Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 426

The Rediscovery of William Onyeabor

Recently the curatorial platform Nowness posted a short video directed by musician and filmmaker Brian Bainbridge and Camille Wasserman that features the quirky yet graceful performance of the New York Roller Dancers as they skate to the music of recently “re-discovered” musician William Onyeabor:

The video represents one of the more creative and compelling appropriations of Onyeabor’s singular musical style to date. In fact, since late last year when Luaka Bop, a New York record label owned by David Byrne, released the reissue album ‘Who Is William Onyeabor’, it has seemed that the story of Oyneabor was, for most of the media, the story of the search for a “mythic” outlier on the landscape of Nigerian popular music.

Reviewers, bloggers and journalists have pointed to the parallels between reissue specialist Eric Welles’s search for Onyeabor and Oscar-winning documentary ‘Searching for Sugar Man‘ which narrates the quest by South African fans to find the 1970s Detroit musician Rodriguez. (That film, btw, left out many convenient facts.) Out of the buzz emerges an inventory of the more intriguing turns in Onyeabor’s life: he purportedly studied film in the Soviet Union, traveled to Sweden to procure his sound recording equipment, singlehandedly recorded and pressed eight albums before he dramatically renounced pop music and dedicated himself to evangelical charismatic Christianity. Onyeabor chose to live out his days as a successful businessman in Enugu, what most commentators seem to view as a life of obscurity.

As The Guardian article on the matter makes evident, for better or worse, this sort of recuperation, rediscovery, reissue phenomenon is a cultural practice in its own right. But as with postmodernist cultural recycling on a whole, the musician, style or commodity returns largely shorn of its historical significance.

In focusing on the rediscovery of an eccentric pop music personality, the original Nigerian audience and the terrain of popular music at that time fall into the background, or disappear altogether. In the case of Onyeabor, the apprehensiveness with which commentators have acknowledged the musicians embrace of evangelical Christianity stands out. And perhaps they should be pardoned, since how would an arts columnist explain to a non-African audience Onyeabor’s devotion to the ministry of T.B. Joshua? And is that an explanation anyone really wants? But the fact that scores of popular musicians in Nigeria, including Ebenezer Obey, Orlando Owoh, and Sunny Ade, have turned away from popular culture and toward the sphere of evangelical Christian music is an undeniable and telling change, a reflection of a larger shifting outlook on life, ephemera, and success.

The rediscovery of Fela Anikulapo Kuti has worked in much the same way. To begin with, Fela has never needed to be rediscovered within Nigeria. His birthday remains the occasion for an annual music festival called “Felabration” at which musicians from across West Africa draw enormous crowds to the New Afrikan Shrine in Ikeja, Lagos. Within Nigeria’s media environment, Fela’s presence remains unabatedly strong and controversial. The social meaning of his music is not finished or closed. When a DJ plays “Shuffering and Shmiling” at a Lagos bar or nightclub the lyrics have a vexing effect on audiences: “Suffer suffer for world [chorus: "Amen"] / Enjoy for Heaven ["Amen"] / Christians go dey yab / ‘Inspiritus hevinus’ / Muslims go dey call / ‘Allahu Akbar.’” You can see the dance floor empty of those made uncomfortable by the song’s unabashed critique of Christianity and Islam. At the same time, those who remain on the dance floor seem to belt out the chorus’s ironic “Amen” even louder. The continued relevance or irrelevance of a musical figure like Fela to an African audience doesn’t factor into that figure’s “rediscovery” outside the continent.

As the rumor surrounding Onyeabor indicate, he remains largely unknown to audiences on the continent and abroad. But this doesn’t mean that his music is unavailable in Nigerian marketplaces. I was astounded to learn that his original albums sell for as much as ₤600. Walking home one night, I heard Onyeabor’s distinctive music playing from the music and video vendor in my temporary neighborhood in Lagos. I was able to purchase a video CD of Onyeabor’s music set to what seemed to me like several early amateur music videos. The VCD cost two hundred naira, or a little more than a dollar. I suppose there is something to be said about the advantages of pirate media markets. If he is available to local audiences, why isn’t Onyeabor a paragon of hip in Nigeria today?

I had an American friend Facebook me with a link to Onyeabor and a comment to the effect that they really liked him and wanted to know more. I sent back a link of WizKid and Olamide, explaining that although Onyeabor is exciting and intriguing music, these are the artists that Nigeria finds unassailably cool right now. They responded that they could not stomach the auto-tuning and objected that the videos recapitulated the shallow consumerism of American pop music today. I agree, and yet it would be quite the coup if tastemakers like Nowness could post a video for Olamide’s “Duro soke.”

The day South African news media ate crow

South Africa’s official opposition the Democratic Alliance (DA) wasn’t the only one left exposed and scrambling to save face when Agang leader Mamphela Ramphele decided to withdraw from a proposed deal that would have seen her pack up her new, barely-opened-yet-already-flagging political enterprise to throw in her lot with and become the ‘presidential candidate’ of the larger party.

Many South African journalists and publications, too, were left eating crow, because some had followed Ramphele into the DA while others, who were already in the DA’s camp, welcomed her with open arms, in the same way party members did.

On Sunday night, hardly a week after the hastily put-together deal was announced amid much fanfare as “news of national importance” and a “game changer” and sealed with a kiss, the whole thing was called off. That same night, DA leader Helen Zille mounted a scurrilous attack on Ramphele, her supposed personal friend who she’s known since the 1980s. In Zille’s mind, Ramphele went within the span of five days from being “a principled, fiercely determined person” to someone who “has demonstrated – once and for all – that she cannot be trusted to see any project through to its conclusion.” The attacks on Ramphele became more feverish as senior party leaders and party members took to social media to take back the previous week’s declarations of love for their now former ‘presidential candidate’. This while Zille on Monday did the radio and TV talk show circuit, where she repeated the previous day’s venomous remarks.

To be clear, for the DA, the deal by Zille’s own admission was primarily about having a black face with ‘Struggle credentials’ lead the party, which, beneath the surface, would remain unchanged. She admitted in an interview on Monday night that she believes–rather patronisingly and based on the results of a questionable social media survey–that black voters think her party will bring back apartheid, which is why she’s worked frenetically to have Ramphele as her party’s black face. In the business world in South Africa, such a deal might have been called BEE fronting, a practice that last week became a criminal offence carrying a possible 10-year prison sentence.

So, yes, Zille’s attacks were about saving her own skin after she rode roughshod over the due process her party claims to value so much just to give the party a black face. But what excuse do South African news publications and journalists have for parroting party positions?

Ignoring that the ANC and its partners had already begun their campaign to call the deal “window dressing” and that the DA itself was making their choice of Ramphele about race, Stephen Grootes, Talk Radio 702 host and Daily Maverick columnist, wrote an analysis last week in which he said the deal would make race less important in politics. There were other clues, too, that it would do no such thing. For example, the DA’s parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko is black, which has done nothing to diminish the importance of race or the prevalence of racial rhetoric in this country’s politics. Why would Grootes ignore these details in favor of saying just about verbatim what Zille had said the previous day?

And after the deal was called off, Grootes, like Zille, went after Ramphele, writing a rather scornful column where he decried Ramphele’s ego and the “sort of crap” that comes with it.

In a soaring editorial on the day after the initial announcement, Business Day declared that the opposition had a brave new face.

“It is truly amazing,” the editorial crowed, “that a political landscape that seemed so moribund a matter of months ago, trapped in the structures, mind-sets and prejudices of the past despite the democratic revolution that turned South Africa on its head in 1994, is now so full of potential and open to constructive change.”

Presumably, now that the deal is off, the political landscape is once again moribund, and with it the quality of political commentary.

Now a shadow of the thoughtful, progressive publication it once was, the Mail & Guardian last week repeated the simplistic idea that a black leader of Ramphele’s stature would sure up Zille’s efforts to make the DA more acceptable to black voters. Never mind that the party’s actual policies, in a country where black people are represented in the highest proportions among the poor and in the lower quintiles of income and wealth, attempt to be pro-poor and pro-equality by being pro-business. No, the easiest thing to assume is that black voters, for whatever reason, do not know that such a position is inherently contradictory unlikely to resolve itself in their favour. Instead, this simplistic story says black people want to vote for someone who looks like them.

And, fighting back the ANC’s claims that Zille bringing Ramphele into the DA was a case of “rent-a-black”, the Mail & Guardian’s politics editor Rapule Tabane said the deal was not entirely a charade and that it lays the groundwork for a time when the “race card”–whatever that is–cannot be deployed against the DA.

As for the international publications, some either reported on the deal from afar while others repeated many of the same tired ideas from the same tired analysts about race, this country’s politics and what it will take to make it less of a factor at the polls. The Guardian’s David Smith reported from Johannesburg, and to his credit solicited sufficiently skeptical comments from Nomboniso Gasa, radio host Eusebius McKaizer (“If they were confident, why would they need to court the leader of another party?”) and a few others. Meanwhile, the FT’s Andrew England also reported from Johannesburg, but got William Gumede to go on about how this could be the start of something good. But probably the worst offender was the New York Times. Yes, you, New York Times, currently reporting on South Africa from London and New York and repeating DA talking points. (The outgoing correspondent Lydia Polgreen explained on Twitter that the new correspondent hasn’t arrived yet.)

Much of this was before the deal was called off–so one only wonders what position the papers and analysts will take now. Whatever it is, I, for one, hope they will make attempts at some deeper analysis on race and politics, or face another blue Monday, where there’s nothing to eat but your own overblown words.

Prince Blackwater of China

The paroxysmal ethics of private military ventures are in the news again after The Wall Street Journal’s recent “Saturday Interview” with Erik Prince. He is now “chairman of Frontier Services Group, an Africa-focused security and logistics company with intimate ties to China’s largest state-owned conglomerate, Citic Group.” If you read the interview, then you know Prince is a savvy businessman, because he is a savvy like that. Why? Chinese trade surpassed American trade in Africa back in 2009. And, as WSJ’s David Feith is quick to point out, China-Africa trade could reach $385 billion by 2015.

It also comes with a video.

It is genuinely surprising that Prince would admit his motive for starting a business is to make money. Blackwater’s ex-CEO became a celebrity using liberal media platforms for his own unrevealing confessionals, self-improvement segments, and philanthropic forays into world affairs. Remember when he told Charlie Rose that the world needs private military contractors to prevent another genocide in Rwanda?

Of course he’s not the only one to try this angle: We started the #Bullshit Files to document  this kind of thing (the link is to the the actions of journalist-cum-adventurer Robert Young Pelton). And I’ve blogged here on the actions of Eeben Barlow, the former Apartheid soldier turned private military contractor.

Ironically, Feith seems concerned that Prince will start entrenching the world’s most oppressive governments now that he’s working with Beijing. There’s a long list of repressive regimes the US and its allies support because they are good for trade. As for private contractors, it is useful to recall Eeben Barlow’s logic:

If a government anywhere in the world is recognised as “the government”, regardless of where they are or what political system they adhere to, are they then actually not legit? After all, the USA recognised all the governments that contracted us as the legitimate governments of those countries – and note – they contracted us to help them. We didn’t invade them – and we still remain friends years after we left. But are you also telling me that these governments are therefore, in your opinion, not legitimate?

Watch: Short documentary on Lagos performance artist Jelili Atiku

From the perspective of one who appreciates Nigerian art, it seems as if a disconnect persists between those artists, almost exclusively painters and sculptors, who work in a mimetic realist representational mode and cater directly to wealthy local patrons, and other artists who press well beyond the limits of conventional art. The commonsensical view assumes that performance, sound, installation and new media artists inhabit an elite space aligned more with a “global” or “diasporic” art world, and that their creations alienate or come off poorly with a popular Nigerian audience by virtue of being too conceptual or just out of touch. Nothing could be farther from the truth and Jelili Atiku, the Lagos performance artist, puts the lie to that misperception in a dramatic and very significant way.

A new video (below) by Danish filmmakers Lotte Løvholm, Nanna Nielsen & Karen Andersen documents one of Atiku’s recent performances in the Lagos neighborhood of Ejigbo. It is significant that Atiku carries out his performance in the community in which he lives. Far from the more glamorous but stultified centers of artistic activity in Lagos (Victoria Island and Ikoyi), Atiku brings to life a discussion of violence, crisis, national consciousness and humanity in the streets of Lagos.

Cape Town Gangster Films

In both print and film Cape Flats gangsta-chic is all the vogue now, popping up in publications and film festivals worldwide. Much of it makes spurious claims to authenticity and the inside track to the ‘great coloured psychosis of alienation and street gang warfare amongst the urban working class youth of the Flats.’ So in virtually one generation, ‘Cape coloured’ has gone from the caricature of funny, self-deprecating, work-shy, hedonists with tendency towards having cross-dressing moffies in their families and Trotskyist politics in their uncles (they were usually all salt-of-the earth types and street intellectuals)–and, of course, don’t forget their famous toothless grin–to the most feared and terrifying street gangsters and vigilante formations. But occasionally there are films that get it right by providing a fresh look at what’s going down in Cape Town.

Two of the better film ventures exploring the complexities of gang culture on the Cape Flats are ”The Devil’s Lair” and “Incarcerated Knowledge.” Both were screened last year as part of the Tri Continental Film Festival. Previous cinematic encounters with the subject usually skirted between the voyeuristic doom and gloom and the downright patronising, with no new light shed on the subject. They all started off as Hunter S. Thompson but always end up as Truman Capote.

In the Devil’s Liar we meet Braaim from Mitchells Plain, an ageing gangster, drug dealer and leader of The Nice Time Kids, one of the most notorious gang formations spawned on the Flats.

Rejected by his community he is trying to carve a life for himself out of the ravishes of his past. In what could have been just another ‘look how fucked up they all are’ kinda gangland movie excursion is instead a meditation on the nature of freedom, choices and the leg irons that bind us from birth.

What makes it so powerful is the harrowing journey from the deep, dark drug infested coves to the claustrophobia of the streets of no hope that is Tafelsig. (It has a wealthy namesake, Table View, on the Atlantic seaboard side of the city known for laidback joggers and relaxing beach strolls.)

Amidst all of this, Briaam expresses his hopes and plans to detach himself from his present life; although aware that he has passed his sell-by-date and influence, the pressures are immense.

In the film by Dylan Valley, we follow the exploits of Peter – a young offender jailed for the murder of his step-dad who has survived Pollsmoor and denounced his allegiance to the powerful 28s.

With the prison experience behind him, Peter works hard to shake off his past and reintegrate with the community. Music is his passion and his road to renewal and a different life, and he is eager to transform his ghetto victimhood to become a hip-hop performer. The movie charts Peter’s first day of release and gives us a look into the life of a man who has been given a second shot at life. Undaunted, Peter faces the challenges his ex-con status presents, immerses himself in music and creates a cathartic, triumphant refrain to describe the apparent chaos that comes with breaking habits and cycles. Will he survive and redeem himself in the eyes of his community? The life of music holds possibilities for salvation and redemption.

Both films offer surprising insights that will leave us questioning our preconceptions of the complex relationship between violence, poverty, honour, love and free choice. It also goes beyond the usual one-dimensional stereotype – and provides a multi-layered engagement that humanises the subject in dehumanising and situations. If you wish to gain some insight into the turmoil of gangland Cape Town, it’s worth starting here.

* This is an edited version of a post that first appeared in Amandla! Magazine.

The Komla Dumor I knew

Far/Near: Disclaimer: A friend who knew I was once a broadcast journalist with Joy FM recently asked me whether I had any pictures with the late Komla Dumor (KD). My response was “unfortunately not, and I am not going to Photoshop one either,” as I do not want to be called a Fast Pretender – a term reserved for friends of Shabba Ranks and Maxi Priest on House Call. This is to say I did not get the chance to bond with KD like say Akwasi Sarpong or Stan Dogbe, mostly because Komla Dumor was “always leaving when I was coming.” What I am trying to say is that I did know the man, but not intimately. However, at the least, he was my friend on Facebook–I hope that counts. Disclaimers aside, I am writing this piece because when Komla recently interviewed the Mandela family, I wanted to send him a note telling him how proud and inspired I was because of his work. I never did send that note, it will not haunt me, but knowing what I know now, I regret not sending him my message.

Far: University of Ghana

I entered the University of Ghana in 1998 as a freshman about the same time that Komla was making his exit. Nonetheless, on campus he remained a legend, and a reality on radio, as well as the lecture hall.

One of the legends I came to hear about Komla at Legon epitomizes who he was as a public “intellectual.” It had to do with one of my mentor’s at Radio Universe, Sankara (Francis Ankrah). Apparently, Sankara as host of one of the several beauty pageants held on campus, used a phrase that the student audience was unfamiliar with. Thinking that Sankara had “gbaa” that is, had incorrectly used the phrase out of context, they proceeded to boo and laugh at him. Komla was among a few other students who were well aware that Sankara was right in his use of the said phrase. Komla, as the story goes, spearheaded the effort to make photocopies of said phrase from the English Dictionary and paste them all over campus. The goal? To educate and reassert Sankara’s dexterous use of the phrase.

Apart from this incident, Komla’s exploits reached me in the lecture hall. Professor Addo-Fenin, arguably one of the best “teachers” to ever teach me at Legon, used to wax lyrical to us about Komla’s diction, and clarity of presentation. It was not as if we did not know Komla was the “ish” on radio, but praise from Addo-Fenin was not to be taken lightly. The man was no joke himself.

Komla was also present on campus amidst the cacophony of booming sound systems across campus. We had to endure the blaring sounds of music from the latest machines from the U.K. or the U.S. Alternatively we settled for least expensive Chinese imported mobile devices we could carry along with us, while listening to our choice of frequency modulation (FM) stations. At Legon Hall, in room M16, our choice was mostly Joy FM, but on other occasions switched to Vibe FM. We were either listening to Kwaku Sintim-Misa’s talk show or to Bushke, churning out Hip-Hop sounds. My room mates: Randy, Collins, Wizzy, Apot, Rufus and others were also forced to listen to Radio Universe, where I began my career as a broadcast journalist. I suffered them to listen to me Deejay Night Universe and Reggae and Rhymes, read the news (NOT PRIMETIME) and announcements, and eventually present the sports show on Saturday’s. We listened to radio on Wizzy’s sound system, and later through my creative use of my father’s old sound system we put the room and the block on blast. It was at these times that, as my good friend Emmanuel Asiedu-Acquah puts it, Komla became “present and large in our consciousness. When [we] try to remember what radio was like in the 1990s, it is his voice and image that dominate [our] my minds.” We listened to Komla for his clarity of ideas, his presentation, his gifted interviewing skills, and his wittiness. Jokes like “whatsaaaaaaap,” his reference to Hausa Koko as “Irish Cream” and his repartees with Sony Decker and later Stan Dogbe during News File, filled our consciousness. And we kept going to Komla again and again for second bites of his “cherry”. He was a rare combination of intelligence, candor, funny, street smarts, and gift of garb.

Near: Multimedia/Joy FM

In 2002, I was on the verge of completing my national service with Radio Universe, when all-in-one-day I received calls from my pal Frederick Avornyo, my mentor Sankara, Joy FM newsroom editor Kofi Owusu, as well as the Human Resource Manager for Multimedia. They were all calling to see my availability to present alongside my verbose friend Kojo Frempong, a. k. a “Shakes” for Shakespeare. I have fond memories of my time at Joy FM, and in a newsroom that included Sony Decker, Akwasi Sarpong, Ato Kwamena Dadzie, Kofi Owusu, Matilda Asante, Stan Dogbe, Eva Okyere and a tall list of presenters.

Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for Komla, during this period he was coming to the end of his first stint with Joy FM. He was getting ready to begin graduate studies at Harvard University. But I did get to meet him, and to present with him on the Joy Morning Show for a number of weeks before he finally left.

Some of my memories of him include him telling Kojo and I about the history of why and how Ivies were planted on Ivy League campuses, as well as his fascination with pen-drives. He was thrilled with how useful the latter could be for investigative journalism. I also recall that at a lunch held in his honor, when he came back from Harvard after a semester, he shared many stories about his adventures with course mates at Harvard.

A year after Komla left for Harvard, I also left for Michigan State University (MSU), and from there both of us went on to pursue our respective careers. Komla, it’s a privilege to have been on the Super Morning Show with you. Arguably Ghana has lost the best-broadcast journalist (Radio and TV.) in the last two decades or so.

Komla Yaawo Ojogban, Damrifa Due, Rest in Peace.

New Exhibition at LACMA Devoted to The Beautiful Game’s Global Significance

Today the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Fútbol: The Beautiful Game opens to the public. An exhibition curated by Franklin Sirmans, it is devoted to football’s global position as a “common human experience shared by spectators from many cultures,” and features contemporary and classic contributions of some 32 artists ruminating on the sport’s political, social, and economic significance.

Just inside the exhibition gallery is a fantastic and chaotic pitch, work by celebrated Brazilian artist Nelson Leirner. In Leirner’s “Maracaña” (2003), figurines of Buddha, white knights, dwarves, and cigar store ‘natives’ are the audience of a match between squads of Incredible Hulks and red power rangers – a fitting fan base for what I imagined as an Arsenal v. Saint-Étienne FIFA 14 fantasy match. Saint-Étienne as Hulk? Formidable (I still love you, Wenger).

Nelson Leirner, “Maracaña,” 2003 | Photo: Drew Tewksbury

The immensity of the football stadium is captured by Andreas Gursky’s multiple plate shot of Amsterdam’s EM Arena. The proportions Gursky captures are breathtaking – we’ve watched the sport on televisions, from the stands, and even while on the pitch, but really glimpsing how little space each player occupies compared to the size of the field is a worthwhile perspective change. Likewise, photographs from Lyle Ashton Harris’ Italia series (2001) muses on masculinity and the predominantly male bodies (“ragazzi del calcio”) in contact – and conflict – at Italy’s league football matches.

Undergirding the devotion and love of the game, of course, is the incredible commodification of football’s most basic elements. Africa (the country) is largely represented by Ghana’s George Afedzi Hughes, who joins several other artists in addressing the economic power, and often violence, endemic to the sport. In “Masked Goalkeeper,” from his Layers project, the goalie’s internal organs reveal the meat – and money – that the bodies of footballers are composed of and produce. Viewers are reminded that these bodies are also products, and products that may go bad at any moment. Additionally, “Made in the Colonies” (2008-11) and “Parallel” (2009-11) – the latter an Adidas cleat above the silhouette of a sniper rifle – speak to the function of football in (post)colonial nations as a potentially reconciliatory – though never quite – practice. In a more irreverent take on soccer commodity, Morocco’s Hassan Hajjaj (we’ve covered him on AIAC before) frames an image of many stylishly clad feet balanced atop a football with brightly coloured Arabic letter tiles.

By far the greatest strength of the exhibition, however, is the inclusion of Los Angeles based artists, in no small part due to the collaborative efforts of East Los Angeles’ non-profit visual arts center, Self-Help Graphics & Art. SHG’s Executive Director Evonne Gallardo commissioned prints from artists Carolyn Castaño, Amitis Motevalli, Ana Serrano, Nery Gabriel Lemus, and Dewey Tafoya for the exhibition. Iranian-American artist Amitis Motevalli’s serigraph “Gooooooooal!” is unapologetically mind-bending: a group of children play football while the expulsion from the foregrounded figure’s rocket launcher explodes behind them.

Amitis Motevalli and her serigraph, “Gooooooooal!,” 2013 | Photo: Drew Tewksbury

The gallery space also boasts Andy Warhol and Kehinde Wiley’s portraits of Pelé (1978) and Samuel Eto’o (2010), respectively, amongst its many other pieces. These fan favourites, as it were, unwittingly emphasize a striking contextual silence in the exhibition’s written self-realisation. At the admittedly lovely opening reception, Brazilian music and dance was performed for a captive audience of art-goers. The vibe was celebratory, this year’s World Cup clearly centered at the reception, if not in the exhibition as a whole. However, given the amount of artwork in the show speaking to the often violent, racialized and gendered aspects of football and football culture, it was disconcerting not to see a more explicit statement on football as a beautiful game, as well as a damned one.

Paul Pfeiffer, “Caryatid (Red, Yellow, Blue),” 2008 | Photo: Drew Tewksbury

Paul Pfeiffer’s 2008 iteration of “Caryatid” is particularly relevant to this relative obfuscation. On three television screens, injuries sustained on the pitch are played on a loop in slow motion. It’s a sobering insight into the precarious nature of the game and the consumption of the bodies tasked with carrying it out. Far from the loving adoration of Manchester United in three photo-based pieces created by L.A.-based artist Chris Beas, Pfeiffer’s video display joins Carolyn Castaño’s portrait of the late Colombian defender Andrés Escobar in highlighting the violence surrounding the sport, on and off the pitch.

For those unable to view the exhibition, housed on the 3rd floor of the Broad Contemporary building at LACMA until 20 July of this year, a treat: Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon’s “Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait” (2006) is one of the two massive video installations in the show and can be viewed here and below for the time being. It is truly a piece for fans of the sport. At once minimalist and expansive (it was filmed with 17 cameras during a perfectly typical La Liga match in 2005), the film immerses its audience in Zizou’s movements and creativity, his stoic focus on the ball even when it is out of his possession.

Joga bonito, as our Brazilian friends declared long before Nike put a price tag on the phrase: being a football fan in Los Angeles has garnered new charm through this exhibition.

All photos are courtesy of KCET Artbound Managing Editor and Producer Drew Tewksbury. For more photos from the exhibition, please visit Tewksbury’s article here.

Weekend Music Break 67

We kick off this weekend’s music break with an artist who has been away from the scene for a while: Cape Verdean rapper Vieira Nkosi. This week he uploaded a short freestyle video (in Dutch) entitled “I Am Legend”. Vieira was forced to take it slow due to an illness, but judging by this video, he’s doing much better, and his new album “Kralienge State of Mind” is finished, he says. We’re happy he’s back.

There’s never a shortcoming of songs from Naija. Burna Boy released his video for “Na So E Suppose Be”:

South Londoner Kwabs, originally from Ghana, is on about everybody’s ‘who to watch in 2014′ list, which is not so surprising when you listen to him. This track “Wrong or Right” will be featured on his EP that’s coming out this weekend.

DRC’s Alicious Theluji had a smash hit in 2012 with her single “Mpita Njia” together with Ugandan singer Juliana Kanyomozi. But she is fully capable of doing it on her own as she proves on her zouk track “Posa ya Bolingo”:

We’re still puzzled what the white horse is doing in Guinean Takana Zion’s video. But it doesn’t matter; we dig his style and this tune:

We’re expecting a lot from Zimbabwean-Dutch singer Rina Mushonga in the near future. Her highly anticipated first album is supposed to come out in February. “Eastern Highlands,” from her self-titled EP she released last year, is promised to be an indicator of what we can expect. We’re counting the days:

An inspirational song from Kenyan rapper Octopizzo, featuring his little daughter Tracy singing the chorus on “Blackstar”:

Three years ago Kenya’s Just a Band shot a video for their single “S.W.E.E.T”. At the time they weren’t happy with the result so they left if for what it was. They seem to have changed their mind, and showed the world what they initially rejected, so you can judge yourself:

Norwegian-South African Nosizwe is no stranger to the music industry. Her brother Tshawe had a smash hit a few years ago with the track “Beggin” as part of the duo Madcon. Nosizwe has taken a different, more alternative route… Her track “The Beat” proves that the musical talent really runs in the family.

To end: this week, Cape Verde, and the world, lost piano legend Epifânia de Freitas Silva Ramos Évora, also known as Dona Tututa. She died at the beautiful age of 95. We’d like to pay homage to her with her performance recorded in 2009 at the occasion of her 90th birthday. R.I.P.

The Washington Post predicts a year full of coups in Africa

The Washington Post’s foreign affairs blogger Max Fisher (about whose infatuation with coloured maps we blogged before here and here) posted an entry earlier this week entitled: ‘A worrying map of countries most likely to have a coup in 2014′. It is based on the work of political scientist Jay Ulfelder. The post includes a coloured map of the globe with countries coloured from light yellow to dark brown. And as you might guess, the darker the country, the more likely it will see a violent overthrow of the government some time this year.

In Ulfelder’s study he takes a number of variables, such as the political stability and infant mortality rate. But he also took into account variables like how long a country’s been independent or who the last colonizer was. It’s not very clear how and why these could have an effect on the result, but according to Ulfelder’s blog these variables don’t necessarily have to have a significant effect on the risk of a coup.

This being Max Fisher, it’s not the first time he has had fun with maps and with Ulfelder’s research. Last year they did exactly the same thing, only then the headline read: ‘The countries most at risk for a coup in 2013.” At the time, Fisher called Ulfelder “the Nate Silver of coups.” Egypt didn’t make the list then. I wonder what changed in the last three hundred somewhat days that we went from ‘risk’ to ‘worrying’ and ‘most likely’?

Anyway, Africans: brace yourself, because the continent is up for an orgy of coups. From Guinea-Conakry to Madagascar, it doesn’t look very pretty, especially for the Sahel region.

But does the continent really stands on brink of political and civil chaos? Some readers at least seems to have a hard time believing this gospel. One, in my opinion rightfully, comments:

A coup d’ Etat is highly unlikely in the following countries: Mali, Central African Republic, and Guinea.

The two first are already under French and international community supervision; the third could face not a coup , but a lower level of civil unrest (maybe civil war) because of the Fulani ethnic group (financial power of the country) and the people of the forest region marginalization.

Another one writes:

A coup in Somalia seems more like a rhetorical exercise than an actual undertaking. There’s not a heck of a lot of government to overthrow, is there?

And on and on it goes.

And indeed, because when is an overthrow of the government considered a coup? And maybe equally important, when is a coup considered to be successful? As we said, Egypt for example did not even make it to last year’s list. However, some still struggle with what to make of the army’s interference in the country’s politics and deposing of the president. When writing an article with a screaming head as in this case, it would have been nice to at least get some context.

Apart from a failure to explain what exactly is meant by a coup, it is also quite confusing when the article is supposed to be about “countries most likely to have a coup”, but where the research the article is based on looks at the risk of attempts and not actual successful coups. And finally, it’s a bit of a downer if after all the predictions, you read midway through:

[E]ven the most extreme cases are well below a 50 percent likelihood of a coup, meaning that a coup probably won’t occur.

That’s where I stopped reading.

The Work of Kenyan Photographer Mimi Cherono Ng’ok

Mimi Cherono Ng’ok (b. 1983) is a young Kenyan photographer who lives and works in Nairobi. Educated from the University of Cape Town in 2006 she has a number of exhibition and projects behind her. Despite her young age her photographic journey has to this day taken her far. From studies in Cape Town, to residencies in Accra, Brazil and Berlin to exhibitions in Italy and Mozambique. She’s been trotting the globe with a camera on her shoulder. However far, she has always been returning to Kenya, although coming home has not always been easy. After many years in South Africa returning to Nairobi left her with a feeling of displacement, but also gave her the unique opportunity of exploring places and spaces anew, which is reflected in some of her work.

In 2008 she produced a solo exhibition, I am Home, on African immigrants living in South Africa. I am Home is series of black and white portraits where Mimi addressed the sensitivity, subtlety and complexity of life in South Africa as an African, as the other other. The humanistic and sensible approach that characterizes this series is also prevalent in a more personal body of work, a series still untitled, exploring her own relation to places, people and spaces of her native Nairobi. As much of her work this series evolve around issues of home, displacement, loss, and identity. With a great deal of personal investment Mimi has created an intimate and deep body of work that is at once heart-warming, sad and beautiful. While some of the photos could be taken straight out of a family album, others seem to be merely stills from Mimi’s life in Nairobi. In sum they are all part of Mimi’s visual diary of an imaginary journey. We had a chance to ask Mimi a few questions about her untitled series, her work in general and about how traveling and coming home informs her photographic trajectory.

KO: When did you first become interested in photography?

MCN: Actually I first took pictures when I was about 4 years old, at the 1987 All Africa games that were held in Nairobi. I found the images recently; so far I have three very out of focus photographs of probably an opening event at Nyayo Stadium. So I’m not sure if there was some subconscious interest there but later on when I was around 12 my dad gave me a point and shoot – one of those plastic ones a lot of tourists used to have, they’re silver, no lens and have a really funny flash – and I would take pictures of random things around the house or my little sister when she took naps, my books on the shelf, the calendar. Really strange now when I look at some of the images…

Who or what has inspired you or influences your work?

Spike Lee’s movie ‘Crooklyn’ has been an influence in some of my work. As a child, I loved the movie when it first came out and now when I watch it again, there’s a lot of ‘stills’ in the movie that really resonate with what I’m doing now. A seminal work that I still keep coming back to all the time is Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ ‘Untitled’ 1991 billboard installation. The installation was 24 billboards of an enlarged black and white photograph of a recently shared double bed, in different parts of New York City. It was the first work that I encountered that was a return to experience, to memory. It was also the first time I had a visceral reaction to an art piece. When I read about it, it made complete sense what he was doing. It was really incredible that he made a work about love, loss, memory, sadness and intimacy, and that so many people related to it. You didn’t have to know the personal details to access what he was getting at. What’s weird though is when I show a lot of my friends the work, they don’t think much of it…but I think seeing Gonzalez-Torres working on such ideas impacted me getting to this point with my own work. I guess he was the map I needed.

What else…also Japanese photo books, I’m really drawn to how a lot of Japanese photographers constantly push photography in different directions. They have so many different approaches to technique, form, content and presentation. It always challenges me to think of my own work differently.

(Ayenda’s old house, 2013 © Mimi Cherono Ng’ok)

Looking at your work much of it seems to evolve around personal views and experiences. Is photography a way for you to process experiences?

I think yes, part of it is to process experiences, and at the same time it’s also a new way of seeing.

Your most recent work has a very private and intimate character. Can you explain a bit more about the background and focus of this series?

I started shooting some of the work in the series around 2008 when I first returned to Nairobi. At that time I wasn’t cognizant on working on a specific theme. I felt really displaced coming back to Kenya and wasn’t sure what to do with myself or what direction to go in. I was busy complaining to one of my friends about this, and as a result of a lot of the conversations we had, I ended up shooting whatever caught my attention. None of it made sense at the time, and I guess part of the frustration was that I couldn’t isolate exactly what I was working on as a subject. So I had these random pictures that I took throughout the year till I moved back to Cape Town. I didn’t think about them much until a couple of years later when I was scanning the images. Suddenly I could draw a lot of relationships between what I first thought were very disparate images and ideas. Also, I noticed that I had been taking a lot of images of my family as well as spaces around where I lived…and because I was so familiar with the people I was photographing and spending so much time with them there was an intimacy present that I hadn’t had with other projects. The work was definitely more personal, and I guess looking at it now part of it is an exploration of my relationship to Kenya, in past and present tense…as when I first left there was so many things I missed about the place, and when I came back, none of those things were present any more. So it functions like a visual diary; my visual diary that documents an imaginary sentimental journey I seem to be on.

Are you pursuing any particular style or aesthetic in this work?

Not at this point. I have an eclectic mix of images, some are black and white, others colour, some shot on medium format, others on 35mm film. The only constant so far is all the work is shot on film, which I won’t change any time soon. I really like that it’s a bit of mashup, especially since that’s how personal diaries are. Predominantly what I’m interested in is this space of memory and fiction, this middle line between veracity/recollection.

(Chemu, 2008 © Mimi Cherono Ng’ok)

You studied in South Africa and came back to Kenya a few years ago. Have your years abroad made you look differently at your home country? And have they somehow informed your current work and life?

I think so. I guess distance always gives you perspective. I think the years away have made me feel almost like a stranger, or that actually what I found very familiar is not anymore, which in some ways is a good thing because that allows me to work and rediscover the country again. It’s a new way of seeing. Looking at places you’ve been to a million times but only start to really see for the first time once you create some distance.

I also think studying photography in South Africa has had a big impact on my work and life. It is a place that has a strong tradition of documentary photography which is what I started working with in the beginning. But more importantly it exposed me to a lot of different styles and genres present in photography, works by older photographers such as Santu Mofokeng, David Goldblatt, Ernest Cole, to younger photographers like Zanele Muholi, Nontsikelelo Veleko, Musa Nxumalo, Thabiso Sekgala who all have distinct ways of working. I think in Kenya photojournalism has been a very dominant factor to the detriment of other forms of photography. Also it was while I was in South Africa that I got a grant from the Market Photo Workshop to shoot a series and present a solo exhibition of the finished project.

You’ve been traveling quite a lot the last few years. How does traveling and residencies in other countries affect you and your work?

For me traveling brings about a lot of exposure, to new ideas, different kinds of people, new languages. I always come back to Nairobi looking at it differently. There’s a lot of cities I’ve been to and they feel really familiar, similar to Nairobi and some are completely different…I like that polarity of trying to make sense of the different symbols and codes you encounter in new places, and how they force you to reinvent your own sense of language about who you are and where you come from.

(Newspapers at Cugu’s house, 2012 © Mimi Cherono Ng’ok)

Last year you were part of the second Mwangalio Tofauti II exhibition, arranged by the Goethe Institute. This time the exhibition highlighted young upcoming photographers from Kenya. What is your experience as a young photographer in Kenya in terms of finding jobs, possibilities for exposure, general appreciation of photography etc.?

It’s challenging. I think there are certain kinds of photography that people really relate to here, predominantly wedding photography/photojournalism kind of work, and if you don’t make that kind of work, people are not really sure what to do with you… But the great thing about this is that the space is really open for experiments. I feel like I’m almost operating in a sort of vacuum, which allows me to do things I wouldn’t necessarily do if I were living in Cape Town or a different part of the world. When I had a solo show at the Goethe Institut, I knew my work would be completely new terrain to the audience, so I opted to use that opportunity to create a show about process and put up new video work that I was trying out. So I’m happy to have that kind of latitude…

(Old bed, 2013 © Mimi Cherono Ng’ok)

What do you think it takes for photography to grow as an industry and art in Kenya?

I think it’s growing as an industry, as an art it just needs to expand to become a bit more diverse, and this will only happen with exposure and awareness of the different kinds of work being made around the world and increased education. I hope the arts can really be brought back into the Kenyan curriculum. I was always bored in school and this was the one class I actually enjoyed.

Finally, can you point at other photographers from the Continent you find interesting?

In Kenya, I really like Amirah Tajdin and James Muriuki’s work. Amirah and I have similar sensibilities, and James works in a completely opposite way than I would, and takes images of things I would never really consider. I participated in a workshop initiated by Simon Njami that had a cross section of photographers from the continent. Through the workshop I was introduced to other young photographers on the continent, and now I’m really blown away by all the different work that’s out there. There’s Fatoumata Diabate and Patrick Wokmeni who have been making images on nightlife in their countries, completely different in its visual narrative. Someone else I like is George Senga who did this series on a man who reordered his life to be exactly like Patrice Lumumba after Lumumba was assassinated. It’s an incredible body of work. There are so many interesting young photographers out there and I hope somehow this can intersect into Nairobi’s visual landscape. For me I find that the possibilities within photography are endless, and at this point I’m just scratching the surface.

This interview was first published on Addis Rumble.