Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 446

As the cliche goes, there are only 3 things that an African child can be

We could call this: The Afro-Trifecta, if you will. They are a lawyer, some sort of business person, or a doctor. Teacher? Respectable, but not enough money. Artist? Quickest way not to be invited home during the holidays. And god forbid, an athlete. Most African parents consider the term “student athlete,” a gross oxymoron. Which is why the story of Ezikiel “Ziggy” Ansah is that much sweeter.

Hailing from the land of the Black Stars, Ziggy came to Brigham Young University in Utah with an academic scholarship. (He’d been converted by Mormon missionaries in Ghana.) Ziggy probably told his mother, “I know I’m 6’5, 270, with athletic prowess, but all I am going to do is just study hard. His major was actuarial science (I do not know what this is either), and then tried for two years to be a basketball player. That did not go so well.

Stuck in a foreign land, moonlighting as a custodian and running low on fufu and palm soup what is a young Ghana boy to do? Play football, of course.

Ziggy shined at BYU, playing as a defensive end and registering impressive numbers. So impressive, that he became a top prospect in the 2013 NFL draft, even though ESPN didn’t know who the hell he was:

No matter. He ended up being the fifth overall pick for the Detroit Lions and is delivering substantially for his new team.

From not being able to wear his pads, to being a rising star in the NFL is truly a story to behold. So please African parents, next time your child tells you that they want to be something else than a profession in the Afro Trifecta, try to keep your eyes from rolling and a blood vessel popping. Who knows? They might just be like Ziggy.

Weekend Music Break 57

It’s the weekend, so let’s dig into the internet’s digital crates for some new music.

In a video that strings together GIF-like movements and intriguing textural contrasts over innovative beats, UK rapper/producer Mickey Lightfoot makes his compelling debut with the song “L.O.S.T.”:

Nigerian rock and roll legend Keziah Jones stages a comeback in his new video “Afronewave” by transforming into Captain Rugged, which is the name of his new album:

Ghana’s fastest rapper Sarkodie teams up with the kings of Azonto FuseODG for the new collaboration “Down on One”:

Fresh off her South African Music Award in the category of Best African Adult Album for her record “Step Child”, Lesotho-born singer Maleh finds her stride with the song “Chimosoro”:

Just in time for the orisha of Afrobeat’s 75th birthday, Eedris Abdulkareem and Femi Kuti pay their respects in the song “Fela”:

Meta and The Cornerstones, the New York City-based reggae band fronted by the Senegalese singer Meta Dia, spread positive vibes in “Silence of the Moon” off their sophomore album Ancient Power:

Overhyped Naija-pop megastar D’banj dances in a forest for some reason in his video for the new club banger “Finally”:

In an album produced by Africa Unsigned and the ever-entertaining FOKN Bois, Ghanaian hiplife artist Bryte hits the big time with his first single “Nadia Number”:

Channeling visual and sonic influences from their South African and Eritrean heritage, Australian group The_PAOK beckons for motion in “Let’s go”:

Brymo reflects on the state of his home Nigeria and the world through impassioned vocals and contemporary dance in the video for “Down”:

And finally, in a bonus video, massively talented South African jazz musician Kyle Shepherd was (finally) honoured with the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for 2014 this week:

Please share your favorite new videos in the comments below.

The #BullshitFiles: KLM offers flights to ‘the Dark Continent’

We’re not making this up. It turns out Royal Dutch flagship carrier’s KLM decision to hire the Dutch East India Company as its PR firm was a bad plan. According to their website, KLM will fly you to ‘the Dark Continent’ (their original inverted commas) to visit Lusaka, Zambia, a city of two million that they’re still selling as the “undiscovered, unspoiled Africa”, or Nairobi, Kenya to get “a real sense of Africa” (using a detail of the stock photo above), etc:

Dodgy advertisement agency? Most definitely.

Asked about it via Twitter…

RT @SRoosblad @KLM suffers from #colonialmentality by calling #Africa 'The Dark Continent' http://t.co/wPgx0IyYaH

— Africa is a Country (@AfricasaCountry) October 18, 2013

…KLM responded:

…and then changed it to this:

Yeh, “unspoiled” Zambia: after colonialism, independence, one-party rule, and an economy crippled by Structural Adjustment.

We’re glad KLM have changed their description of Africa as “the dark continent”. They told us they didn’t want people to misinterpret it. Apparently we misinterpreted it as racist Bullshit.

Nine signs the journalism on Africa you’ve just encountered is trash

You may already have accepted that those images of swollen potbellies underneath protruding ribs, those sticky flies sitting on the starving child’s eyebrows and lips, those panoramic views of refugee camps are not the be-all and end-all of Africa. Or those unclear references to Africa which suggest it’s a monolith, or even worse, a country. You may have accepted that all these, some of which are not inaccurate in some places, don’t provide the full picture. A picture which, if it were genuine, would reflect a continent of diverse peoples and ideas, varied standards of living (including horrendous poverty and unbelievable inequality) yet infinite potential, a picture of an eclectic mix of things good and bad.

Besides flies, potbellies and continental monoliths, here are some other telltale signs of simplistic and often pathetic attempts to cover Africa. If more than one of these apply to your print, online or broadcast journalism source, you’re probably not getting your information from the most reliable place.

1. Darkness, darkness everywhere

If you come across a description of Africa as the “dark continent,” Africa having a “dark history,” especially if you come across Conradian references to “the heart of darkness,” it may suggest the journalist relies too heavily on a book of fiction written in 1902 and is unlikely to have spoken to many people on the ground. Also, all this “dark” this and “dark” that business, feels just more than a little racist.

2. African sunsets, African skies

Only in Africa do news reports sometimes wax lyrical about golden African sunrises, molten lava African sunsets, azure African skies… I can assure you: The sun in Africa is the same sun as the rest of the world. The sky is exactly the same sky too. Trees are trees in Africa, not African trees. “Plumes of smoke went up, smothering the Japanese sky in Fukushima.” If that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is — and for Africa it’s no different.

3. They need a reason to kill each other?

Bill Maher recently interviewed the New York Times’ East Africa bureau chief Jeffrey Gettleman on his show and Maher asked why it seems “in Africa… [there are] wars for no apparent reason… for the sake of.” Gettleman then indicated that LRA leader Joseph Kony’s insurgency might fit that category since he can’t be bought, he can’t be reasoned with and he has no ideology. I found it curious: Kony anointing himself as a messiah and calling his organization the Lord’s Resistance Army still didn’t qualify enough for Gettleman’s definition of an ideology. This sounds a lot like someone who’s watched that scene from The Dark Knight where Alfred (Michael Caine) tries to explain the Joker’s psychopathic personality to Bruce Wayne using the example of the Bandit from Burma. Forget the layers upon layers of background to Kony’s rise, including the terrible atrocities against civilians of the Acholi districts in Northern Uganda by rebels and the government since as early as 1986. It may come as a surprise, but no — wars don’t just happen for the sake of, in Africa. Like everywhere else, they have a context. Colonialism was real. So was apartheid. These phenomenon, imposed from the outside, have had a lasting effect on every thread of the fabric of society, from Morocco to Sudan, Ghana to South Africa. The continent cannot be reported accurately without recognition of these legacies. Any piece of journalism that doesn’t — is not worth trusting. We remember The American Civil War, The Russian Revolution, World War II, The Holocaust — and factor them into how they affect realities on the ground today. Africa’s history is no different.

4. They speak English?

Colonialism brought European languages to Africa. Any report that gives even the vaguest indication of surprise that this Angolan speaks fluent Portuguese, or this Ivorian speaks fluent French, or that Zimbabwean speaks perfect English — should be mocked.

5. Can’t understand ‘em

When you do come across a news report that has an African interviewee speaking English, but still find the speech subtitled, ask yourself why heavily-accented factory workers from Glasgow, protesters in Belfast, or even the Australian PM Julia Gillard aren’t subtitled too.

6. All dictators are equal, but some dictators are more equal than others

Confident, unapologetic use of the terms “Banana Republic” or “Tinpot Dictatorship” tend to feature heavily when it comes to Africa in the mainstream. Not that there aren’t many, far too many — but if a news source is going to call one dictator a dictator — it should call all dictators dictators. Ask yourself, how many times has the d-word been used by your news source when referencing U.S. and European-allied absolute monarchs in the oil-rich Gulf? If the polite “strongman” or “pragmatist” or “reformer in a traditional society” can apply to them, it can apply to African leaders too.

7. No potholes — it’s a miracle!

Rwanda has been through a lot. It’s a nation that’s making big strides on many fronts, particularly economically. But the next time you read something about the lack of potholes in Kigali and the miracle that the roads and buildings are so incredible, so soon after the genocide, consider this: What the hell do potholes have to do with hacking someone to death with a machete? Nazi Germany had great infrastructure and probably zero potholes. The Tibetans have few roads, and those few probably have very many potholes. They’re hardly the most violent people you’ll ever meet.

8. Look, they’re singing and dancing!

If a political report devotes a substantial chunk of attention to tribal dancing, and “vibrant African music” — beware. You wouldn’t sample the nightclubs and “vibrant American music” in Adams Morgan when doing a piece on Democrats and Republicans arguing over the U.S. budget. Just like the sky is the sky in Africa and not the African sky, music is music in Africa and not African music. And if music wasn’t vibrant, well then it’s probably not music.

9. What do you think about Obama?

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen or read a western reporter asking every African they come across what they think of Barack Obama (you know, because he’s black and they are), I’d use the money to travel to Kosovo, or Latvia and ask people there what they think of Mitt Romney, you know, because he’s white and they are.

Refugee Voyeurism, German Style

What do a model, the former bassist of a rightist rock band, a fantasy writer who has several times expressed her admiration for Thilo Sarrazin (the Bundesbank executive, who questioned whether migrants were ‘unfit or unwilling to integrated’ into society), a streetworker with a potty mouth, a former soldier, and a dropout neo-Nazi have in common? If you can think of a better joke than Germany’s public broadcasting television service ZDF, please let me know. The producers at ZDF’s teenage offshoot ZDFneo for their part divided those bizarre characters into teams of three. The contestants are then set the task to reversely travel two routes that refugees frequently take on their way into fortress Europe.

Accompanied by dramatic music, a guy who is introduced as an “Africa expert and orientalist” enters the stage. He will serve as the game master who explains the rules: no mobile phones, no passport– “that means: no identity.” The first group, called “Team Iraq,” is sent on the way from Germany to Iraq via Turkey while the other group which is heading to Eritrea via Italy goes by the name of ‘Team Africa’ (cause Africa is a country like Iraq is). That’s “Team Africa” in the promo photo above.

The results of this dimwitted idea can be watched in the TV show “Auf der Flucht–Das Experiment” (which would probably best translate into English as ‘On the Run – The Experiment’). The producers claim to have found an unconventional way to tackle a socially relevant topic. No doubt about the topic’s relevance. The initial problem, though, is that ‘unconventional’ here means that the show deals with such a highly sensible issue from the perspectives of six wanna-be VIPs who are ‘sent on a journey that will change their lives forever’ as the audience is promised by the voice-over at the beginning of the show. In this manner it is little surprising that there is once more hardly any in-depth conversation with actual refugees but instead a whole lot of white stereotypes about refugees and their countries of origin.

Here is the official trailer (in German):

In fact, the people who should be the center of attention are granted only a few heavily edited establishing shots in which they are allowed to voice their opinions and feelings in no more than half a minute. By this, the people who actually live in camps under unbearable conditions and embark on perilous journeys during their sometimes years-long odysseys are degraded to extras who make a nicely exoticized setting for the brave German adventurers.

By contrast those ‘main characters’ are extensively filmed as they are disgusted at a bucket latrine in a refugee camp. In another sequence one candidate is filmed vomiting for more than a minute and a half. All this satisfies the voyeuristic wants of today’s TV audience.

Additionally, of course, the candidates reproduce the long list of stereotypes against refugees. The standard arguments such as ‘there is not enough wealth to be shared with everyone’ are still rather harmless compared to the statements by the purportedly repentant neo-Nazi who, for instance, constantly associates black people with HIV/AIDS.

All this is even more disturbing when you notice that the directors believe to have chosen characters whose opinions are ‘representative’ of those that exist among the broader German public. Against this background, the hard facts that are mentioned from time to time (e.g. figures of refugees worldwide) become marginal notes as they are counteracted by the dominant images that imprint on the viewer.

Whenever the candidates feel like quitting the whole thing (that’s the nice thing about their ‘experiment’) their trolley bags are packed ready for take-off. Not only does this further disqualify the program’s self-proclaimed educational mandate to a level that comes close to shows like I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! and the like.

More drastically, though, reality for refugees does not offer such kind of safety net in which they could easily slump once they have a bad day. Reality for them is more likely to include floating for days on the Mediterranean Sea in a cockleshell without drinking water; torture and mutilation in Libya’s clinks located in the middle of the desert; abduction in the Sinai which might hold gang rape for women and organ harvesting on the part of male refugees; physical abuse by FRONTEX paramilitary forces who welcome refugees to the European border regime that is designed to keep them off at any cost; being driven underground by fear of racist thugs and thus not even being able to apply for asylum procedures.

Part of this reality are also the protectionist policies of the European Union which help to create a global system of unjust economies; lobbyist policies that benefit corrupt dictatorships; policies that allow weaponries to export their lethal products to areas where they fuel further conflict; policies that do not give a fig about keeping climate change at bay; all these elements contribute to the reasons which force people to leave their home places. To blank out all these circumstances for the sake of a reality show is sheer cynicism.

Note: The show has been awarded the German TV prize in the category ‘Best Docutainment’ a few weeks ago, shortly before the first news about the latest boat disaster off the Lampedusa coast came in. The inspiring example for the show was broadcasted in Australia under the name Go back to where you came from and has achieved similarly questionable success. Also Danish TV now features the format under the name ‘Send Them Home’.

Remembering Sathima Bea Benjamin

“Hi Rashid, is it true?”, “Yes Matt she is on the other side.” With what feels like a physical blow to the body I try to make sense of it all. Barely a month earlier I was in Cape Town for what was to be Sathima’s swan song: a live performance at Tagore’s in Observatory celebrating the reissue of her 1976 masterpiece African Songbird that I’d just reissued on my label. Although suffering from flu Sathima commanded the room with the voice of an angel. The electric atmosphere and crowded space only enhanced the palpable sense of being in the presence of greatness.

As we mark Sathima’s birthday today I’m still trying to make sense of it all. Her long struggle to be heard, never playing on her African roots and resolutely uncommercial with a complete commitment to classic jazz idioms. And a big shadow cast by her partner Abdullah Ibrahim, the challenges of motherhood exacerbated by exile and an uneasy homecoming from the Chelsea Hotel in New York where she said she felt most at home.

Sathima had the unique ability to strike first at your heart, not unlike the experience of hearing Billie Holiday for the first time. She cites hearing Billie’s performance in Lady Sings the Blues as being pivotal to her development as a singer. And Sathima’s original compositions like Africa and Nations in Me eschew the commonly prescribed categories of race and nationhood propagated by Apartheid. It’s a powerful combination.

Her final performance at Tagore’s was highly anticipated and packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Some initial microphone issues before Sathima took to the stage, backed by the Hilton Schilder Trio, to perform one more time her classic songbook tunes, laments and the anthem Africa. “I’ve been gone much too long/and I’m glad to say that I’m home, I’m home to stay…” I was so happy for her despite the knowledge that perhaps this might all be too late. We spoke late into the evening at the Labia Cinema on Sunday and at the Mahogany Room on Tuesday about taking this forward.

Too late, and now she’s on the other side. And that’s our lament: that home is still the other side.

Photo Credit: Gregory Franz.

Sathima Bea Benjamin: “I have so many nations in me”

“Hi Rashid, is it true?”, “Yes Matt she is on the other side.” With what feels like a physical blow to the body I try to make sense of it all. Barely a month earlier I was in Cape Town for what was to be Sathima’s swan song: a live performance at Tagore’s in Observatory celebrating the reissue of her 1976 masterpiece African Songbird that I’d just reissued on my label. Although suffering from flu Sathima commanded the room with the voice of an angel. The electric atmosphere and crowded space only enhanced the palpable sense of being in the presence of greatness.

As we mark Sathima’s birthday today I’m still trying to make sense of it all. Her long struggle to be heard, never playing on her African roots and resolutely uncommercial with a complete commitment to classic jazz idioms. And a big shadow cast by her partner Abdullah Ibrahim, the challenges of motherhood exacerbated by exile and an uneasy homecoming from the Chelsea Hotel in New York where she said she felt most at home.

Sathima had the unique ability to strike first at your heart, not unlike the experience of hearing Billie Holiday for the first time. She cites hearing Billie’s performance in Lady Sings the Blues as being pivotal to her development as a singer. And Sathima’s original compositions like Africa and Nations in Me eschew the commonly prescribed categories of race and nationhood propagated by Apartheid. It’s a powerful combination.

Her final performance at Tagore’s was highly anticipated and packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Some initial microphone issues before Sathima took to the stage, backed by the Hilton Schilder Trio, to perform one more time her classic songbook tunes, laments and the anthem Africa. “I’ve been gone much too long/and I’m glad to say that I’m home, I’m home to stay…” I was so happy for her despite the knowledge that perhaps this might all be too late. We spoke late into the evening at the Labia Cinema on Sunday and at the Mahogany Room on Tuesday about taking this forward.

Too late, and now she’s on the other side. And that’s our lament: that home is still the other side.

Photo Credit: Gregory Franz.

Where is Grahamstown?

On 10 October 2013, a certain segment of white South Africans left their children with the “girl” for a couple of hours as they marched through the streets demanding acknowledgement of the “genocide” (sic) being perpetrated against them as an “oppressed” (sic) minority. I also stumbled across, to my horror, Carly Rae Jepson (of “Call Me Maybe” infamy) mangling a cover version of Joni Mitchell’s classic “Both Sides Now.” My faith in the intelligence of humans reached a nadir. But nothing prepared me for an article by Dutch journalist Fred de Vries: “Grahamstown: Love and sex in the city of saints” in South Africa’s Mail & Guardian.

De Vries lives in South Africa and has some local fame for his interviews of leading South Africans. His most recent book, Rigtingbedonnerd (2012), focused on Afrikaner identities after 1994. More recently, his bio lists a writing fellowship at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg and teaching creative and travel writing at Rhodes University (in Grahamstown). His Mail & Guardian article is ostensibly based on his experiences at Rhodes University.

Now, beyond doubt, Grahamstown is a strange place. When I first arrived I found, as a Star Wars nerd, that the best way to describe the place was in the words of Luke Skywalker, “if there is a bright centre to the universe, you’re on the planet farthest from it.”

I first saw the Mail & Guardian article on Facebook. The friend who pointed me in the direction of the article and I shared experiences of being care-free, largely irresponsible and upper middle-class kids at traditionalist English liberal Model C schools.

Our Rhodes days together followed a fairly similar pattern. On a first reading, the article evoked feelings of nostalgia–being “smashing[ly] drunk during orientation week,” meeting people we had real connections with, and getting up to mischief that would not have occurred if we had stayed in South Africa’s capital Pretoria on the wrong side of the “Boerewors Curtain.”

However, the article preyed on my mind. On a second reading, I realized that hoping that “Red October” and Carly Rae Jepson were the low points of the intelligence of individuals was wishful thinking.

Rhodes University, including staff and students, constitutes some 9,000 of the Grahamstown population of 120,000. It is quite some accomplishment that in a few short paragraphs de Vries, drawing on the archaic ideas of his informants (not at all problematized), insults almost every group in Grahamstown.

Let’s begin by observing that de Vries entirely conflates particular, mostly white middle-class and privileged experiences of a segment of the Rhodes University population and their clubs, bars and bedrooms with the identity of Grahamstown as a whole.

There is no reference to the thousands of mostly black residents who, in the face of massive unemployment, terrible service delivery, a largely broken state school system, HIV/AIDS, high incidence of rape and gender violence, don’t live the life of post-material freedom of identity that de Vries so glibly ascribes to Grahamstown.

In a display of shocking scholarly and journalistic blindness and ethno-centricism, the different lives and experiences of some 110,000 other people are utterly effaced.

But there are also other kinds of blindness and silences. De Vries writes:

Grahamstown as a bastion of experimentalism – who would have thought that in 1812, when Colonel John [Graham] established it as a garrison town?

Had he cared to learn about the history of Grahamstown, de Vries may have reminded us of the ‘experimentalism’ that Colonel Graham introduced – that of declaring amaXhosa women and children fair game during the wars of colonial conquest and dispossession. But why spoil a ‘clever’ narrative.

The article contains glib throwaways such as Grahamstown has a “reputation for tolerance and progressive thinking and for experimenting with love, sex and relationships”. Really, where is the evidence?

Were there special relationships of love and humanity between the black and white folk, an abundance of sex across the color lines and marriages across ‘races’ among the population of Grahamstown?

This is sheer obfuscation on the part of de Vries. While there may have been some differences at the margins, at core Grahamstown was hardly different from other ‘white’ towns before or during apartheid.

And how about this: Rhodes University “would gain a reputation for being a liberal, free-thinking institution”. When and among whom? After the 1980s perhaps, forced by the explosion of anti-apartheid struggles but before that?

I wonder what Bantu Stephen Biko would say, having led a walk-out in 1967 when the Rhodes administration refused to permit black student to stay in the residences. Or Basil Moore, having been .

De Vries is either oblivious of Rhodes’ own 2008 public acknowledgement of shame, which makes clear that for much of its history it was far from a “liberal, free-thinking institution”, or suffers from a bad dose of amnesia.

The fact of the matter is that Rhodes University and Grahamstown do not begin and end with a certain segment of middle-class students spending their days and nights drinking and experimenting with their identities and sexualities.

Either de Vries walks around Rhodes and Grahamstown blind or with a set of lenses that simply blind him to the rich diversity of people, issues and challenges. Rhodes is not only the girl from the leafy suburbs of Johannesburg whose parents were so “progressive” as to send her to a state school, as if there is not a world of difference between Model C schools and other public schools.

There are students at Rhodes who are far too busy wondering where the next term’s fees will come from, how to survive the social scene when they don’t have the type of disposable income young men and women from rich and middle-class families have, how to navigate an institution with a pervasive culture of whiteness and class privilege, and how to ensure they cope with Rhodes demanding academic standards.

Students are busy growing as individuals, in more ways than being taught how to kiss women, learning why statements such as “try[ing] to be lesbian” (a quote de Vries seems to have made up) is as odious and gag-worthy as much of the “Red October” discourse – and hopefully becoming socially and politically conscious in ways that allow them to grasp just how shockingly ethnocentric his article is.

De Vries seems to be in a time warp, reinforcing the idea (as do the photographs that are used) that Rhodes is the privileged stamping ground of certain social class and groups, and it is somehow they who define Rhodes and Grahamstown.

This is putrid analysis and over-clever writing masquerading as serious journalism. It must be a matter of real concern that a person who seems so utterly blind to the realities of Rhodes or Grahamstown and who analyses their realities in such parochial ways has been let near the diverse classroom that today constitutes Rhodes and which requires teachers with expansive, sharp and imaginative lenses.

The #BullshitFiles: Christina Aguilera feeds war-torn Rwanda

Christina Aguilera, ambassador for World Food Program (WPF), recently went to “war-torn Rwanda” People Magazine tells us. Well thankfully she made it back home safe. War is not an easy thing. Although, I’m not sure exactly which war she is referring to – last I checked, the civil war and genocide in Rwanda ended twenty years ago. Well, Rwanda has other problems and its government is implicated in violence in neighboring DRC, but it is not war-torn. Also, Rwanda is an entire country. Where in Rwanda was Aguilera?

The song the children are singing in the video is of course inaudible but Aguilera’s is crystal clear. Her Light Up The Sky forms the background to the video. We hear her sing “When skies are grey, I’ll light your way, I’ll be your shoulder, You can lean on me” while seeing her feed “starved African children.”

Interestingly, one word from the kids’ song in Kinyarwanda is clear: Tuzarwubaka: We will build it (i.e. the country); clearly indicating that meaningless charity is not what they have in mind but rather that they are actively engaged. This is of course lost to all the non-Kinyarwanda speakers.

“The people of Rwanda touched me in a way I cannot express or put into words. They are in a place that needs our help and I am so proud of the work that we are doing there,” Aguilera insists. “This trip came at a time when I needed to step away and connect with bigger issues in the world,” she continues.

Africa: helping white people who’re a wee bit down-in-the-dumps feel better about themselves since 1884.

Even if we were to accept this blatant lie that Rwanda is a “war-torn” place where “refugee camps” abound, what kinds of superpower do Aguilera and the WPF have to make them think they alone could change such situation? War and poverty are the result of larger structural inequalities, part of larger historical, political circumstances that no individual can resolve. And certainly not Hollywood style celebrities: Aguilera, Invisible Children’s Jason Russell or even Bono. Enough of these white celebrities scrolling out of nowhere wanting to save African lives. Keep to your various professions thank you very much.

Also, the participating ‘restaurants’ to help world hunger, partners with the WFP are: KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Really? Junk food providers helping end ‘world hunger.’ Given all the information available to indicate the disastrous effects (heart diseases, diabetes) of eating junk food this partnership couldn’t be more ironic.

The video ends with Aguilera singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to a group of children. One among them is singing along and she seems a bit surprised by this. Too unfathomable that children of ‘war-torn poor Rwanda’ might know an English/American nursery rhyme? Welcome to the 21st century Ms. Aguilera!

Weekend Music Break: The Brother Moves On

I followed The Brother Moves On around South Africa once. True story, I even wrote about it here. I’ve seen them many more times after that, and each time was a trip. On their recent trip to Cape Town, they stopped over to record some songs for the Big Leap sessions, an initiative by Assembly Radio described as “a series of intimate performances from some of South Africa’s most exciting new and established artists.” The idea is to do two songs and one original cover. The Brother decided to cover Madala Kunene’s ‘Da Tom’ (third track in their set below). It’s worth going to their show just to see them perform that one song live:

* Featured image by Greg Marinovich.