Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 389

Transgendered in Botswana

“Pula, pula, na, na, ke tla gola leng.” The ethereal club banger “My Body” by Kat Kai Kol-Kes and her band Chasing Jakyb is an ode to the physical meeting of human body and rain. Kat is from Botswana, a country made up of 85 percent desert. Unsurprisingly, rain and water take on a mystical quality as a recurring motif and linguistic reference in the nation’s culture. In their early years, Batswana children sing songs and play games devoted to the calling of rain, and as adults, exchange currency aptly named pula, meaning rain. “Pula, pula, na, na, ke tla gola leng” means “Rain, rain, fall, fall, when will I grow?” Drawing from this childhood song, “My Body” compares the artist’s yearning for “bliss” to her country’s desire for rain; bliss is achieved at the meeting of rain and body in a storm of sound.

We first heard Kat, a transgender artist who performs regularly throughout Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, last August. She played at an event hosted by Art of the Soul, a youth organization dedicated to social service through the arts. We were blown away by her moving performance, and decided to check in with her to talk about art and transgender activism, developments in Botswana’s music industry, and her upcoming January 2015 album release of Bongo Country, an exploration of her relationship to Botswana.

Unlike neighboring South Africa, in Botswana the rights of LGBTQ citizens are not constitutionally protected, and legislation forbids same-sex relationships. But for a number of reasons, compared to many other African countries the LGBTQ community in Botswana experiences less severe social and institutional backlash. Botswana’s history as one of the only countries in Africa never to be fully colonized (it was a British Protectorate between 1885 and 1966), as well as the fact that the country has never been engaged in war, civil or otherwise since independence, has led to relative social, economic and political stability, has led to relative social, economic and political stability. While gender “transgressions” go relatively unimpeded in Botswana, LGBTQ citizens still face discrimination and injustice in the form of verbal abuse, a lack of healthcare resources, as well as rare cases of legal action against them.

“My Body,” a track from Bongo Country, merges Setswana and English hooks to create a slice of dance-floor slaying EDM that pulls from club sounds as varied as Cher, ’90s pop, and South African Afro-futurists like Spoek Mathambo. While Kat prefers to write songs in English, her Setswana lyrics often speak insightfully to her personal journey as a Motswana artist, an identity she claims is inextricable from her work. Violins and occasionally grating electronic sounds underlie the beat and indicate the coming of a storm, as Kat sings with dynamic range. Beginning with a high-pitched children’s song, the song kicks in as a heavy bass begins to ooze under the vocals, the whole building to a sweet, almost decadently rich climax. The English hook goes:

The clouds on the horizon, they said baby I got you, and as the shadows crept on the floor, I knew what they were about to do, to my body, my body body …

Kat takes the well-known saying “water is life” to a whole new level in this ode to maru a pula, clouds of rain. Her self-declared “club banger” works not only as a dance groove but as a magical expression of physicality, fertility and storm through sound, declaring botho, we are all one under heaven in our desire for bliss.

* Image by Faith In A Jar Photography. This post first appeared on Afropop Worldwide, a public radio show and website devoted to the music of Africa and the African diaspora. You can subscribe to the Afropop podcast or download episodes from SoundCloud.

Transgender in Botswana

“Pula, pula, na, na, ke tla gola leng.” The ethereal club banger “My Body” by Kat Kai Kol-Kes and her band Chasing Jakyb is an ode to the physical meeting of human body and rain. Kat is from Botswana, a country made up of 85 percent desert. Unsurprisingly, rain and water take on a mystical quality as a recurring motif and linguistic reference in the nation’s culture. In their early years, Batswana children sing songs and play games devoted to the calling of rain, and as adults, exchange currency aptly named pula, meaning rain. “Pula, pula, na, na, ke tla gola leng” means “Rain, rain, fall, fall, when will I grow?” Drawing from this childhood song, “My Body” compares the artist’s yearning for “bliss” to her country’s desire for rain; bliss is achieved at the meeting of rain and body in a storm of sound.

We first heard Kat, a transgender artist who performs regularly throughout Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, last August. She played at an event hosted by Art of the Soul, a youth organization dedicated to social service through the arts. We were blown away by her moving performance, and decided to check in with her to talk about art and transgender activism, developments in Botswana’s music industry, and her upcoming January 2015 album release of Bongo Country, an exploration of her relationship to Botswana.

Unlike neighboring South Africa, in Botswana the rights of LGBTQ citizens are not constitutionally protected, and legislation forbids same-sex relationships. But for a number of reasons, compared to many other African countries the LGBTQ community in Botswana experiences less severe social and institutional backlash. Botswana’s history as one of the only countries in Africa never to be fully colonized (it was a British Protectorate between 1885 and 1966), as well as the fact that the country has never been engaged in war, civil or otherwise since independence, has led to relative social, economic and political stability, has led to relative social, economic and political stability. While gender “transgressions” go relatively unimpeded in Botswana, LGBTQ citizens still face discrimination and injustice in the form of verbal abuse, a lack of healthcare resources, as well as rare cases of legal action against them.

“My Body,” a track from Bongo Country, merges Setswana and English hooks to create a slice of dance-floor slaying EDM that pulls from club sounds as varied as Cher, ’90s pop, and South African Afro-futurists like Spoek Mathambo. While Kat prefers to write songs in English, her Setswana lyrics often speak insightfully to her personal journey as a Motswana artist, an identity she claims is inextricable from her work. Violins and occasionally grating electronic sounds underlie the beat and indicate the coming of a storm, as Kat sings with dynamic range. Beginning with a high-pitched children’s song, the song kicks in as a heavy bass begins to ooze under the vocals, the whole building to a sweet, almost decadently rich climax. The English hook goes:

The clouds on the horizon, they said baby I got you, and as the shadows crept on the floor, I knew what they were about to do, to my body, my body body …

Kat takes the well-known saying “water is life” to a whole new level in this ode to maru a pula, clouds of rain. Her self-declared “club banger” works not only as a dance groove but as a magical expression of physicality, fertility and storm through sound, declaring botho, we are all one under heaven in our desire for bliss.

* Image by Faith In A Jar Photography. This post first appeared on Afropop Worldwide, a public radio show and website devoted to the music of Africa and the African diaspora. You can subscribe to the Afropop podcast or download episodes from SoundCloud.

The Fingo Festival Revolution in South Africa’s Eastern Cape

“You’ve got a car? It’s less than two hours from here” says a Rasta woman I’ve known for a total of ten minutes. In that time, she’s managed to convince me to travel with her to a town nearby (or was it me trying to convince her?) on a hunt for medicinal herbs.

The ganja in these here parts is strong. Mango, I’m told, is this season’s flavour. It can be found in Port Alfred, the town in question.

I didn’t have a car in any case and had to forego the offer, unfortunately.

I’d landed here, in Fingo township, after being fetched from Grahamstown’s city centre by Xolile Madinda (or X), one of the main organizers of the Fingo Festival – an annual, independently-run series of events founded in 2011.

After a brief back-and-forth over text messages, X and myself agreed to meet in front of the Pick ‘n Pay off of Africa Street. It’s mind-morning during Winter; the air is crisp and fresh, and nippy in that special Easter Cape kind of way which leaves you with the perpetual feeling that you’re a clothing layer too short to be warm. X emerges from behind me and is every bit the nineties hip-hop renaissance man with his hooded jacket and Timbaland boots, plus a gray-coloured beanie wrestled onto his head to drive the whole idea home.

He’s also well-versed in the history of Grahamstown–a story of displacement, deceit, and, ultimately, ownership–of land, of an entire nation’s memory.

We spend the next twenty minutes shop-hopping, hunting for mats on which the b-boys will flex during the breakdancing battle later. We then leave the hungover, fest-frenzied streets of Grahamstown to cross the invisible line into Fingo, the township five minutes’ drive away.

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Fingo Festival was established as an intervention during the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. The aim was to make art accessible to the Fingo township and its surrounds through a seven-day programme which has grown to include activities such as children’s workshops, open-ended dialogues, and musical performances.

“There’s a lot of cry that the [Grahamstown Arts Festival] is for the elite, that the art is expensive, and all these questions. So, as artists we figured out [that] there’s a deeper question that is not being addressed right here,” says X.

This deeper question, he figures, is that we as black people aren’t taught to prioritise art from an early age. To redress this, X and his partners decided to demonstrate that art has value beyond being an extra-mural activity.

“It’s a job for other people,” he says.

It was imperative for them as artists to set a standard so that people of Fingo and neighbouring townships understand that “during the festival, it’s not just them getting a job to clean the street. It’s for them to go and enjoy the arts – go and watch a drama performance, go and watch a music performance.”

We stop at the traffic lights where Dr Jacob Zuma Drive and Albert Street intersect, indicating to the right. A mural painted in red against a white backdrop lies to my left hand side; across from it is the open area paved in orange brick where the b-boy battles and live performances are held every the afternoon for the festival’s duration.

When we arrive at the community centre, a Rhodes University drama student is animatedly reading to a group of children gathered in one of the rooms. The workshops are hosted in the library at one end of the building. In session is someone from UCT’s Computer Science Department, who has developed an App to help bedroom producers determine the quality of their recording. It’s production 101 as heads listen intently and share their expertise on topics ranging from recording techniques, to treating a room for vocal recording.

The morning chill has started to wane, but there’s still a biting undercurrent which even the b-boys who’ve just arrived outside are keen to fight off. They stretch, they jump, and they clown around and take pictures for Instagram.

I, on the other hand, develop this strong urge for medicinal herbs, which leads to me being introduced to the Rasta referenced above.

Fingo Festival is not without its own set of problems. According to X, they’re running on practically no funding this year. The little they received went towards hiring the sound, feeding the children, buying paint for the wall, and buying mats for the b-boys (we eventually got two when we found them).

It would seem that while people in positions of power have been vocal in their support of Fingo Fest, lending muscle to ensure that it continues to exist doesn’t come as easy as the praises they’re so quick to dish out.

“We don’t want to be treated as special, but we want people to [take note] that after 20 years of democracy, these young men and women started something in their own community to reflect that there is change in the society we are living in,” says X

“It doesn’t have to be money. It can be making things happen,” he tells me. “The difficulties are there, but they could be solved if we also put ourselves out there, like now.”

It ultimately ends up sounding like a wishy-washy dream: a bunch of hippie-leaning bohemian intellectuals with deep socio-political grounding, a love for the freedom that comes with embracing art and letting it flourish, and a preference for more alternative forms of learning. It seems foolish, doesn’t it? A grassroots festival. Hosted in the outskirts of a frontier town. Over a seven-day period!

But without grassroots initiatives such as Fingo and its ilk, people in the community have no other means of accessing at least some of what’s on offer at the more polished, high-end, two-week festival just twenty minutes’ walk away.

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And sure enough on the Monday following fest, the street poles had newspaper headlines praising the “record attendance numbers” at the Grahamstown Arts Festival. The numbers, and not the art, were the main concern.

We can argue until daybreak about the representation of black, mostly working-class people in spaces like the Arts Festival; about the festival’s steady movement away from townships such as Joza; about the Village Green’s policies (which have been deemed exclusionary to the immediate community countless times, yet nothing seems to be done about it).

Instead of talk, it’d help if initiatives like Fingo were championed more by the mainstream.

I may have missed a few great showcases at the festival itself: Tumi Mogorosi, Kyle Shepherd, Msaki, and countless other musicians who dedicated themselves to a gruelling schedule of shows; the numerous actors who fought hangovers to give repeated performances which oftentimes cast them in emotionally-demanding roles; the film directors who availed themselves for QnAs after screenings; the seemingly-enriching discussions at Think Fest (X himself gave a talk).

But as the sun hovered on the horizon on Saturday, the last day of the festival, and people sang along to a reggae band’s rally that “Better must come…”, I knew that no other gathering could, at that very moment in time, top the feeling of euphoria which overcame me.

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T.O. Molefe on South Africa’s “War on Women”

The essayist T.O. Molefe (he is a contributor here too) has a new op-ed column up at nytimes.com. He writes about “South Africa’s War on Women.” The oped opens with a discussion of why South Africans appear so blase about gender violence. Molefe writes, “… crimes against black lesbians don’t register on the public’s radar amid the general landscape of violence. The police reported that there were over 17,000 homicides and 62,000 sexual assaults in South Africa between April 2013 and the end of March 2014.” Molefe argues that this disregard are related to the disorder and structural violence in the country’s poor townships. Then he gets to paralympian Oscar Pistorius, who will know in two weeks whether he will go to prison:

There is also the case of Oscar Pistorius, the world-famous athlete who this month was found guilty of culpable homicide for fatally shooting his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. He now faces a potential maximum prison sentence of 15 years on that charge and up to five years on a lesser charge of negligently firing a gun in public. His case has nonetheless forced South Africans to confront two dangerous dissociative myths.

Mr. Pistorius is wealthy, dashing, famous and white. He has challenged South Africans’ quietly whispered belief that domestic violence and femicide are the preserve of poor, black men prone to alcohol and substance abuse.

This belief allowed middle class and wealthy whites to tut disbelievingly as they leafed through the Sunday papers reading about the latest incidents of violence against women. In their minds, this violence was something happening far away and the people involved were part of a society divorced from their own.

The public spectacle of the Pistorius trial, which centered on a predominantly white gated community in Pretoria changed all that; it’s no longer so easy to tune out to the shouting, breaking glass and sounds of fists on flesh coming from the house next door.

Regardless of whether there’s any truth to Mr. Pistorius’s defense against the charges — that he feared someone had broken into his home and fired shots in self-defense — his argument exposed the violent masculinity that cost Ms. Steenkamp her life. The person from whom he was supposedly protecting himself and Ms. Steenkamp was a figment of the white middle-class imagination: a member of the dreaded hordes of poor, black men who each night ostensibly scale the electrified fences of gated communities to rape and pillage.

Source.

Can an algorithm be racist?

Can an algorithm be racist? Google’s translator (the new 2.0 version) works statistically. That Connectivist article (at the link) calls it “the great equalizer.” Unlike the first iteration that was based on the input of grammar rules and vocabulary lists, this one draws from a vast pool of actual texts to produce a softer, truer translation. But sometimes, it gets it just plain wrong. And just plain racist.

Last week I played intermediary between some friends, distanced by geography and time. At least on my end, it all happened on my phone but nary a call was made. I sent and received texts and IMs on Facebook, cut and pasted messages, and used e-mail, all in the palm of my hand. But the exchange spanned a world of relations and contacts dense with transatlantic history and mediations. That might have been nothing but a quaint curiosity, another small world moment, had it not been for Google translate.

Having completed the connection between the old friends, I thought my task was done. Then this arrived: “Funny, I got this message from JM and see how google translated it.”

The original message:

Olá carissimo amigo

Espero que esteja tudo bem

contigo manos e pais

Eu e minha irmã estamos bem.

Gostaria de manter contacto com vocês

Abraço forte

Google translation:

Hello friend carissimo

I hope all is well with you

niggas and parents

My sister and I are fine.

I would like to keep in touch with you

Big hug

What happened? Google translate pulled from the argot of Brazilian hip hop. “Manos” means “brothers” (or brothers and sisters) in Portuguese and Angolan Portuguese. In Brazilian Portuguese it means “bro” and “nigga,” according to scholar Derek Pardue who studies Brazilian hip hop and Portuguese hiphop (particularly Cape Verdian rappers). They nab it from US hip hop in an act of Pan-African identification. Somehow, that falls out of the translated message.

If you type in just “manos” you get “brothers” or “bros” so it is something about the punctuation or the combination with “contigo manos e pais” (the familiar form of “you” combined with brothers and sisters and parents). Nonetheless. Strangely, it left “caríssimo” untranslated. I would have translated it as “very dear.” Clearly, it’s not Mikolo’s version of Google Translate. But what do I know?

I know that although Portuguese originated in Portugal, the country with the current largest number of speakers is Brazil. Brazil has the world’s largest African descended population (we glossed race in Brazil during the World Cup in June 2014). Brazil dominates this relationship with Portugal economically, culturally with music and television production, and linguistically, thanks to the new orthography, signed in 1990 between Portugal and Brazil but slowly instituted since 2008 in Portugal and 2009 in Brazil (and unevenly in other Portuguese speaking countries).

Large populations of speakers exist in Portugal’s other former colonies: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Buissau, Moçambique, São Tome and Príncipe (known as the PALOPS) and, to a lesser extent, East Timor, Goa, and Macau. The new orthography is, among other things, meant to facilitate internet searches between people who speak the same language. But what happens with translation? Translation isn’t just linguistic, it’s cultural too, sometimes generational. Even when we speak the same language, we don’t speak the same language. My American friend understood. Our Angolan friend would have been aghast but would have figured out what happened. But what if the person who received the message didn’t speak any Portuguese? What if he didn’t know the person sending the message?

I know machine racism when I see it. However “unintentional” a computer program may be. People wrote the program. How can they learn to account for slang, cultural difference, linguistic variation, sedimented history? Google might be fast but it isn’t savvy. It isn’t the great equalizer, it only reproduces the inequalities we already know too well.

It’s just like Africa!

Linda de Mol is enormously popular in The Netherlands. She hosts tv game shows, even has her own talk show, speaks German fluently, and moreover, comes across as very approachable. (She also happens to be the sister of John de Mol, the co-founder of Endemol, the company that should be blamed for “Big Brother,” “Deal or no Deal,” “The Voice,” etcetera.)  The new thing among famous Dutch people is to publish a glossy magazine with their own name on it (think “O” by Oprah as model). Most of them do it once a year, or just one time only. Linda publishes a glossy monthly, LINDA Magazine, which has a large circulation because Linda is popular among Dutch women. The September issue is an ode to Africa, so it’s titled “The Safari-edition.” Here’s the trailer for the cover shoot:

Linda is a very busy woman, so she doesn’t have time to put on a zebra-print dress and fly to faraway Africa, so the best place else to be is Safaripark de Beekse Bergen about an hour and half long drive from Amsterdam, since they also have drooling giraffes. Fortunately, the sun is shining, so it’s “just like Africa” according to the “always smiling” Linda. Who will see the difference; A giraffe is a giraffe …

“Just a report from location ‘Safaripark’ won’t let us get away with it”, the editorial team from LINDA-magazine must have thought. So, let’s add some “typical African things” to the issue. LINDA is being read mostly by women so it should be something interesting for that audience. What do African women have what Dutch women don’t have? A delicious, big, round, BLACK BUTT!

Of course, it’s not only good things that come from Africa, so they have to include a story about women being raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Now if I had the chance to edit an Africa-edition of a magazine, I would come up with something totally different: I would not go for fake safari-pics; most Africans have never seen an elephant in the wild. I would love to show my readers Africa like it is. Africa is a continent with 54 countries, some of them individually the size of Western Europe. All of them have different cultures and habits. I would–because that’s my personal interest–make a report about the many different musical styles in Africa, which are so unknown here. I might tell something about opera in South Africa, or about that handsome singer from Rwanda …

LINDA is a magazine read by women, so some articles about clothing, make-up and the diversity of hairstyles in Africa could have been appropriate. Stories about African women who are successful in their lives, maybe an interview with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and her struggle for female rights in Liberia, and her election to be the first female president of an African country ever. Women with strange hobbies. That kind of things.

Instead, LINDA chose to inform Dutch women about “the big bottoms” of black women, and how most African men are attracted to that quality.

LINDA chose to write an article about women who had been raped in DR Congo. (Can you notice the improper connection between the two articles?)

LINDA chooses to present all of this with Linda de Mol on the cover of the magazine, sitting on the hood of a Jeep, between drooling giraffes and horny zebra’s in Safaripak de Beekse Bergen.

“It’s just like Africa!”

Make Ignorance History

I wouldn’t be surprised if the two white South African students—Mark Burman and Ross Bartlett—who donned blackface and dressed up as “Venus and Sarena Williams” at a party at the University of Stellenbosch were sitting around a fire last week to celebrate the Heritage Day holiday. They might have even called their friends doing their gap year in London to say they should come home, because South Africa is such a lekker place to be.

This is because Burman and Bartlett (and their friend, Michael Weaver, who posted the picture on Instagram) are probably not the kind of proud virulent racists who are not embarrassed to use social media to spout their offense. To find those, hang out on the Facebook page of say the Afrikaans ‘artist’ Sune Bridges’ (the daughter of the late balladeer Bless Bridges) that for some reason Facebook has not remove yet. Rather our Blackface students are so comfortably ensconced in a privileged bubble, that the notion that their blackface might be deeply offensive did not even occur to them. (It was telling from responses to the incident that many whites, including on social media, despite all the evidence to the contrary dating back to the middle of the 19th century when it was the most popular weekend entertainment for and by whites, or blackface’s continued use in Leon Schuster’s films, insist that blackface is not a South African tradition.)

The everyday lived experience of these white students at the University of Stellenbosch (an institution of which I am an alumnus and a former staff member) would in all likelihood not be very different from those at other higher education institutions which are still grappling with transformation – as a similar recent case of blackface students at the University of Pretoria, or the racist instances at the University of the Free State attest.

But perhaps even more shocking are the attempts by readers of online news sites where the story was posted to predictably try and pass this off us innocent student fun and criticism of their actions as exaggerated political correctness. The comments also show up the nature of the online public sphere in South Africa as skewed in terms of race and class. Online news sites and social media such as News24 (or comments on Mail & Guardian stories) remain spaces where South Africans feel comfortable and safe to express their prejudices. (BTW, journalists are not oblivious to this: How to moderate these vitriolic comments was the topic of a panel discussion at the South African National Editors’ Forum or Sanef meeting in Cape Town earlier this year, and is an issue that deserves continued scrutiny and debate.)

Sometimes you have to wonder when white South Africans are going to own up to history.

Perhaps more interesting is the question why students at one of the country’s elite universities would lack either the knowledge or the sensitivity to prevent them from engaging in such offensive behaviour. The two students in the picture probably belong to the ‘Born Free’ generation of people younger than the country’s democracy itself – if they don’t know about the history of racism in the country or the offensiveness of blackface, they either never paid attention in history class at school (or it most likely never taught) or they arrived at university with an inherited view of the world that has been so ingrained, so naturalised that acts like these won’t register as wrong on their moral compass. Their half-hearted apology indicates exactly this. “There was no racial undertone to the costume”, they protested on Facebook. What exactly a ‘racial undertone’ might be to a portrayal so racial that you had to use shoe polish (or whatever) to accomplish the ‘costume’ is difficult to fathom.

It is this inherited set of attitudes and beliefs – that the vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State, Jonathan Jansen, called Knowledge in the Blood that is the most insidious and therefore the most difficult to undo. (Some might say Jansen undermined his own work with his tendency to forgive racists at his own institution too easily.)

Individual acts of blackface such as the recent ones at the Universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch have to be condemned and the students should be held accountable beyond half-hearted ‘apologies’ only aimed at deflecting blame. But more important than bringing these individuals to book is to undo the worldviews, attitudes and ignorance that allow environments to exist within which these acts can occur in the first place. This is where a structural response becomes imperative: to think again about the political economy, the educational system and the social environment that perpetuate ignorance and individualises racism in order to sustain its own existence and avoiding demands for transformation.

It is in the interest of say, the media or the university, to deny that it has any stake in the socialisation process that brought the students to this point. The denial of racism in the public sphere has become a fine art in South Africa. Express shock, individualise the culprits and move on–in that way the structures remain intact. There will be those that will point to these incidents to say they are responses to white fears, political correctness, affirmative action, blahblahblah. Should you be tempted to engage in that discourse, please first check your facts.

The story of two grinning, smug, ignorant white students in blackface is therefore not only the story of yet another set of individuals that made asses of themselves, nor is it the story of the internet trolls that rush to their defence. It is also, and perhaps even more so a story about the lack of transformation in higher education, the continued asymmetry of power in the social domain and the political economy of social media that allow middle class, white voices to make the most noise in and about South Africa.

That old excuse of ‘We didn’t know’ (previously also heard as ‘Ons het nie geweet nie’ and ‘Wir haben es nicht gewuszt’) may be factually accurate, but it is never an ethical defence. Everywhere these words are heard, they are an indictment of structural inequalities, the domination of power over knowledge, and the failure of the moral imagination. The struggle of man against power, as Milan Kundera told us, is the struggle of memory against forgetting. It could be amended to read: The struggle of the present against the past is the struggle of understanding against not-knowing. Don’t say you didn’t know, or you didn’t mean it. That is besides the point. You were not born outside of history. Find out. Question. Change. And for those that do know, and do care – parents, teachers, lecturers, public intellectuals – the job is to keep making sure that ignorance isn’t bliss.

A museum in the middle of the street

Three towering moko jumbies stroll up behind the stage, as if on cue, dressed in suits of glow-in-the-dark yellow and electric blue. The sun is setting on the second and final day of ChaleWote, Accra’s annual street art festival, but energies show no sign of fading as Burkinabe band Siaka Diarra streams the “polyrhythmic madness” promised in the festival program, djembe gyrating slowly-quickly-slowly against unpredictable percussion.

The sudden appearance of men on stilts swings eyes and cameras away from the music, but the moko jumbies do not steal the show; only enhance it as they walk casually around the stage, past the food and drink stalls that line the perimeter of the concert space and out into the festivities beyond. At ChaleWote the time/space lines between different performances and exhibitions, and the larger space in which they are situated, constantly blur and stir into one pulsating continuity of creative expression.

Siaka Diarra

When the Takoradi Masquerade parades by a few minutes later, Siaka Diarra spontaneously swings their tempo towards the passing beat. As the show comes to an end, a cross-dressing dancer jumps on stage to drop moves that twerking can only hope to dream of becoming one day. This is not a festival for those who like experiences folded neatly, or art served with hors d’oeuvres via a stick up their buttocks. That said, it’s a festival for everyone.

ChaleWote takes place at the seaside site of the first Ga settlement in the Accra area – a spiritual mecca for several centuries, known as Ga Mashie until it became the capital of colonial invasion and was christened Jamestown. The festival has been organized every year since 2011 by the “subversively African” arts collective Accra[Dot]Alt. It brings together artists from Ghana and beyond, and thousands of merry makers, for a weekend of visual art/music/fashion/theatre/extreme sports/photography/spoken word/film that run down a long stretch of Jamestown’s John Atta-Mills High Street all the way to the shore.

Collaborative Palestine-themed mural.

“The Journey Beyond” – mural by Nima Muhinmanchi Art (NMA) collective. Photo credit: Walter Adama n Selorm Atikpoe.

A painful history rests beneath the festivities. “Under Jamestown is another town,” explains Mantse Aryeequaye, Accra[Dot]Alt co-founder. “There was a lot of resistance from the community to the slave trade, so they didn’t want people to see that they were transporting humans. There are houses with secret tunnels that lead all the way to the shore where they would put the slaves on a ship.”

Today, above ground, Jamestown is a mix of fishing neighborhoods, local enterprises and dilapidated colonial structures. Its history as a hub of oppression – but originally, of pre-colonial spiritual symbolism – lends itself to what Mantse describes as “a new expression, to reimagining the space”.

“Agbo Ni Aye: Enjoyment after death” by Serge Attukwei and GoLokal.

The theme of ChaleWote 2014 is Death: An Eternal Dream into Limitless Rebirth. “Why Death?” asks the festival program. “It surrounds us in Ghana. Funerals every weekend are important social affairs.” Festival-goers need not worry about missing out on the weekend funeral scene – Death is exquisitely represented at ChaleWote 2014. Collaborative artworks portray perceptions of death and rebirth. An eerie-beautiful procession of pallbearers carries fantasy coffins designed by Ghanaian sculptor Pa Joe. “Enjoyment after death”, a performance installation by Serge Attukwei and GoLokal, examines Ghanaian funeral culture and celebration of the dead.

Rebirth, too, is celebrated through the art, which seeks to “breathe life into new histories, possibilities, hopes and desires…. stories that are thrilling, passionate and charismatic”. It is this spirit – the spirit of born-again creativity rocking in beat with history – that makes ChaleWote what it is: free, in many senses of the word.

RollaWondaland skater.

At the lighthouse end of High Street, across from the main concert space and against a backdrop of art and poetry murals, Rolla Wondaland skaters create a runway. Dozens of people line up along the street to cheer gravity-defying champions, or whoosh a collective wince if one crashes into the ground. On the adjacent beach, Action Accra’s “Eco playground” showcases art made from recycled objects. Transforming discarded objects into objects of beauty is a recurrent theme in the festival: ranging from Maame Adjei’s “Crate-ive Seating” that repurposes obsolete crates into quirky benches, to a parade of brides clad in fashionably recycled plastic bags, designed by Ghanaian artist Fatric Bewong.

The post office building is draped with Ibrahim Mahama’s “Social Reality”, an installation made from coal sacks and wax print panels and described in the festival program as a work of “relational aesthetics…an extension of the body irrespective of its ‘true relationship’ with the site and its history”. I’m not sure what that means, but my god, it’s beautiful. “If only street art give orgasms…lol!” reads one Facebook comment. Well if it wants to learn, this might be a good place to start…

“Social Reality” by Ibrahim Mahama. Photo credit: Ghanyobi Mantey

Photo time

Throughout the day, Social Reality and other artworks double up as backdrops and props for a series of impromptu photo shoots. While dishing up orgasmic art, #ChaleWote2014 multitasks as unabashed host of the selfie Olympics. From supermodel poses with theatre troupes to tongues reaching for nipples in murals, there is a spontaneous energy around the art that encourages interaction on any level at all.

The children of Ga Mashie, inadvertent hosts of the festival, are no exceptions to this. Be it through curious stares or hawking goods, clambering over artwork or clinging to the bike of Wanlov the Kubolor, one pillar of the visionary Ghanaian hip-hop duo FoknBois, their presence is felt strongly. A new acquaintance warns me against getting too friendly: “these children who live in Jamestown are the most stubborn children in Ghana –” he stops and thinks about it – “in the world. Everyone knows about them, they are so stubborn!”

Kings of the world. Via Live 91.9FM

Wanlov the Kubolor doles out joyrides.

Their presence sometimes creates friction, some people shooing them away harshly when they get too excited. There are those who, Mantse comments, “don’t have the approach of minding the space because it belongs to other people, so if the kids are bothering them, they tell them to fuck off”. But the children of Ga Mashie, he points out, “are not regular kids. That comes from their surroundings – they are forced to be tough at a very early stage. So they come into a space and do what they want to do”.

In that sense, too, the kids at ChaleWote are right at home. Come into the space and do what you want to do seems to be one of the many unofficial mottos of the festival. “Artists who did not even answer the call use the space as a platform,” muses Mantse. “Things more or less follow the schedule, but what makes it even more exciting are these random performances that are not planned, are not part of the official program, just people coming in and expressing themselves. As we grow, we will need to find creative ways of accommodating that, because it’s important – to make space for schedules, but also for spontaneous things to happen. That’s what helps to create this really intense energy that the festival has. It’s just people showing up and creating.”

Bernard Akoi-Jackson

Artists and passers-by make street graffiti.

Outside Bible House, the YoYo Tinz hip hop booth serves gospel from 10 in the morning, DJs giving way to a range of live performances as the day progresses. Graffiti artists – and anyone who cares to join in – paint the adjoining street. Flamenco dancing and motorbike stunts, acrobatics and theatre, capoeira and street boxing, are among the acts popping up at various times and spaces across the festival. A mini film festival with colorful fabric for walls is constructed in the middle of a compound. There, in my search for yet another installation, I stumble upon a crumbling but stubborn staircase, which ambles down to a serene nook by the sea. Blissfully lost, I sit still for a while.

ChaleWote is best played by ear. When I surrender and stop studying the schedule and map like some kind of neurotic Swiss navigator, it’s a pleasant confusion that ensues. Why are these incredibly dapper gentlemen walking past me as though on an invisible catwalk, with boom boxes under their arms? Is that chocolate sitting on the outstretched palms of that gold-painted man? To where are the writers from the poetry workshop I visited earlier marching in fluid synchronicity? (“We’re performing our poems at all the stages, come! You were at the workshop, aren’t you a writer? Don’t you want to read something?”)

Too cool for school in the Afro District. Photo credit: Kwaku Wilson & Accra[Dot]Alt

Several years ago, recalls Mantse, “the creative community in Ghana was mostly concentrated in hotels, museums, embassies – that’s where you found art. It was all very elitist, very exclusive…it does nothing for people to have a few in one small space who are supposed to represent everyone else. That’s why ChaleWote is important – it’s public, it’s free, you’re creating a museum in the middle of the street, and everyone can take part.”

It also creates employment, as the residents of Jamestown – who are extensively involved in ChaleWote’s operations and performances – benefit from the festival and from the spike in tourism that it has generated. “This is one of the ways we can create opportunities, especially at a time when Ghana went from being an ‘Africa Rising’ star to getting an IMF bailout,” says Mantse. “The government doesn’t support artists, so if we want a thriving creative community it’s up to us to build structures for that. And because of the DIY nature of the festival, it also has this DIY energy around it – people think of amazing stuff, it encourages them to create outside their comfort zones.”

Brides dressed by Fabric Bewong in recycled plastic bags.

The practical organization of ChaleWote also lives outside the conventional comfort zone. “I doff my hat to Accra[Dot]Alt for birthing such an enthralling event”, says Eugene Owusu, a self-proclaimed “arts freak” whom I meet at the festival. If only it was well supported by the government of Ghana and corporate organizations, he adds, “ChaleWote would become the world’s number one festival that all and sundry would look forward to every year”. Currently, ChaleWote is mostly funded out of pocket by Accra[Dot]Alt, with contributions in kind from various institutions. Corporate sponsorship is conspicuous in its absence – at least, its physical absence. Outside the small stalls set up by food and fashion vendors, no branding is visible anywhere.

But cyberspace is an open playground. So when sponsorship talks between Accra[Dot]Alt and Guinness come to an unceremonious end, the international beer brand still pushes its #MadeOfBlack online ad campaign on the back of ChaleWote, by contracting prominent Ghanaian bloggers to attach the hashtag to their pics and updates of the festival. I believe the official legal term for this is “swag-cyberjackery”– the arrogance with which corporate money appropriates community creativity – but still, the show must go on.

Esi Yinka Graves dances Flamenco.

And on it goes, and on. In the courtyard of Brazil House (which has a history of Brazil’s African slave industry mounted on the walls) Bright Backwerh presents “Immaculate con-tra-ception/Race 11/Untitled”: an installation of wooden silhouettes and news clippings that tell stories of racism in football and life. Around the corner, Sabolai Radio – the music-centered sister festival of ChaleWote – gives us a taste of things to come in their upcoming festival (19 – 21 December 2014). Across the road, Pretty Period, a photography exhibition made of portraits of festival-goers, celebrates the beauty of dark-skinned women. The fashion market is Satan to my wallet, the food market Lucifer to my belly, both in the most heavenly of ways.

Strangers become friends and conversations take turns from frivolous to political to opportunistic.

“How much did you pay for that? [laughter] Hehhh, chale tomorrow you will cry! I’ll take you somewhere you pay just 10 cedis for the same thing!”

“Let me tell you where Ebola came from – whites made it in a lab. Think about it…”

“Are you on Facebook? Write your name here so I can tag you in my photos. Can I come visit you in Rwanda?”

Bicycle stunts by the BMX Flatland boys 

As evening falls, the festival is supposed to be winding up but the crowd only gets thicker. I am slightly overwhelmed by everything I’ve absorbed in the past 8 hours, which is still not everything the festival had to offer, and curiosity drives me up the street for one final lap. The official events are winding down and melting into several parties clustered on different corners, each blasting their choice of music to an animated crowd. This is where tehning up comes to tehn up, and by the time I tehn back, I have experienced such an acute overdose of good times that I have to go home immediately.

Yes, home. Abruptly like that. Because there’s only so much a woman can take before exploding into infinite shards of creative bliss. So I can’t say how ChaleWote2014 ended, but my sources tell me they jammed past the witching hour, and as for me, I can tell you this: start saving if you can, and planning where you can. Because if you miss #ChaleWote2015, hehhh, chale. You will cry!

Bass (photo credit unknown)

 Good times

 

Hipster’s Don’t Dance’s Top 5 World Carnival Tunes for September 2014

The second edition of the Hipster’s Don’t Dance monthly chart on Africa is a Country is here! Check it below, and be sure to visit the HDD blog regularly for all their great up-to-the-timeness out of London.

Wizkid – In My Bed

Last time we did a chart we bemoaned the fact that Wizkid wasn’t releasing his 2nd Lp, stashing it away like it was Detox. Then he went ahead and dropped it in the middle of the night ala Beyonce (he says it was in fact leaked). It’s a great effort and this one sees his channeling South Africa more than his recent efforts.

Burna Boy – Check and Balance

I really hope Burna Boy and his record label patch things up because part of his appeal was Leriq’s beats. This weak Bam Bam riddim retread is ok and keeps his dancehall fans happy but at the end of the day its just not the same.

Gaia Beat – Kimpelequecé (feat Fiuk Tutuka)

Can everything be produced by Angolan Gaia Beat? Commercials, ringtones, alerts on public transport? This track from earlier in the year features some incredible kuduro dancing as well.

Kcee – Ogaranya ft. Davido

Kcee and Davido team up for Ogaranya and the video is one of the most vibrant afropop videos out at the moment. It sees the pair stunting in their best trad attire complete with Nigerian coral. Keep your eyes peeled for the shot with the doves!

Wande Coal x Baby Hello

Wande Cole’s Baby Hello video sees Yemi Alade as the video girl in what looks to us like Naija’s 2014 take on Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl video.Rotate is still getting a lot of love from us and this one is following in its footsteps.

Mos Def/Yasiin Bey: ‘I don’t think that there’s necessarily one sound of Africa’

Mos Def, now living in Cape Town and collaborating with Petite Noir, talking to Dazed Digital.

I don’t think that there’s necessarily one sound of Africa. Consider the  and The Brother Moves On, those that are into Marimba music and the whole devotional gospel sound like St Vincent and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. You’ll find similarities between Congolese music and Senegalese music. There are musical principles and approaches that you’ll find applied in different ways throughout the continent. I find South Africa to be specifically diverse – I mean Dirty Paraffin and Blk Jks are worlds apart in terms of coming from the same sort of place. The sound is developing and maturing as much as the country is. That’s one of the more appealing aspects to life here, to our social reality. Everything is still in a stage of development; nothing is quite set in stone in a society that is redeveloping and re-establishing itself. There’s a lot of room for positive growth. There are challenges too but I’m much more encouraged than I am pessimistic when I think about life in Africa. I think its future is much brighter than its past.

Source.

Image: Ignatius Mokone