Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 572

All Senegal has left is a fight song

So in the end Senegal have been eliminated from the African Cup of Nations after two bad defeats–first to Zambia and today to one of the co-hosts Equitorial Guinea. And I thought they have an expensive strike force who play in European leagues. (Well, they don't seem to know about defense either.) Maybe they'll show pride in their final group match against Libya (who could still go through if they beat Senegal). At least their fight song, coordinated by the legendary DJ Didier Awadi, is worth dancing to:

The Spanish-Tanzanian Connection

Al-Akhbar English has an article up by Amal Ghazal, author of the recently published Islamic Reform and Arab Nationalism: Expanding the Crescent from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, 1880s-1930s, providing a brief and accessible historical review of the Omani empire (perhaps skewed a little to the Omani perspective), and its former capital Zanzibar, which Omanis refer to as their version of Al-Andaluz. I have to say that one of the things that impressed me the most during several visits to the Arabian/Perisan Gulf over the past couple of years were clear signs of African influence on the Peninsula. It made me think a lot about constructed notions of African vs. Arab identity, and the cultural fluidity that exists throughout the Indian Ocean in general.

That's the kind of history that isn't generally celebrated or even taught in schools in the West, and I got the impression that folks on the Arabian peninsula weren't so used to celebrating their African heritage themselves. So to learn that in Zanzibar there were nationalistic efforts to erase such histories doesn't come as a huge surprise.

On a tangential note: while many Muslims from West Africa live in Saudi Arabia and throughout the peninsula, in light of a history of the forced separation, it's fascinating that the majority of African immigrants I would run into in Dubai were Christians from East Africa. Globalization wins again I suppose.

The CIA's Charles Taylor Revelation

The international dimension of Liberia's civil war is rarely given the attention it deserves. The fact that Charles Taylor stands on trial for war crimes in Sierra Leone points to it partially, but often not realized are the roles that countries like Libya, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria played in initiating a truly multinational war. Recent revelations by the CIA — which have always been suspected — put the United States' role in the war at center stage, adding fuel to claims of outside intervention in Liberian politics, since its founding as a Western style nation-state, up until today.[image error]

In 2009, during his trial for war crimes in Sierra Leone, Charles Taylor claimed that the CIA had arranged for his "release" from a Massachusetts prison. This release was made to look like an escape, after which he was allowed to travel freely across international borders, build up a small fighting force in Libya, depose of the sitting president Samuel Doe, and eventually set up a rogue state government in the capital Monrovia. The CIA denied this, but a recently answered Freedom of Information Act claim, filed by The Boston Globe six years ago, has the CIA admitting to aiding Taylor's escape from prison.

In his book, The Mask of Anarchy, Stephen Ellis suggests that Samuel Doe, the president who was overthrown by Taylor, had cozied up to United States in the early years of his presidency, becoming a Reagan ally in the hopes of garnering the favor and resources that a strong relationship with the Americans would bring. The U.S. saw Liberia as a possible military foothold in Africa in order to fight Gaddafi, the Soviet Union, and other unfriendlies on the continent. Staying true to Doe's wishes, the U.S. overlooked a questionable election and various human rights abuses, including the brutal public executions of his political opponents.

Ellis contends that the U.S. stayed true to Doe until his demise, and that Taylor's escape from prison was a mystery. But, while the Americans were backing Doe publicly, the revelation that the CIA gave material support to coup plotters exiled from Liberia, including freeing Taylor, suggests that Doe's brutality may have caused him to fall out of favor with the U.S. government privately. This is especially interesting since one of the main criticisms launched at current president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, both by her political opponents and Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is her material support for Charles Taylor in his plots against Doe.

In the wake of the Cold War, such stories of international meddling by the U.S. government are going from speculation to confirmed facts. Though such revelations can teach us more about the past, the present state of affairs needs just as much scrupulous attention. American military interest in Africa in general is at an all time high. And because of its strong historical relationship with the United States, perhaps it's not surprising that Liberia is now a key delegate for the military monitoring force, Africom.

While whistle blower organizations like Wikileaks remain under attack, rumors abound about the real reasons for intervention in Libya, there is speculation about a presence in Uganda, and the labeling of political and economic dissidents from the Western Sahel to the horn of Africa as Al-Qaeda or pirates justifies covert military action. It seems that perhaps the future of military manoeuvring in Africa is just as unknown and out of the hands of the people as it ever was.

#Jan25 Egypt

One year ago Mostapha El-Shafey took this now iconic photo of a protestor, Abdulrahman Ezz, confronting police in Meydan Tahrir. Today, Egyptians aim to take back Tahrir and the revolution. There will be many more photos and videos of bravery, of violence, of fear and of triumph. As I now reflect on my thoughts from last year (I was very annoyed with the asinine media coverage, if you'll recall), I find myself just as hopeful as before. The election results may not have been ideal, the military refuses to relinquish power while maintaining damaging neo-colonial economic and political relations with the West, patriarchy and rigid conservatism persist (and I'm obligated to cheer on Tunisia in lieu of Egypt in the African Cup of Nations), but Egyptians have been publicly and fearlessly resisting SCAF since Mubarak's ouster.

This is no small thing. The vast majority of active Egyptian organizers have been realistic. There were no dreams that things would change overnight (or even over the span of a year), no denial of the realities of global social, political, racial and economic hierarchies. Just the ability to imagine and put into action the quest for a free Egypt, a free Palestine, a radical change throughout Africa and the world. True potential for liberation has always depended upon radical imagination — that is, the ability to see and craft a world beyond what we understand it to be. Nawal el Saadawi writes in her autobiography, A Daughter of Isis, that "imagination for me was like air. I had to breathe it."

So while we wait again to see what happens in Egypt over the next few weeks, months, and years, think of the Egyptian and Tunisian artwork Orlando Reade has been sharing on the blog (and the street art well covered in many other spaces). Think of the new and old musical traditions of Egypt and their role in this movement. The media may be preoccupied with Barack Obama's next speech on 'what Egypt needs' or the spectre of an 'Islamic takeover' in North Africa, but we aren't.

In Search of Maputo

* Guest Post by David Patrick Lane

Somewhere along the architectural and art deco eye candy scale between Miami Beach and Mogadishu sits Maputo. Mozambique's capital wears its decorative dress well. It may be a touch over accessorized with Marxist Leninist Avenues and side street dwellings may be less about curvy shapes, lines and pastels than the practicalities of providing shelter and cheap pedicures, but even now as Chinese cranes create condominiums, the city retains an ornamental cache that continues to attract students of architectural history and post modernist design. In 'Searching for Pancho', a short film by South African filmmaker Christopher Bisset about the work of Pancho Guedes, perhaps the most renowned of all building designers — about five hundred structures all told — in what was then Portugal's piece of the action, Lourenço Marques, is surveyed. The film is a cute piece of work.

A cynical critic may however assume it was a part of a tourist information campaign, such are the similarities to the highly successful "Incredible India" promotion. A solitary student (played by Stephen Hitchcock) with stumble and a knapsack slips through the city, scribbling notes in his moleskin. He goes almost unnoticed, save for Pancho's buildings and murals, which occasionally become animated and engage the curious young man. This is magical Mozambique. The cinematography is polished. A classical Spanish guitar score and upbeat percussion accompany the visuals. The architectural story is compelling. The cartoon animation is colourful and creative. The buildings are expressing themselves. Wonderful! So what is it that bugs me about this piece? If the buildings can be given license to bounce into life, then why not complement them with the energy of the people who actually live, play and work in them.

Lourenço Marques was already on the art deco map when 7-year old Amancio d'Alpoim Miranda Guedes arrived with his family from Lisboa in 1932, and 'Pancho', as he became known, absorbed Africans and their art into his work. It is one of his signatures, and what distinguishes his work from that of his American and European contemporaries. Pancho was blending the Movimento Moderno with Mozambican material at much the same time that multiracial Mozambique was becoming an unofficial fact of the colonial nation. Pancho had no official Frelimo affiliations, as far as I can tell, but he was known to have associated with Frelimo supporters and sympathizers. It was probably hard to not have had such relationships as an artist in such a restless late colonial entity. Perhaps his most important contribution in this context was his mentorship of the late Malangatana Ngwenya, arguably Mozambique's most prolific painter and poet. Malangatana had been a ball boy at Guedes's tennis club.

Pancho chose to pack up and leave Lourenço Marques when the masses and middle classes inserted carnations into the rifles of relieved conscripts on the streets on his motherland in 1974. Mozambique would soon go through serious convulsions and almost crack in a nasty civil war. The work of Malangatana Ngwenya best reflects this most horrific of violent periods. There is little call for architects and building designers during times of impending war, so far be it from to me suggest Pancho Guedes should have remained.

It was an added tragedy of Portuguese colonialism in Africa that their departure when it came was vindictive and ruinous. It is hard to know what contribution Pancho could have made had he stayed. Novelist Mia Couto — born a generation later than Guedes to Portuguese parents in Beira — did manifest and contribute to his newly free and independent homeland working as journalist for Frelimo, and later publishing novels, such as the acclaimed "Terra Sonâmbula" or "Sleepwalking Land", which best tells the story of Mozambique's 16 year civil war. But for Pancho the Chair of the Architecture Department at Witwatersrand University in nearby Johannesburg was a more appealing place to consider future building design. (Guedes's appreciation of his esteemed position in Apartheid South Africa is not something of which I have knowledge. The change outsiders or those engaging or doing business with the copybook racist society that was Apartheid South Africa hoped to achieve remains an emotive debate for some.)

Pancho Guedes now resides in Sintra in Portugal, an almost Disney-like fairytale manifestation of Portuguese grandeur, where he continues to be inspired and work. His legacy is his immense contribution to Mozambique's architecture, and Bisset's film does do that work some justice. In that respect, Bisset has directed a slick and successful short art film.

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There is I sense something more to this being just a successful reflection of Pancho Guedes's career, however. Bisset's short if ever selected by an ad agency could form part of a tremendous branding exercise and help turn Mozambique into a high-end tourist destination. Is that the subtext or potential upside for the Director here? Am I being too cynical, again? Probably. But as someone who spent a little time among Mozambicans I do not want to see their long dance of liberation end next to some high-powered dishwasher at the back of some random foreign-owned four or five star identikit hotel. Mozambique is growing at a rapid pace and tourism — architectural and urban tourism, eco-tourism, wildlife tourism and straight up sandy beach tourism — should be a part of what sustains that growth, but after witnessing the recent bread riots first hand, I am weary of the damage unfulfilled dreams can do to the psyche of a people. The danger is not the boom, but rather getting up close to it and finding it hard or impossible to access.

My raw reaction to watching Bisset's tour of Maputo is that the director fails to get close enough to those who really bring Pancho's buildings to life.

Bisset's short first picks up speed in a Chappas or minivan. A pair of black hands has the wheel. The driver's identity is immaterial, an excusable omission for arts sake, probably. However, what struck me as unusual was how spacious and salubrious the ride was. No shuffling of folks up and down the seats. One lady sits in front of our solitary traveller. They don't interact. Again, they don't need to. And they may not have been able to communicate in a common language anyway. But it is the appearance of our esteemed traveller's headphones that first gave me serious pause. He's on a journey to find Pancho, and expand his artistic mind along the way, one presumes. Yet somehow the stereo stands out as a symbol that suggests to me he is stuck or cocooned in his own world. Nothing wrong with that, but if there is something good to see, then surely there's something to good to hear. Maputo may offer the usual cacophony of city traffic sounds, but it also comes with the most beautiful Bom Dias, Obrigados and De Nadas you could ever imagine. And those are words even a mute Montenegrin could understand. And yet our intrepid explorer has his ears muffed in a pair of Senheisers, when he for me should be listening to the streets. He's doing his own thing, but that is not the way to pick up a little Shangaan, the local language of folks in Maputo.

A street merchant raises his wears. A map of Mozambique is a common two for one item on the streets of Maputo. The vendor is obscured. The rider issues a wave. This is not a film about street commerce. A small school kid passes by. Again I try to tell myself it's not about the people, it's about the art. A wounded war veteran and his four-wheel Zimmer frame also get a cameo in the foreground. It's hard not to pass by a limping or legless man in Maputo. But to catch the expression on such a man's face would also tell the story of a million dead Mozambicans. We don't get to see the child's or the man's face, like we didn't see the bus driver's face.

I want to know the story of Pancho's art because I know it was not conceived in a studio, but among the people on the streets. It then strikes you that Bisset's Maputo just doesn't seem as bustling or as busy as one remembers it. Perhaps Bisset had chosen to work in the rarefied early light when most folks, save for the padeiros, are still asleep. I remind myself for the fifteenth time that this is arty production, not a social documentary. All the same I did savour the view of the Cantembe ferry jetty as our student skipped along the wall of the Avenida 10 de Novembro. I fondly remember many an evening saying goodnight to the African Sun from that Corniche.

Despite my social and stylistic reservations, Bisset is serious about only portraying Pancho's work. He avoids the temptation to incorporate a glimpse of the neoclassical Central Train Station as his protagonist walks away from one of the most iconic structures in Maputo. Eiffel's Casa de Ferro is also excused the passing-by indulgence. Avenida 24 de Julho gets the prolonged shutter exposure treatment, perhaps if only to remind the viewer that there are folks in Maputo with places to be and people to see. There are 1.8 Million folks in metro Maputo, after all.

The film picks up speed the longer it goes as the solitary student slips in and out of building after building. The shapes, the faded colours, the details are all there, and not just in grandiose churches, but also in regular abodes designed by Pancho. The visitor scales a gate, climbs a magical stairwell and adjusts the washing on the roof of a Pancho apartment building to get a better view of Maputo. Pancho's legacy is clearly there functioning for the people. There are fewer things more important than a good shelter. It's a fantastic legacy. I would find it fun explaining to the current residents that they occupy homes that somehow combine the best of the ancient dwellings of Cappadocia with the futuristic home of the Jetson family.

Bisset's student splays out across the back row of his minibus on his way out of town. He's proud of his adventure. A couple of Pancho's creations join for him for the journey. He's had a terrific experience passing through Maputo discovering the work of Pancho Guedes. I enjoyed the film for what it was. I appreciated the skills of all those who contributed to it. I wish them luck with future productions. I only wish that the folks who were the souls of the buildings they came to visit had been given more than just cameos, props and tokens passing by on the screen. All this required was just one real and reciprocal local human connection, moment or touch.

Watch 'A Procura de Pancho/Searching for Pancho' here.

* David Patrick Lane has written about media consumption in Mozambique for AIAC before.

Tunisian Coke

The Africa Cup of Nations (CAN) kicked off on Saturday, and things are already getting pretty interesting. Tunisia have beaten Morocco 2-1 last night. With Morocco being one of the favorites in the tournament, the win was unexpected and even Tunisia's coach Sami Trebelsi admitted to being "surprised" at the "standard of play" by the North African nation. Perhaps the team's rigor  can be attributed to the national pride that has come with their recent revolution, which triggered the events that eventually became the Arab Spring. Not ever one to miss out an opportunity to ride any (Mexican?) wave, Coca-Cola have cashed in on the spirit of revolution, as they did in post- Mubarak Egypt as Sophia Azeb has pointed out. They released this video for the Africa Cup of Nations with Si Lemhaf, one of the music groups who gained fame for their catchy videos during the revolution through social media. Luckily for Coke the Tunisian colors match theirs; it makes product placement just that bit more seamless.

It is worth noting this article by Paul Garver (shout out again to Sophia) where he points out that trade unions played a huge role in mass revolt in Tunisia, the same unions who took on Coca-Cola for their abusive behavior towards Tunisian workers,  and their "precarious" employment contracts. Which makes their self – positioning as the "drink of the people" in Tunisia seem all the more sinister.

Get Up, Stand Up

Tunisian born artist Amel Bennys, who works between Tunis and Paris, has just had her first solo show at the Selma Feriani Gallery in London. 'Get Up – Stand Up' includes 'Fin de Partie', a series of heavy-duty mixed media works on canvas (seriously interesting – see below), and a selection of sketch-books. Her sculptures are due to be shown in London in Hanover Square this May.

British Rapper Nate's 'Africa'

British rapper Nate sampling Hugh Masekela's Stimela in his 'Africa' (for which he gets some help from Cyclonious, Dark Matter and Jalex). The video seems to have been recorded in a Gambian coastal town but I'm not quite sure which one. Bakau maybe?

The New South African Superstar

Ten seconds before the New Year's midnight in a Johannesburg night club the dancing slows down. The patrons are counting down the end of 2011. I am watching all this on SABC 1, the most popular TV channel in South Africa. Once it's officially a new year, the show cuts into a music video: the first song of 2012. The house beat starts playing. This could be the intro of any South African house song – they differ particularly little from each other. In a black and white video, the South African super star DJ Sbu drives around miming to smooth female vocals. This song is called "Lengoma" and it wasn't originally a dance song but now it has been remixed by this jovial looking driver. The vocals are sung by Zahara – the new favorite of South African record buying audiences.

It's not that surprising that Zahara should ceremoniously kick off 2012 since she has been dominating 2011 with her song and album "Loliwe." Even the DJ Sbu remix of "Lengoma" won Hit Single of the Year in 2011 Metro FM Awards. Zahara has become the top pop artist in South Africa in a fairly short time but curiously enough, for the media, she has remained something of an enigma because she doesn't appear to have any obvious unique selling points beside her talent.

When she's being written about there aren't any scandals and eccentricities available to be dwelled upon to describe her personality. What we get to read are comparisons – we need to understand everything through comparisons, it seems. Or at least that's what the music journalist seem to think. The comparisons roughly fall into two main categories often depending on the depth of the article in question: those made by journalists who compare her to someone else because they are lazy or on a tight deadline and those comparisons made by journalists who in a self-congratulatory manner are showing off their vast musical knowledge. Neither one of these are particularly helpful in gaining any understanding on anything but the music journalism itself.

Her style is effortless. No weave or bikinis, but a tied afro and an acoustic guitar. Perhaps the familiarity Zahara has doesn't remind us of someone famous. She is much more like someone regular with an enormous amount of talent — the media doesn't get tired of talking about just how down to earth she is. It has become her public image. In interviews she resembles more an athlete than a performer, but curiously enough the media has spun her down-to-earthness into something out of this world. I can only imagine this to be awkward for her, but I guess it comes with the package they call success.

Zahara's Afropop sound is organic. I don't know Zahara personally, so I can't say what she thinks, but I am left with a distinct sense that she's content with her position in the lineage of the tradition. She doesn't try hard to revive something old, but rather actively lives and manifests the point where that tradition of Afropop is at today. She is like no one and everyone at the same time, and her music is all very simple. Very catchy. It's what pop music is all about.

But to assume that being able to make catchy songs and perform them is enough to be featured on the cover of the South African Rolling Stone magazine (cover above), as she has been, and enjoy seemingly never-pausing airplay is very naïve. A young woman from the Eastern Cape doesn't get airplay because of herself but because of the people in whose interest her success is. TS Records, to which Zahara is signed, is a South African label that has a distribution deal with multinational major record corporation EMI through CCP records. It is owned and run by TK Nciza (who 'discovered' Zahara) and hit maker DJ Sbu.

Regardless of Zahara's 'imageless image,' her image is looked after by TK's wife, the former Mafikizolo singer and now solo artist Nhlanhla Nciza. These are well connected people. They make Zahara a success. They give her the credibility that sells. They are, as American music author Nelson George would say, the permanent business, who will be there whether the follow-up sells or not. They are the ones who make her a business.

None of this to be cynical though – these are standard practices in music industries and they are hardly Zahara's fault. Perhaps they are no one's fault, but that depends on your views on music as commerce as well as culture; and it is both of those things. None of this is to take anything away from Zahara's undeniable talent and appeal. While her album is produced very professionally by Robbie Malinga, an artist himself, Zahara doesn't rely on technology to sound good. Just with her presence and guitar she is able to put up a show that is fit for kings. It's just to say that there are numerous talented individuals and groups out there who never get the big breakthrough in the traditional sense of the word. Some of them enjoy varying degrees of local stardom and many perhaps go and get another job as the music doesn't pay the bills. The South African music industry model – to a large extent due to the country's slow and expensive internet connections – rarely, if ever, allows artists without some capital and infrastructure behind them to be nationally known. Yet.

Zahara's "Loliwe" album has sold well over 300 000 copies, which in South Africa is a huge achievement. Not all artists and albums by TS Records reach that point. Not many albums from any label do this well so no one can deny the role that the talent plays here. Perhaps the relationship between Zahara's cultural aesthetics and her labels business acumen and connections are symbiotic in a fairly equal manner, but much more than a Cinderella story this is music business as usual. Only this time, they have found something other than sex, booze or affluence to market.* Zahara is not trying to artificially enhance herself and the fact that this sells records – more than anything else – is a very promising sign indeed.

* Not surprisingly, some South African bloggers compare her unfavorably to other performers who in the bloggers' estimation appear more at ease with their sexuality.

Music Break. Bibo

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A preview of what to expect from French soul singer Bibo's internet mixtape "Demain des L'Aube" scheduled for May 2012.