Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 577

'The West is no longer the Motor of History'

UCLA history professor Vinay Lal speaks to the Indian website Newsclick about "the new movements developing in different parts of the world–from West Asia, North Africa to Europe and the United States. He sees the possibility of new politics emerging from this and how it can reconfigure the nation state." There's also a Part 2 to the interview with Lal. It may be worth spending a day or two with Newslick interviews with experts to educate yourself on some refreshing, other than Western or non-hegemonic viewpoints on what gets covered as "international news."

* H/T to the latest edition of Zunguzungu's regular "Sunday Reading" posts, which I can never finish by the time the next Sunday comes around. Feels like graduate school.

Remembering Tunisia

The 14th of January marks the first year since the Tunisian people pushed the country's despot Ben Ali out of his palace and witnessed him flee the country into exile in Saudi Arabia. Today sees thousands of Tunisians come out to the street again, demanding jobs, dignity and recognition of the martyrs slain during the weeks of unrest before Ben Ali's escape. One of the many moving works remembering those Tunisian citizens that were killed, are the portraits by the young French-Algerian artist Bilel Kaltoun. Three months after the January revolution, he drew some 40 life-sized figures from the victims' photographs and placed them in and around the streets of Tunis. More pictures of his 'Zoo Project' below and on his website (click on the arrows in the right side of the screen to browse).

Friday Music Bonus Edition

Pitcho added archival video material (and a short fragment of the brilliant 2008 film 'The Class'/'Entre Les Murs') to the title track of his Crise de Nègre album. It's becoming a trend, but it works. Friday means we have four more:

DJ Mpula gets help from Ngongo on 'Ka Heueh':

Last month, Vieux Farka Touré and his father's friends and former band paid tribute to Ali Farka Touré in Bamako. (Great footage by Bamako Culture):

Popular Kenyan bands P-Unit and Souti Sol got themselves a hit:

And the quietest song on Tinariwen's masterful album now also has the quietest video:

The Swimmers

'The Swimmers' is a series by South African photographer Carla Liesching.

Egypt on Film

If you're anywhere near Brussels this weekend, a stop at BOZAR (the Centre for Fine Arts) might be worth your time. As part of Aflam, a new Belgian 'festival of Arab cinema', the Centre has programmed seven new and recent films about Egypt, with some of the directors attending. Three documentaries: At Night, They Dance (trailer above) by Isabelle Lavigne and Stéphane Thibault is a family chronicle about a clan of women in which the profession as a dancer is passed down from mother to daughter. The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni, a documentary by Rania Stephan, recounts the career of the legendary and influential Egyptian actress, "who was to Arab cinema what Umm Kulthum was to Arab song":

Omar Shargawi and Karim El Hakim's 1/2 Revolution tells their version of last year's revolution through footage filmed while in the middle of it:

And four fiction films. 18 Days is a collection of ten short films, both real and imagined stories, made by ten directors focusing on the revolution:

The 2010 film El-Shouq ('Desire' or 'Longing') by director Khaled El-Hagar explores the goings-on in an unnamed Alexandrian street and the lives of its inhabitants. The film was nominated to represent Egypt in the Best Foreign Language Film section at this year's Oscars:

Hesham Issawi's Cairo Exit tells the story of Amal and Tarek:

And Ibrahim El Batout's Hawi "looks at the idleness, hopes, and disillusion of everyday life in Alexandria as experienced by a range of characters played by non-professional actors":

Nas's Angola Blues

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In "If I ruled the World," Nas raps: "I'd open every cell in Attica send em to Africa." Then in the 1998 Hype Williams feature film "Belly" (costar DMX), Nas's character wants to move his girlfriend and child to the continent as a way out of his life as a gangster. (He does not specify which country.) More recently Nas collaborated on the decent concept album "Distant Relatives" with Damian Marley, in which they aim to engage with the music of Africa. (They ended up sampling, among others, the music of Fela Kuti and Mulatu Astatke). Anyway, for all his symbolic politics, Nas has always made it clear he'll play in Africa if the money is right and not because of some sentimental reason. (In video footage taken at a press conference a few years ago, Nas claims to have visited the continent three times.) Well, it seems over the New Year's Nas had another opportunity to play in an African country. He was supposed to play a big party/concert in the Angolan capital. The Angolan promoter even wired him a down payment of $300,000 to get him to commit. In the end Nas did not turn up. No one would have cared, except that his American promoter as well as his son were detained by Angolan authorities in Luanda and charged with fraud. Nas, meanwhile, claims it's all a miscommunication, and went out partying with Lebron James, a basketball player who once posed for a Nike ad as a Mobutu-like figure sitting on a throne with lions at his feet.

Sorie Kondi wants to go to Texas

A small team of folks (including myself) are trying to help raise funds to get Sorie Kondi to SXSW in Austin, Texas this upcoming March. If you're unfamiliar with Sorie, check out the many profiles done on him c/o Vickie Remoe, the BBC, and We Own TV.

His songs, like "Without Money No Family" tell stories of a tough life, so expectedly, Sorie would never be able to afford the ticket to come the U.S. on his own. We're appealing for help to make it happen. Visit the Kickstarter page to make a donation. He's got some great incentives up there too!

Also, look out for my own remix of "Without Money No Family" soon on my latest EP, African in NY.

The Palm Wine Drinkard

Without a doubt, my favorite group of recent times has to be NYC outfit Das Racist. Dismissed by some as nothing more than stoner rap, to me they are a fresh new voice in hip hop. Two of the members are of Indian descent and they play around with "brown" identity in America, and perhaps globally. With lyrics like: "They say I act white, but sound black / but act black, but sound white / but what's my sound bite supposed to sound like? " they are able to challenge racial perceptions while at the same time not taking themselves too seriously.

One of the rappers in Das Racist, Kool A.D., recently released a mixtape entitled The Palm Wine Drinkard, named after the seminal Nigerian novel by Amos Tutuola. Kool A.D. in particular is a fascinating if unpredictable artist, referencing Edward Said in one track and then singing "booty in the air!" in the next. In this one he seems to be just having fun. You be the judge.

Download the mixtape here.

'The whole African American thing'

NBC's "Late Night with Jay Leno" is hardly considered a cultural arbiter anymore (except for its baby boomer viewers and for the mostly white supporters of the Republican Party) but in South Africa the appearance of comedian Trevor Noah on the show last week is big news. Noah is a big name back home for his send-ups (more like impressions) of popular politicians and racial stereotypes, some more successful than others, and for shilling for a mobile phone company. Nonetheless, having heard so much from people in South Africa about how funny Noah is, and happy to root for fellows from the continent, I was excited for his first appearance on American TV. Significantly, Noah was apparently also the first African comedian to appear in the stand-up slot for young comedians on the show (a few big name African-American comedians are regular featured guests already). Sadly, Noah's performance was unfunny and for the most part offensive. After doing some decent jokes about the economy and his background — his mother is black, his father white — he then proceeded to tell jokes about what he called "the whole African-American thing." What followed — in what was supposed to be an "African-American accent" — were some tired generalizations and stereotypes of African Americans about language, black people's names and of African Americans "trying really hard to reconnect with Africa." Halfway through I could not bear it anymore with the exaggerated mannerisms, including "walking" like African Americans and its supposed relation to gun play, etcetera. I assume there was to be some irony or edginess in there. But I could not find it.  I suppose I can't see funny or get a good joke. I couldn't help recall Steve Coogan's advice for comedians: "Comedy can't always be safe, and sometimes entertainers need to challenge social orthodoxies. But 'saying the unsayable' is different from simply recycling offensive cliches."

As a friend wrote to me after I sent him the video: "I laughed through about the first quarter and then cringed throughout the rest, more at the [mostly white] audience's laughter than anything … I wonder what his routine would be like in front of a room full of 'African Americans'." Luckily, few people saw it. Back in South Africa the newspapers went on about how Noah is "taking America by storm" and about being Proudly South African.

If you still want to watch it.

'Fictional' Cape Town

Yesterday while quickly blogging about the Carl's Jr commercial shot that utilized Cape Town as a stand-in for Istanbul, I was reminded of French photographer Cecile Mella's project "Fictional Cape Town." There Mella documented the manufactured worlds produced by advertising firms using locations around Cape Town as a stand-in for European, British or American scenes. "… A characteristic wine farm is transformed into a Dutch homestead, or a Long Street café becomes a Parisian bistro for a day or two."  Not surprisingly these ads contribute to the racial political economy of the city. There's lots of work for mostly local and expatriate whites as actors, models and extras in front of cameras. Blacks, with few exceptions, it seems do lots of the heavy labor in the industry. Why Cape Town? It is cheaper — the favorable exchange rate — to shoot and it comes with good infrastructure. Mella has written that the advertising industry "semi-colonizes slices of the city," but that she hopes attentive viewers can catch the glimpses of the real Cape Town in her images of these "crooked landscapes" manufactured worlds. Here we're posting some of the images. The one above is for a "worldwide campaign for a cereal brand commissioned by UK-based clients." Below, the Company's Gardens are transformed into Poland for  "a national campaign for the Polish branch of a global phone network company."

Below, Mamre, a mission station town of mostly working class coloured people 50km north of Cape Town, is transformed into a colonial fantasy in a "national campaign for a Middle East telecommunication company."

Filmed on Keerom Street (the site of the High Court), this scene below is from a "production for a Korean electronics company advertising a digital camera."

Finally, she also includes the occasional image like the one below where a black staffer does the hard work ahead of the shoot captured in the first image.

For more details, see her website.