture in America is good at, it is reminding black Americans what they are not.

“You are not Ghanaian”? But am I American? What does it mean to be American or be of any nationality, for that matter? It has to be more than simply holding a passport with certain symbols that makes one think of the nation that they are most commonly attributed to. Those people are always correct, I am not Ghanaian, but 2014 has made it quite clear that my blackness prevents me from ever being fully American.

This is not to say I believe everyone should run out to adopt a nation to support, or do something that would be reductive nature. To support a national team is to do more than throw on a jersey — a nation should not become an accessory. There is more to Ghana than just the Black Stars, just like there is more to international football than the game on the pitch. The success of former colonial nations on the pitch represents a country that is overcoming the suffering forced on them by outside influences. It represents a nation and a people with a future where their successes come from within. It’s a suffering that will never be forgotten, but something that will be overcome.

I cannot possibly know the suffering of any nation or people who have been colonized. As a black American, however, this suffering is something that I can relate to far more than any false idea that the US national team can offer me. The success of a nation such as Ghana in a footballing tournament fills me with optimism for the future, a future where both black nations and black people will be allowed to self-determine and achieve greatness. My personal history will most likely prevent me from knowing my African roots prior to the end of the American Civil War when my relatives wandered on up to Cairo, Illinois. What they passed down to me, however, is something that can never be erased or forgotten and that connects me with a world that goes beyond anything a passport can offer.

This post first appeared on The Outer Drive and is republished with permission. Follow @TheOuterDrive and the author of this post @Maxplatypus.

Security Killings: American Police Violence, from Ferguson to Nairobi

The world watched U.S. tanks roll into Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, in a misguided attempt to control protests over the police killing of Michael Brown. In the aftermath, the apparent militarization of local American police departments struck many critics as disproportionate force. It also tells us a great deal about the interconnections between U.S. foreign and domestic policy. These tanks not only illustrate the militarization of the U.S. police force, but the circularity of state-sponsored violence. The U.S. security edifice was built upon institutionalized racism which has been maintained in various forms throughout its history. What is new is the overt ways in which the American security industrial complex is exported abroad. Over the past few years, tanks used abroad have been re-imported into the United States and purchased at subsidized rates by police departments who maintain the domestic racial hierarchy. At the same time, the U.S. government has exported similar equipment and – especially – training to other nations to fight both the war on ‘drugs’ and the war on ‘terror.’ The recent killing of 43 students in Mexico and the extrajudicial killings of suspected “terrorists” in Kenya reveal the connections between U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

On September 26, 43 Mexican students from the rural teaching college of Ayotzinapa were on their way to protest the discriminatory hiring practices of the local government. Security forces intercepted them and opened fire on the buses, killing several of the students. The security forces illegally apprehended the rest of the students. According to the investigation led by Mexico’s Attorney General, the police handed the students over to a criminal organization, Guerreros Unidos, who incinerated their bodies, after torturing and murdering them. This incident, occurring almost simultaneously to Ferguson, was only the most visible instance in a long history of abuses, excessive force, and a total disregard for the lives of poor people on the part of the the Mexican police.

This case also reveals U.S. complicity in Mexican state violence and, further, that U.S. military training and tactics fail to address the real crimes that plague vulnerable Mexicans. The long history of security cooperation between Mexico and the U.S. opened a new chapter with the 2007 Merida initiative, a $2.3 billion program that delivered training and equipment to Mexico’s law enforcement agents to fight the so-called war on drugs. (Plan Colombia, an $8 billion program between the US and Colombia in 1999, provided the model for this agreement.) After the implementation of these policies, both Colombia and Mexico witnessed the militarization of police forces, ostensibly to prevent the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S. In both countries as well, these policies have led to extrajudicial killings of poor people and constant harassment and attacks on activists and union leaders. These crimes are often perpetrated by the national security forces or, paradoxically, by drug-dealing gangs linked to law enforcement agencies. Thus, in the name of protecting the American population from drugs, the U.S. is exporting police brutality to terrorize and control certain populations.

So too has the US exported violence in the name of protecting Americans from terror. The U.S. 7th Special Forces Group has conducted operations of both counterterrorism and counternarcotics all over Latin America and the Middle East. The distinction between the war on terror and the war on drugs has become increasingly murky. Since September 11th, Latin American states have adapted their political discourses on domestic drug policy to fit into the global war on terror. They deployed discourses of “narco-terrorism” to garner international support to fight organized crime and political opponents. The post 9/11 moment also explains the implementation of “broken-windows” policing in Latin America, where police departments crack down on petty infractions to prevent more serious future crimes. Rudolph Giuliani most famously implemented “broken-windows” in New York City, and later exported this policing model to Latin America through his consulting business. The war on drugs, the war on terror, and “broken-windows” policing criminalize marginalized groups to a greater degree, using excessive force, torture, and incarceration. All three approaches also fail to address any of the systemic causes of drug-trafficking, terrorism, or crime.

Kenya is one of the US’s closest African allies in the war on terror. As its importance to American policy rises, Kenya has also utilized excessive force, while disregarding the structural issues that have brought terror to East Africa. In late 2014, Kenya passed a new security bill. The bill allows the security and intelligence agencies to detain terror suspects for up to a year and prohibits journalists from publishing on terrorism without police permission (this comes just after an Al Jazeera investigation alleged that Kenyan police have assassinated almost 500 terrorism suspects). This new bill follows two recent terrorist attacks, in which al-Shabab – a Somali Islamist militant group linked to al-Qaeda – killed 64 people in northeastern Kenya. While the very real threat of terrorism in Kenya might seem to rationalize this more robust response, it has served to further marginalize Muslims and Somalis in Kenya, exacerbating the very inequalities which likely contribute to the production of new terrorists. (The recently passed security bill is just the latest iteration of this social neglect and repression. Prior to that in April 2014, the Kenyan government launched Operation Usalama Watch, which cracked down on ethnic Somalis. Thousands of refugees were detained in poor conditions and were summarily deported.)

The U.S. has supported Kenyan policy with aid, military training, and intelligence assistance. A 2013 Congressional Research Service report noted that Kenya was one of the top five recipients of State Department Anti-Terrorism Assistance funding. Since then, there have been reports of the Kenyan police killing and disappearing hundreds of suspected militants, as well as orchestrating extra-judicial assassinations of Muslim clerics, and racial profiling and harassing Somalis. All of this is part of an anti-terror policy funded and supported by the U.S. In Kenya, as in the U.S. and Mexico, the state commits extrajudicial killings of marginalized young men with impunity. Almost equally disturbing, in all three cases, the state does not even record or count its victims. (This was most vividly illustrated when Mexican authorities discovered additional mass graves while searching for the missing students.) When we see images of tanks rolling into Ferguson, we would be wise to remember that the perpetuation of a racially hierarchical U.S. state domestically has much wider implications for state violence internationally.

And yet, if repression is global, so, increasingly, is resistance. Many have seen images of Palestinians holding up signs in solidarity with protesters in New York and Ferguson. We have been struck by images of Afro-Colombians from Buenaventura – a port city which is part of a violent drug corridor – expressing support for African Americans. Each of these communities knows the costs of US police violence all too well.