Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 457

A fresh dose of the Chimurenga Chronic

For those of us seeking to get our fix of media with substance, it’s time once again to take a hit of the Chronic. Chimurenga, the recalcitrant pan-African multimedia institution based in Cape Town, has just released the latest edition of its quarterly publication, the Chronic.

The Chronic, in its current manifestation (see our piece on the previous issue), is the synthesis of a revolutionary gazette, book review magazine and history-laden mixtape. Cross-pollinating genres and creative mediums, the Chronic seeks new ways to engage with past, present and future elements of African social and political lives.The specialty of the Chimurenga in all of their projects is to go deeper, to ask the questions not being asked and to share unexpected stories that had previously been obscured.

In this second Chronic, the writers and artists agitate the archive, creating new meaning for current events and relics alike. Within its 124-pages, we get a fresh review of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah that doesn’t pretend she’s the only Nigerian author since Chinua Achebe; a peek into the obsessive cult of personality that surrounds the stylish Cameroonian first lady Chantal Biya; a sonic, visual and literary journey through Cape Town’s jazz soundscape and much more.

Here is a sample of what the new Chronic iteration has to offer:

Artists and writers from around the world take on the philanthropic complex to unravel the philosophies of dependency and power at play in the civil society of African states. Paula Akugizibwe assumes observer status at the African Union to uncover the charm offensive that keeps the West in control, while Parselelo Kantai exposes the manufacture of post-election peace in Kenya. Also, we journey into the AU headquarters in the heat of the political crisis in Mali and speak with Raila Amollo Odinga about the arithmetic skills of Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

Elsewhere Yves Mintoogue and Adewale Maja-Pearce diagnose the First Lady Syndrome in the political patronage of Chantou Biya and Dame Jonathan; Agri Ismaïl eavesdrops in on Islamic finance after the market crash; Deji Toye looks at the Nigerian art of patronage; and Cédric Vincent exposes the political rhetoric that caused all the chaos at both Benin biennales of 2012. As an alternative, three pan-African art projects overcome maps and institutional bureaucracy through networks and synergies; Ghana’s controversial duo FOKN Bois fuck with the puritanical mores in the world’s most religious country; and we listen in on the rebirth of the new thing in Cape Town’s jazz scene.

The Chronic also goes back to university to recount seventeen stories of love and learning under the World Bank and interviews Fred Moten and Stefano Harney on the possibility of staging a revolution “with and for” the university.

The wide-ranging sports coverage kicks off with Bongani Kona’s reflection on Zimbabwean players in South African rugby. In addition, Simon Kuper points out Africa’s best footballers aren’t African and Akin Adesokan learns 24 tricks of the forehand from Roger Federer.

The Chronic Books supplement is a self-help guide on reading and writing. Learn how to be a Nigerian from Peter Enahoro, Nigeria’s ‘woman of letters’ and the masters of Onitsha Market Literature. Get advice on how to live and how to write from Mohsin Hamid and Werewere Liking; meet the next generation of playwrights; and find out why you should reading Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jose Saramago, Eric Miyeni, Andile Mngxitama, Gonçalo Tavares, Vivek Narayanan, Nthikeng Mohele, A. Igoni Barrett, Abdellatif Laâbi, Gabriela Jauregui and many more.

The unparalleled depth of the Chronic content makes conversations about the perceived rise and decline of an imagined Africa irrelevant. In going deep, many of the Chronic’s stories have multiple elements, an essay and an interview or visual graphic that act as complementary vantage points.

With all that it has to offer, experiencing the Chronic is to abandon an idle mind. The words and images found in the Chronic have a tendency to defy simple consumption, instead they command engagement and challenge the reader’s understanding of (sub)cultures and history. This process is captured with perfect brevity in Chimurenga’s slogan: who no know go know.

Always at the cutting edge, what you find in the Chronic now is what myopic CNN will be reporting on in a year or two once they finally think they’ve “discovered” something novel. By then of course, the Chimurenga team will have joined with other like-minded creatives in influencing the future of social thought among those who are ready to be challenged.

Over the next few weeks we’ll take a closer look at what’s inside The Chronic to see if it lives up to its legacy.

The Chimurenga Chronic is out now in print and digital versions. Pick it up here and join the conversation.

South African Low-Fi Freedom

South African video footage has been freed from the annals of the archives housing our past on VHS. A remix of South Africa’s past and present day is now available in a low-fi video clip collection from CUSS — a group of young Johannesburg artists including Ravi Govender, Jamal Nxedlana, Bogosi Sekhukhuni and Zamani Xolo — on their free-to-air channel, and even more directly to the public in the myriad of TV-selling stores in Johannesburg’s inner city.

CUSS, among other things, subverts the closely guarded collective memory of South Africa’s 90s and takes standard definition video/images as a starting point. They help to remind us of what we know (that 90s TV talk show) and what we more recently barely got to know (that Spear painting). It’s a comment on what’s in the media today, catching throwaway comments that could be lost in the brevity of an un-taped local breakfast show:

(PJ Powers is still talking “poster boys for what South Africa can be”. Really?)

Remixed in rainbow colors is a dismissal of the rainbow nation for all the grey areas in the picture, as well as an attempt to find out where the picture does come together:

Pointing fingers at our middle-classness is also part of the offering of self-reflexive video speak, in an age where “I’ve got to have it!” sets the precedent:

Here is a group of artists who have democratized the image of our past through ripping clips off Youtube to re-author what we once knew. It’s incendiary and strikes chords very close to home for those of us under-30 near the mark of South Africa’s 20-years of democracy.

We were just kids in the 90s, listening in on the excitement of our parents and singing along to the SABC catch phrase: “Simunye, oh, we are one!” Now, we are still one, I think, only less optimistic. That’s Mzansi for sure.

Chief Boima Interviews … Kae Sun

In our current #hashtag fueled media landscape, it is fairly hard for an up-and-coming artist to emerge outside of predetermined genre, social, or sonic signifiers. However, as an artist develops, sometimes they manage to chip away at the walls the media traps them in. With each project they are able to reinvent their aesthetic, while their work remains true to their identity as a creative person. We call these artists stars.

In Toronto-based singer-songwriter Kae Sun’s case we would have to call him a Black Star. His latest album Afriyie is a surprising and fresh addition to the global African media landscape. Tracks like “Lead Loaded Letters” stand out with their mix of heavy electronics over clunky blues guitar riffs, signaling an ability to rise above neatly laid out categories. With Afriyie, Kae Sun has managed to emerge as one of the most promising singer-songwriters in the international scene.

Like many young Canadians today, Kae Sun’s story is one of global migration. He moved from Ghana as a youth to attend university in Ontario. It was here he started pursuing music professionally, however his path to becoming a professional musician started much earlier during his childhood in Ghana. These various life experiences come through on his first full length album Lion on a Leash. The album was mostly performed by a live band with some electronic production subtly infused, we hear a distinctly rock-leaning sound with some influence of Afrobeat, reggae, and hip-hop.

An EP released two years ago called Outside the Barcode was a collection of beautifully written tunes performed on acoustic guitar and sung by Kae Sun. His emotion and sincerity as a performer really shine through on this effort. Several of the songs on that EP appear in new re-imagined form on Afriyie, allowing us, the outside observers, to see the development of his boundary pushing sound, reflecting an artistic growth and an increased access to production resources.

The question of what counts as African music is becoming more irrelevant as the rest of the globally networked world becomes more familiar. Afriyie is Ghanaian in a way that is only starting to become prevalent in our contemporary moment. It is representative of a national identity, more like the color of a passport, rather than ancestral tradition or cultural representation. It is place and time specific, and doesn’t seem weighed down by a need to play identity politics. It represents the place where the artist is at, as a culmination of life experiences, rather than a romantic obsession, or longing for the past. This is notable for an artist who has moved recently from one country in the global south, to another in the north.

Kae Sun’s absorption of influences from his adopted home is clear to me throughout the album. I hear echoes of a historically strong Torontonian electronic sound, as well as connections to other hip-hop tinged Black Canadian songwriters such as K’naan and K-os. An ability to connect with and reflect on his immediate surroundings is reflected in his artistic choices.

After seeing the above video in which Kae Sun covers Citizen Cope’s “Lifeline,” I was pleasantly surprised to see an immigrant artist take up the cause of local social issues. In this case, it was the eviction of a community from government subsidized housing to make way for private developers. I wanted to take an opportunity to chat with Kae Sun to tease out where he sees that his lines of influence lie…

I’m surprised at how different Afriyie is from Lion on a Leash sonically, how did you arrive at the current more electronic leaning sound via an all acoustic demo EP in Outside the Barcode?

Kae Sun: It was always the plan to try to do more with ambient sounds and programmed parts, and you can hear it in some of the songs on Lion but you need more time and space to do that and I had a smaller budget. The EP is an exception in a way because I did that out of an urgency I was feeling with those particular  songs but as far as full-length albums go I always wanted to do something a bit more conceptual so this happened at the right time.

What were your musical influences before you started making records? What are you listening to now?

I feel like my influences shifted over the period it took to complete the record but my earliest trigger was a singer from Montreal Arianne Moffat. I found it interesting how she incorporated electronic sounds and textures into her very melodic songs and then later I was going to these rocksteady and reggae nights and really got put on to some classics. Also when I was making trips to Ghana, Femi’s Day by Day was my soundtrack. These days I try to listen to anything that grabs my attention.

Your album titles intrigue me quite a bit, especially Outside the Barcode and Afriyie. Do you want to give some background to these names, and why you chose them?

Writer/Activist Arundathi Roy used the term “living outside the barcode” in reference to people in India who essentially live off the grid as a consequence of their poverty. It’s an interesting thing. It’s almost like poverty has shielded them from being exploited as a consumer base although they’re exploited in more horrible ways. I found this interesting because driving through Accra I got the same vibe in certain communities, things I didn’t notice when I was growing up. So that’s where that title comes from. Afriyie is more personal, it’s my middle name, named after my grandfather.

“Dzorwulu Junction” stands out on Afriyie. And while Kanye West claims to be a black new wave artist with his recent album, I would say that this song was more explicitly so. This style is also a reference I’ve heard in people like Spoek Mathambo who are flirting with Afro-futurism. Do you see your self as sonically connected to either of these artists?

Perhaps, but I think there’s more to it. Some artists are good at creating a conceptual context for their work and by so doing expand and/or challenge our understanding of what is possible with music, I think of Miles Davis, Prince, David Bowie, Dylan, Andre 3000, Kanye, M.I.A. I think  it’s in the breadth of the work and continuously evolving or trying to move things forward. I’m definitely partial to that approach to making music and drawing from a wide range of ideas and influences to transcend genre, transcend medium even into literature, poetry, visual art, philosophy and so on. That’s really what I’m going for. A lot of the time I find being labelled “musician” can be restricting.

What about thematically? How does your own liberationist content fit into a contemporary conversations about African liberation, Afro-futurism, New Slaves, etc?

I find it hard to look at what I’m doing from that angle, it wouldn’t work well for me. What I know is that the intent for me is always spiritual. Creative expression is my spiritual practice, that’s my worship so to speak, every idea I have regarding liberation comes from the fact that I believe God’s creative expression is love. Freedom and justice come from that love and in so far as that is not the current condition for humans artists will either create to release that tension or create to escape it.

Check out the rest of the interview on MTV Iggy.

Photographing the African Diaspora in New York City

In a world ever more saturated by images, understanding how to read pictures has never been more important. In a course this summer at the New School in the GPIA, students learned how to read images, and also how to make them.

We began by looking at other people’s photographs and thinking about the choices photographers make and the stories their images tell. The conversations changed as students embarked on their own photo projects in New York-based ethnic enclaves. Students photographed all around the five boroughs – from Ghanaian hair salons in the Bronx to Taiwanese restaurants in Queens. Three students focused on African diaspora groups.

Selected images of student projects are below, and more are on our class website.

Gladys Ekoto on why she wanted to work with Cameroonians in New York:

I have selected a Cameroonian community as my diaspora country project. The community is located in the Bronx, New York. I am interested in this diaspora because I would like to be part of another community besides Harlem. I heard of a Cameroonian diaspora nine years ago and never attended any meeting or cultural events. Being born in Cameroon I feel the time is right to be an active member of a community of my country of birth. In addition, I am drawn to the group because I feel that I am loosing that part (Cameroon) of my identity. This project will allow me to rectify that situation.

Click to view slideshow.

Aaron Leaf on a trans-border diaspora:

While Fula people live across a dozen or more West African countries, the Fula community of Brooklyn traces its roots primarily to the region around the Senegal river in modern day Mauritania and Senegal. At the intersection of Fulton and Franklin in Bed-Stuy, there are a handful of Fula businesses, an upstairs Mosque, and the national headquarters of the Pulaar Speaking Association, a Fula mutual-aid organization with branches in 26 American states including Alaska. I profiled leaders, attended events and shadowed artists to create these images from a thriving community.

Click to view slideshow.

Toni Akindele on hair cuts and celebrities:

Located off of McClellan Street, Peace & Love Barbershop and Hair-braiding is the focal point of the Ghanaian diaspora in the Bronx. While the shop’s services include haircuts, shaves, twits, weaves, and braids, the Bronx’s Ashanti people gather along McClellan to watch soccer matches and Nollywood films, play checkers, or enjoy kabob and jollof rice at Papaye Restaurant. Peace & Love Barbershop owner, Dada, caters to various Ghanaian community members from small children to up and coming artists, legendary athletes, and prominent community leaders. Given the diverse clientele of Peace & Love, it’s no surprise to find yourself waiting for the barber chair next to celebrities like 2Face Idibia!

Click to view slideshow.

Tuesday morning quarterbacking*

The meaningless football tournaments of the summer–mostly to the benefit of sponsors–are thankfully now over. Club football calendars from around the world have been synched (mainly to please European club owners), so this weekend was basically the start of the 2013/2014 season. This is also the first time North American fans of the English Premier League can watch every game. With the opening weekend out of the way, we can safely say NBC’s off to a good start–no one misses Eric Wynalda and Warren Bartlett or FOX’s plastic studio, but Piers Morgan as a guest host? And what’s with underestimating the football knowledge of American-based fans or presenting supporting a club is like picking different kinds of cereal? At least NBC have great commercials; though this one misses the mark. Starting today we’ll do a weekly post on the goings on of the weekend. The whole thing is of course futile since there’s no more weekend games in football–there’s professional football now everyday of the week. That said, we can’t promise deeper meaning and trenchant analysis. Lots of videos of goals and Wilfried Bony with his short off or discussions of his humongous thighs. Our primary goal is to follow the fortunes of African and players of African descent playing at the highest levels, so there’s going to be an overabundance of incidents, goals, ridiculousness and media from Western Europe. So here we go.

1. File under #EatMyGoal: Juventus–featuring Ghanaian Kwadwo Asamoah, Paul Pogba (above, who had come on as a substitute in the 23rd minute and scored the first goal) and Angelo Ogbonna (along with AC Milan’s Mario Balotelli one of the few black Italians in the Italian national team) answer Lazio’s racist fans with a 4-0 thumping (Italian commentary).

2. England’s Premier League kicked off on Saturday. In the first match of the day, Kolo Toure (who prays before matches) almost scored on his Liverpool debut against Stoke (who fielded French-Congolese midfielder Steven N’zonzi). But it was Kenya’s Victor Wanyama who impressed journalists and pundits the most as Southampton won 1-0 later that day. A penalty in the closing minutes conceded by West Brom’s Congolese midfielder Youssouf Mulumbu was the differene. The Telegraph’s Brendan McLoughlin described Wanyama’s performance: “Of the new faces on show, it was Victor Wanyama who caught the eye. Composed and commanding in the middle of the park, the £12.5 million signing from Celtic immediately looked at ease on his debut.” Even Paul Merson (former Arsenal striker, now a pundit on Sky), who once referred to Nelson Mandela as “the little black chap,” was impressed. But not before he mangled Wanyama’s last name. Watch for yourself.

3. Wilfried Bony, also known for his “legs like tree trunks” and for drinking coffee with no shirt on, scored on his debut for his new club Swansea against Manchester United. Bony transferred from a Dutch club to Swansea inspired Shola Ameobi, a British-Nigerian striker who plays for Newcastle, to conclude (in an interview with BBC Sport) that African football “is on the up.”

4. The star of that game was Robin van Persie (arguably the best player in the Premier League right now), but Daniel Nii Tackie Mensah Welbeck, who scored once last season, scored twice yesterday.

5. Finally, to end the first round of games in the Premier League, Yaya Toure scored this free kick as Manchester City put in four goals pass Newcastle.

6. Mozambican midfielder, Simão Mate Junior, made his debut for Levante in their 7-0 loss to Barca remembered more for  Lionel Messi’s two goals. (Still nice to see a Mozambican in La Liga.)

7. On Saturday South Africa’s Orlando Pirates beat Egypt’s Zamaek 4-1 in a group game in the African Champions League. This comes after they had beaten another Egyptain side Al Ahly 3-0 in Cairo. These are big wins given the reputation of Egyptian clubs in the continental competitions. But, we forget that Pirates were 1995 African champions and 1996 Super Cup champions. Highlights of the Pirates-Zamalek match courtesy of @MattMzansi’s Youtube channel (with South African commentators).

8. The Confederation of African Football has announced that the draw for the final round of 2014 World Cup qualifiers have been moved from Egypt to Morocco due to unrests. The event will still be on September 16th.

9. Supersport, Africa’s version of Sky Sports and ESPN, just announced a deal to screen Nigeria’s premier league. Quite a lot of money it seems, but as Mafika Sihlali reminded us on Twitter a steal considering Supersport paid $100 million for the rights to South Africa’s Premier Soccer League.

10. And, finally, AIAC’s Elliot Ross writes (for Al Jazeera’s new US channel) about Manchester City’s owners new venture: an MLS team in New York City. The big question: Will committed New York soccer fans take an American team seriously?

* Elliot Ross contributed to this post. The quarterbacking of the title is a nod to the mocking Twitter account @USASoccerGuy.

Escaping categorization: a Q&A with Ethiopian photographer Michael Tsegaye

It’s hard to catch photographer Michael Tsegaye; photography jobs frequently take him to remote parts of Ethiopia, while his personal work graces urban art meccas like Paris, New York and Bamako. He’s soon Scandinavia-bound; Oslo will host his next exhibition in Fall 2013.

Luckily Michael recently had time to meet for a macchiato at the Lime Tree café in the Bole neighborhood of Addis Ababa. Michael grew up in Bole, before the area become home to the never-ending construction of shiny new office buildings and restaurants. Originally a painter, Michael turned out to be allergic to oil paint, and switched to photography in 2003. Photography brought him out of the studio and into constant negotiation with places and people; Michael says he’s never looked back.

His photo series range from tackling social issues like climate change to pondering space and time across Ethiopia. Michael has worked in a variety of mediums and formats, and is increasingly in demand from a number of commercial and nonprofit clients. Despite exhibiting around the world, Michael regularly also debuts work in his hometown. We chatted over coffee about how the media portrays African artists, which subjects catch his attention, and what reaction to his photos has surprised him the most.

In the bio on your website, you state, “I try to escape being pigeonholed.” Why is defying expectations important to you? And who usually does the pigeonholing?

There is a certain expectation when you are called an African artist or an African photographer; it puts you in a kind of box. So for me I’m here, I’m in Ethiopia, I’m in Africa – but that doesn’t mean I do a certain kind of photography style. I can work anywhere, and my work should first reflect me as an artist – not as an African or Ethiopian.

Your website offers a glimpse into your portfolio. For each series there is a short introduction, but besides that short note, the viewer is left to interpret what he or she is looking at. This approach, one could say, you share with many artists. Is that a deliberate choice? Are you saying: this is art, and you, the viewer are free to interpret it as you want?

Some works on the website I put just for the viewer to see and imagine, but mainly the work is not meant to be presented online. I do exhibitions, where the photographs are the right size and accompanied by lighting. For exhibitions I also provide more explanation, and the picture becomes stronger, you can communicate more, interact with it. The website is just a glimpse.

Do you work with digital, film or both? How do you decide which medium fits the topic? When to use color or b&w?

For jobs I do digital, but otherwise it depends on the subject. For Future Memories, the Addis series, I think the title and the concept led me to shoot in black and white film. If it’s a long-term project I can process film whenever I want.

In a previous interview, you mentioned you prefer not to focus on poverty, yet poverty is also present in many of your photographs. How do you navigate this balance?

Ethiopia is viewed in many medias as a poor country, with hungry people. I don’t want to show that. It’s not only that we have poverty; there is life, there is everything here like any other country. I know that maybe it sells if I do poverty, but that shouldn’t make it the focus. At least that’s not my focus.

How do you decide to work on a particular topic?

It depends. Sometimes when I travel I see things and it builds up to a story. Or I decide to take on something that’s a big issue here – like for example when I did the Working Girls series which is about prostitution. Prostitution and HIV are big issues here, but I wanted to explore what it is like on the inside, what their daily life is like. Mostly we see how they are dressed, that they are out in bars, but there are other layers to every person.

So sometimes it’s a social issue I explore and sometimes it’s more personal – if I’m happy or depressed, certain things come out. It’s like solving a problem; you have an issue and you try to work with it and see where it goes.

In Working Girls, you document the lives of young women sex workers in Addis. How did the project originate, and for how long did you take photos? How did you gain the trust of the young women? Did you show the women the photos; if so, what were their reactions?

I was introduced to the women by a local NGO and I stayed with them for two weeks. I went in the morning to their place and I left when they started work at the bar. Most of my day every day was with them. It was a bit difficult in the beginning – they didn’t know what I was like, they didn’t trust me. I didn’t even take pictures the first two days, I just sat with them, and then when they started trusting me I started taking pics.

They came to the opening of the exhibition at the Harmony Hotel in Addis. They liked the photos, and they explained them to the audience.

I showed it also in Paris, and then the photos went online. There was only one guy who didn’t like the idea and the subject; he said Ethiopia is not like this, Ethiopia has many beautiful things. I think that was the only negative reaction – many people liked that it showed a social issue that should be discussed.

What is the public reaction to sex work as a practice in Addis, and Ethiopia more broadly?

I think partly sex work is accepted here, because it’s growing, the number of people involved in it. But it’s a mixed reaction; it’s accepted but it’s not accepted. For the girls, most of them change places – if the girl is from Addis she has to work in Awasa, because she doesn’t want her friends or neighbors to know.

If the girls are working in a bar, they say it’s usually safe. But some of them are working in the streets, so sometimes a guy will come with a gun who doesn’t want them to use a condom and force them [to have sex].

In several series you show the affects of development in Ethiopia through aerial shots which convey the magnitude of the changes, including the way the urban landscape in Addis is changing – Bole road was recently constructed and debuted for the African Union’s 50th Anniversary (although now appears under construction again), new apartment complexes are going up and older houses torn down. What do you hope your photos reveal about these changes?

I think in those photos I wish to show “know what you have when you lose it.” Addis is 120 or 150 years old, so there is a culture that developed in those village areas that were first settled [where there are now new condominiums going up] like Arat Kilo, so when they demolish them and move people to the new apartment buildings, there are certain things that go with them, some of which fit or don’t fit with this new kind of living structure.

For example in Sengatera, there is this main street, and along with it there used to be shops and garages. People used to collect discarded carton boxes from the shops to use as kindle for making injera. Older people lived off washing clothes and selling injera. The neighborhood had its own system and social fabric; the residents helped each other out, they shared shiro, they called each other for a coffee. Everybody knew everybody. So when people are taken out of that system and put in different places, it destroys the system that existed. For me it’s interesting to follow the people and see how they develop into the new system. And what they take with them.

Ethiopia, like most countries, has a complex religious history and many people identify as religious. In the series Chasms of the Soul you explore customs around commemorating life via photographs that are overlaid on gravestones. In North Road, you show gatherings of Christian monks; many of the photos in Ankober are grainy and partially obscured, lending them a mystical air. How do you approach religion in your work?

When I do personal work for me it’s all my experience. I went to a Catholic school and my family is Orthodox Christian. I’m also influenced by the Amharic literature, and poetry I grew up reading. The sense of spirituality in my work comes not only from religion, but from my sense of Ethiopia and how I perceive it.

What is the photographer community like in Ethiopia? Where have you found supporters and colleagues? What are the challenges?

I don’t hang out with photographers, I hang out with artists, painters. I come from an art background, and my friends are artists. Taking pictures is easy but producing an exhibition, producing a book, printing – those things can be difficult here. It can be hard to find a good space to exhibit.

What influenced you to become an artist?

I don’t know. I used to draw when I was a child. We used to have in our house books of Lenin and Marx, and on the covers they had portraits, and I would copy them. We also used to get a calendar from this guy who worked for a pharmaceutical company, and the calendar had pictures of Picasso and Dali. In school I illustrated bible stories.

But beyond that I had no exposure to art. After high school I joined Addis Ababa University in Sidist Kilo to study economics. And then I quit – it didn’t make sense to me. I told my mom I wanted to be an artist, and in our family I had a relative, Eshetu Tiruneh, who was an artist, so she took me to him and he was the one who trained me. I used to go to his office and he would show me slides, show me how light and shadow work. After that I joined an art school, but he was the one who first opened my eyes.

Which photographers do you admire, and any particular series of theirs?

I don’t follow photographers; I tend to see painting more than photography. I like Vermeer, Rembrandt, the abstract expressionists. Also Egon Schiele and the Russian painters.

You’ve had exhibitions around the world. Has anyone’s reaction to your photos ever surprised you? If so, how so?

If I sell, sometimes I get surprised.

What are you currently working on, and what is your next project?

My next exhibition is in Oslo, of the graveyard pictures series Chasms. Also my Addis Ababa project is ongoing. There’s also a long-term project I’m starting to work on more – portraits of older people across Ethiopia, all in close-ups. I like portraits and I think with older people you can see more – all the wrinkles.

With portraits, it’s a strange experience – you kind of invade someone’s privacy and they’re uncomfortable, but after awhile they become comfortable. Maybe they don’t have a choice – the mask is open and you really see them, you see what’s there.

To see more of Michael’s photographs, visit www.michaeltsegaye.com

Not quite spring, but not nothing

Yesterday, Monday, August 19, 2013, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who was the first woman to serve as Deputy President of South Africa (2005-2009), took the oath of office as Executive Director of UN Women. Then Over the weekend, Joyce Banda, first woman President of Malawi, was sworn in as Chairperson of the Southern African Development Community, or SADC (at the same time that H.E Robert Gabriel Mugabe was sworn in as Deputy Chair).

Stergomena Tax had been Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of East African Cooperation in the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania. Over the weekend, she was sworn in as Executive Secretary of SADC. Joyce Banda commented,

I, being the first female Chair, and you, being the first female Executive Director, shall be expected to demonstrate our total commitment and determination to continue with the work of our brothers and take SADC to the next level.

Banda went on to explain that any failure on the part of the two women would “let down fellow women who are counting on our success, as well as the girls of our region who look upon us as their role models.”

Bernard Mbembe, Tanzania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, noted, “This is the first time for a woman to hold such a high post in the community and we are truly honored to have a formidable candidate to secure such a post.”

Stergomena Tax was sworn in by Anastazia Msosa, Chief Justice of Malawi, the first woman to be Chief Justice of Malawi. Afterwards, she posed for photos with Joyce Banda, Anastazia Msosa, and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, the first women to be Chairperson of the AU Commission.

Quite a couple days. While Mlambo-Ngcuka, Tax, Banda and Dlamini-Zuma all have their critics, this is still a moment of some kind of promise and progress. It’s a pity that amidst all the handwringing that goes on in the Western and Northern media about, and often in the name of “African women,” that these convergent couple days went more or less unnoticed … yet again.

Chief Boima interviews … Alec Lomami

This summer I’ve been hired as a freelancer for Iggy, MTV’s global music website. The site is aimed at young people to introduce them to the idea that pop music is a global phenomenon (if today’s tech savvy youth already didn’t know). I get paid by Viacom every time I put something up there, but it’s a pretty quick moving stream of content, and posts tend to disappear rather quickly. I thought it would be good to run each one of my posts as a series over here on Africa is a Country. The site’s editor Beverly Bryan graciously agreed to let me cross-post. At times I’ll only be posting excerpts or introductions so you’ll still have to head on over to MTV Iggy for the full thing, but that simple click keeps me eating for now. I hope you dear AIAC readers understand. For the first installment, I interviewed the artist Alec Lomami…

Many artists today take the label international to a point where they in some ways become a nation unto themselves. As an artist with multi-layered influences, Alec Lomami is building his own nation in front of our eyes. He’s had quite a journey over the past couple of years, graduating college in Louisiana, moving to his mother’s house in North Carolina, flirting with the Afropolitan scene of New York, and most recently settling down at Stellenbosch University outside of Cape Town to pursue a master’s degree in philosophy after brief stints in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe.

The producer-rapper arrived on the scene a year and a half ago with the release of his single “Kinshasa,” a dedication to the capital city of his country of origin in the midst of a sort of falling out with his country of residence, the United States. Last week he finally released Mélancolie Joyeuse, a free EP on Bandcamp, with “Kinshasa” and three other songs that each speak to his personal experience over the past couple of years. This week, Alec graciously took time to do a late night interview, and answer a few questions between library sessions at the university.

In the wake of the immigration issue that you faced in the U.S., how did you end up in South Africa?

What happened is my mom ended up becoming a US Citizen, and she declared me and it was approved. But even when it’s approved it actually takes a while before your green card is evaluated and given to you. It depends on when you apply, so my green card would have been valuable in 2015 or 2016. So I was like, Well I didn’t want to stay in limbo again. So technically I would have been there … and there was a lot of red tape, so I just needed a break. I was like you know what, “I can just go somewhere and do what I gotta do, and if in 2 years it doesn’t work out I can come back, and if I like where I am I can stay.” I just needed to move. It’s not that I got deported, I just chose to leave.

So how do you feel about the coverage your immigration issue received when you first started getting press?

That’s actually a good question. When I first brought up the immigration [issue] it was kind of a passing comment, ’cause I was asked a specific question. The question was “what inspired the song Kinshasa?”

Well, I was in jail [immigration detention] when I wrote the song, and when I had the idea. Part of the reason I brought the subject up was, I felt like most of my friends didn’t even know the situation I was in. I had maybe one friend who knew my situation. I didn’t tell nobody. It’s kind of something that’s shameful and embarrassing. You hear your own friends say, “oh, these immigrants, they come in our country take our jobs” blah blah blah. So I don’t want to be like, “well I’m one of those,” and you don’t want to be judged, so I never even told people that sort of thing. So then one of the reasons I even wanted to talk about it was I felt like, it was a good way to show that those immigrants aren’t all criminal, they’re just normal.

I felt like I wanted [to bring it up] for a good place to start at least a conversation about the situation, but we never really got to that. No one ever really asked me a real question about it. It just became like a marketing kind of thing, like a cute thing to say. And it hit the high point for me when there was this one blog that wrote something like, “Alec Lomami, arrested in America, now in South Africa.” So I’m just like “what?” [After that] I didn’t even want to mention, or talk about it, just because it turned into something I didn’t intend it to. But, I don’t mind talking about it at all if I feel like we’re actually talking about something meaningful, versus, “oh this guy, poor him, he was in jail, and he did this song in jail” cause that’s not really what I wanted to do.

Also, I didn’t have that much music out at that time and I wondered if people were covering me because of this story, or because of my music?

Your story is very emblematic of this idea of Afropolitanism, or a globally mobile African diaspora. What do you think about that idea, especially after experiencing it from the US perspective, and now being in Africa?

I feel like views on it has changed ever since I’ve moved back [to Africa]. When I was in New Orleans, there was barely any Africans that I knew. I just wasn’t around a lot of Africans and stuff. So to me, when I first started doing music, and I discovered the New York scene, that was just something exciting and new for me. Before it was just me and my cousin having all these ideas, you know we want to do this, and that we didn’t like how Africa was represented. I didn’t even know there was other people thinking the same way. So that was exciting and stuff, that was pretty cool.

But when I moved, when I came back – and [in the States] we had all these ideas, when you think about Africans back home, we felt like the people back home weren’t necessarily carrying the flag of Africa like they should. They might not like the traditional music, they might not like… you know, so you have all these ideas – but when I came [home] I was like well, “for the most part people wouldn’t fault a young African-American who’s into hip-hop for not liking jazz because that’s not the music of his time.” But I feel like, in some ways in Africa, if you listen to rap, people say he’s influenced by the outside, he’s not into his own thing.

But all this just kind of nuanced the way I see a lot of these things. I feel like some of it is necessary for a person living in the West, just because you’re always confronted by the fact that you’re a minority, like you’re not from there that sort of thing, so you kind of always have to assert yourself a little stronger. But, when I went to Zimbabwe, when I went to Congo, people just are African. There wasn’t necessarily this strong need to want to overtly preach it out and that sort of thing. I don’t know I just try to figure out what the balance is.

Check the rest of the interview on MTV Iggy.

When Forbes starts asking questions about the wealth of Angola’s ruling family …

If a tree falls in a forest and no one heard it fall, did it really fall? If one is a billionaire in Angola and Forbes hasn’t yet reported on it, are they really a billionaire?

In a rather hastily researched article last January, US magazine Forbes declared Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angolan president in power for 34 years and counting, José Eduardo dos Santos, as Africa’s richest woman, estimating her wealth to be in excess of $3 billion. This in a country where most live in the type of squalor befitting a population that survives on less than $2 a day.

Forbes is well known for their superfluous lists of the world’s super rich. When they finally turned their attentions to Angola and passed off their original article as some sort of breaking news story, many Angolans and Angola-watchers felt understandably miffed that what they had known about and reported for years was suddenly big news, just because Forbes had “broken” the story. We don’t read Forbes that often, but we wonder if this sets an unusual precedent in terms of questioning people’s fortunes. Surely Isabel is not the only billionaire in the world whose wealth comes from highly dubious origins?

Anyone who researches or has any knowledge of Angola’s reality knows exactly who siphons off the country’s oil wealth; the subject has been extensively researched by numerous entities and new reports about corruption scandals continue to surface seemingly every year.

Nonetheless, Forbes has a huge reach and a solid reputation among the business community in Angola and elsewhere. And so it was that Jornal de Angola, Angola’s state-owned government mouth piece, only nationwide daily newspaper and constant subject of ridicule loudly sang Isabel’s praises in colossal front-page letters, announcing her as Africa’s first woman billionaire; for them it was proof that their beloved government was doing something right. They heralded Forbes’ billionaire coronation as a moment every Angolan should be proud of. Many Angolans, however, knowing the truth, were not so enthused.

Two days ago however, Forbes published a new story, stinging in its criticism and poignant in its wit, exposing Isabel’s wealth as the ill-gotten gains of a corrupt, unscrupulous regime.

Angolan social media was set on fire. The article, co-written by Mr. Marques, was biting. Information was presented factually in short but effective paragraphs, leaving little room for imagination or misinterpretation. It is a nice example of investigative journalism, albeit with a few flaws: some of us here at AIAC do still find the tone a little uncomfortable, almost as if having “broken” the news Isabel was rich, Forbes is now “breaking” the fact it came from corruption, while others question the typical smack about ‘African dictators’ ill gotten gains, as if capitalism is just fine and there is just some special disconnect in emerging economies.

Our gripes notwithstanding, the article was massively disseminated within and beyond the Angolan community on Facebook and Twitter with many asking, “how is this even news, again?” Portuguese media quickly picked up the story and more shares ensued.

This is highly embarrassing for the Angolan government, so concerned with its image abroad that it spends millions of dollars yearly in lobbies and PR firms in an attempt to clean up its image. All for naught, because when you Google Isabel Dos Santos’ name now, the Forbes story is second on the list right under her Wikipedia entry.

That Jornal de Angola and other government mouthpieces picked up the original story with such bravado further adds insult to injury. We are eagerly awaiting their reaction to the most recent piece.

What is also significant is the reaction from “Isabel’s People”. Numerous Angolan publications, such as Maka Angola, Folha 8, Semanário Angolense, to name a few, have published other versions of this very same story; none garnered so much of a flicker of interest from Isabel’s camp. But this is different; this is Forbes.

It seems that it doesn’t matter if Angolans know the truth – they’re insignificant. But if the outside world hears of it, through Forbes, well, it’s a different matter altogether.

Within 24 hours of the story’s release, Isabel, who was contacted numerous times by Forbes but refused to comment, issued a statement through a spokesperson denouncing the story. It also launched ad hominem attacks against Mr. Marques, stating that he “travels the world speaking ill of Angola and Angolans.” Not once did the statement seek to challenge the numerous, researched and documented allegations made in the article about the source of the ‘Princess’s’ wealth.

In the process, Isabel lost a golden opportunity to truly defend herself. Instead, the world got to know just how the Angolan regime works and just how it is possible for Africa’s richest woman to come from anonymity and become a billionaire in one of the world’s most corrupt countries.

We’ve certainly noticed, however, the wider trend of the President Dos Santos’ children attempting to pass themselves off as hardworking people with difficulties just like everyone else. Earlier this year there was Isabel speaking with Tom Burgis for the Financial Times, attempting to explain her wealth; it’s here that she made the widely derided comment about selling eggs when she was 6 years old.

Then there was Coreon Du interrupting prime time television to complain that his company wasn’t getting paid for services rendered to State television, even though his company already receives $40 million directly from the state budget and even though less than a week after his national plea, he bought Portuguese magazine Lux for $10 million. Most recently there was Zenu dos Santos attempting to explain that it’s perfectly normal for a 35-year old with limited experience to be named Chairman of The Board of his country’s new $5 billion Sovereign Wealth Fund, after he was appointed by a decree signed by … his father.

Isabel may well be a shrewd, skilled businesswoman, but there’s no denying the simple fact that she’s a billionaire because of who her father is.

Implying otherwise is an insult to Angolans.

Täschligate*

Retired pop legend Tina Turner, a long-time resident of Zürich’s ‘Goldküste’ (Gold Coast), the coveted area of marvellous villas on the lake of Zürich, had much to celebrate this year: she got married to her long-time companion Erwin Bach, a former music label executive, during a lavish ceremony at her lake-side villa ‘Algonquin.’ Much of the local ‘Cervalat Prominenz’ (Swiss celebrities) attended the wedding, but more important perhaps, the billionaire American media titan Oprah Winfrey was also among the guests. And her stay in Switzerland was not without consequences.

A few days after the wedding, Winfrey was interviewed–to promote the new film “The Butler” in which she stars–on the US television show Entertainment Tonight, a channel not known for generating hard news.

When asked about her experience of racism (had she ever been called the “N-word”), Winfrey referred to a recent incident in Zürich during which she was racially discriminated against by a shop assistant in an upscale fashion boutique. Winfrey told how the shop assistant, presumably white, refused to show her an expensive handbag that she could afford, most likely because she was black and the woman did not recognize her. Winfrey said she did not want to pull out her “black card”–in reference to a credit card–but wanted the assistant to treat her as any other rich shopper. Her comments, especially regarding racism in Zürich, went viral, and seemed to have taken everyone, the Swiss, the global media audience, and even Winfrey herself, by surprise.

It took a while for the shop assistant and the boutique owner to respond to Winfrey’s allegations. They eventually stated that it was a misunderstanding.

The shop owner, who was also invited to Tina Turner’s wedding, apologized half-heartedly to Winfrey. So did the Swiss Tourism board.

Reports made the connection between Winfrey’s experience of racism and the high anti-asylum seekers and anti-black foreigner sentiments in Switzerland.

Some bloggers even related the incident back to the refusal of Swiss banks to return deposits to Jewish victims of the holocaust and their descendants.

Others wrote that Winfrey was not only discriminated against by the fashion milieu, including the boutique assistant, because she was black but also because she did not have the slim body that went with money, fame, and being fashionable.

The shop assistant said that she could no longer sleep ever since the incident hit the internet and gave an interview to the biggest Swiss Sunday paper, and told her “side of the story.”

And then Winfrey apologized for airing the incident and that it got so well publicized.

Yet, she remained adamant that racism is real and that the incident did happen.

I am still trying to makes sense of all the hype. The media certainly has, but made things only worse. Some commentators misread “black card” as “race card.” One CNN presenter, Erin Burnett, accused Winfrey of playing the very race card and compared Winfrey to the prostitute that Julia Roberts played in “Pretty Woman”. (Work that one out for yourself.) Right-wing US media sites have definitely made “sense” of the incident and predictably claimed that Winfrey is using the ‘racism card’ strategically whenever she needed media coverage. Conveniently forgotten here is that Winfrey was responding to a question by King, and that she was also referring to another racist incident that does not suit the right-wing conspiracy argument.

In light of the Trayvon Martin case, I think it is impossible to understand this ‘media event’ without having in mind the attention the Martin case received and the suspicious attention that follows black people in public, and white, spaces.

Maurice McLeod, a London-based journalist, summarized this best in an insightful comment on The Guardian‘s Comment is Free site:

Oprah’s experience is no doubt unpleasant but her wealth and fame probably shield her from this most of the time. Being followed around expensive shops by over-keen security guards is nothing new to most black people.

But after all that–once we’ve condemned the racism–we still can’t work out why Winfrey needs a $38,000 handbag and why someone would sell her that? Here’s some suggestions what she could have bought with that money.

* ’Handbag-gate’ is how the Swiss German language media referred to the incident.