Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 681

Music Break

The new video for Nigerian Afrobeat funkster Bantu's tune "I'm Waiting." It's part of the soundtrack of the new film,"Relentless" (set in Lagos) directed by Andy Okoroafor. The single/video features Nneka.

Via Emma Arrogundade.

Photography: Duran Levinson

Good biscuits at the UN social security forum at Cape Town International Convention Center, South Africa. December 2010.

Explore Duran Levinson's work here.

 

'Who's Telling Our Story?'

Journalism in Africa: Who's Telling Our Story?

Friday, February 18, 2011

New York University

Puck Building, 295 Lafayette Street

Rudin Conference Room

At 5.30pm.

Featuring:

Nassirou Diallo (Committee to Protect Journalists), Ebba Kalondo (Media Institute of Southern Africa), Noel King (The Takeaway, WNYC), Shamira Muhammad (NYU Global Journalism '11), Femi Oke (The Takeaway, WNYC), Brooke Silva (Earthchild Production).

Cosponsored by: NYU Africa House and NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute

Via Din Clarke.

'The Real Housewives of Civil Rights'

It's suppose to be funny. Winnie Mandela even makes an appearance.

Music Break

I have this track (and video) on repeat. The Sway Machinery featuring Malian singer Khaira Arby, "Gawad Teriamou." The video was filmed in and around the Malian capital Bamako, "… while the Sway Machinery was recording their [new] album ["The House of Friendly Ghosts, Vol. 1;" out February 8] with masters of African music including Khaira Arby, Vieux Farka Toure, Djelimady Tounkara and Super 11."

'First Time in Sudan Africa'

Another one of those videos I was forwarded over the break. It's become something of a rite of passage for rappers to visit Africa. For example this video of Busta Rhymes refusing to let an elderly Senegalese woman after visiting Goree Island in Senegal last year, briefly went viral.  In the video above it's the turn of the rapper Cassidy (he had brief hits with the songs "Get No Better" and "My Drink and My Two Step") visited the African continent for the first time. He traveled to Sudan late last year. Lots of static ensue.

We Are Not All Clay Shirky

Sophia Azeb

Not to say that technology did not play a role in aiding the world's ability to follow and support the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, but we must understand that Twitter and Facebook were mostly utilized by Egyptians (such as Wael Ghonim) in order to continue spreading information on the locations and times of protests. When Mubarak's regime, with the complicity of Vodafone and other communications companies, quickly shut down internet and mobile connections, the protests continued. In fact, they grew larger. And this was solely by word of mouth combined with the infuriatingly obvious lack of coverage by Egyptian state-owned television coverage. When you cannot find a single stall open to buy bread, and your ful vendor is running down the street with hundreds of others, waving an Egyptian flag over his head, does one really need Twitter or Facebook to figure out that something is happening?

Twitter and Facebook is a lifeline for those of us unable to contact our families back home and hear first-hand what they are hearing, doing and thinking. Al Jazeera Arabic's coverage was addictive but I certainly spent more time on Twitter communicating with those closer to home for most of my news. For that, I am immensely grateful that these particular tools of social media exist. I will not, however, concede the incredible unity and power of the people to their use of social networking tools. The time I spent translating speak-to-tweet messages into English is not a confession that the revolution could not have happened without Twitter, but something that made many limited to watching the revolution unfold feel useful, if only for a short time, in advancing our fight for freedom.

For the non-Egyptian, non-Yemeni (again, the list goes on) observer in the West, Al Jazeera's English coverage (and the effect of the manufactured controversy surrounding Al Jazeera in the first place) introduced many to these revolutionary movements who would otherwise lack access to such detailed coverage. During the first week or so, live communiqué translations, video feeds of Meydan Tahrir, Alexandria, and the shifts in Egyptian state-run news service coverage would have been limited to the Arabic-speaking world without Al Jazeera English. Hell, even the White House depended on good ol' Al Jazeera to get past Mubarak's internet shutdown. It is still necessary to remember, however, that Al Jazeera provided a service (an amazing one, of course) to those of us outside of Egypt. Egyptians used the presence of Al Jazeera news cameras to their own end – for instance, displaying the police identification cards of the "pro-Mubarak supporters" – and we benefited from the people's ingenuity.

In the end, it is the people of Tunisia and Egypt who threw out the regimes that were suffocating them. In the end, for Algeria, Iran, Gabon, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan and Morocco (maybe soon, Puerto Rico?), it will be the people who are fighting for their freedom. Victory will belong to the people. People, who use social networking to advance their causes and share news with the outside world, but people, just people, nonetheless.

As a friend remarked the other day: "Not to engage in Glenn Beck-style Iran-parallel drawing, but there was another February 11th that didn't require Twitter to happen."

Bwana Kitoko

If you're passing through Brussels the next months and you haven't seen Belgian painter Luc Tuymans's series Mwana Kitoko: Beautiful White Man yet, go visit his retrospective (Friday 02.18 > Sunday 05.08) at BOZAR. The original 2000 exhibition's title 'Mwana Kitoko' refers to "the rather derogatory nickname Mwana Kitoko, i.e. beautiful boy, which was given to Belgian's young King Baudouin by the Congolese, and which was promptly changed by the Congolese authorities to the more respectful and authoritative Bwana Kitoko, i.e. beautiful, noble man."–Tom Devriendt

[Source]

'The Legend of Polokwane'

No not the guy on the left. It's the music of DJ MO-LAUDI.

Listen here.

Hip Hop is a Database

…The Hip-Hop Word Count is a searchable ethnographic database built from the lyrics of over 40,000 Hip-Hop songs from 1979 to present day. The Hip-Hop Word Count describes the technical details of most of your favorite hip-hop songs. This data can then be used to not only figure out interesting stats about the songs themselves, but also describe the culture behind the music. How can analyzing lyrics teach us about our culture? The Hip-Hop Word Count locks in a time and geographic location for every metaphor, simile, cultural reference, phrase, rhyme style, meme and socio-political idea used in the corpus of Hip-Hop. The Hip-Hop Word Count then converts this data into explorable visualisations which help us to comprehend this vast set of cultural data. This data is being used to chart the migration of ideas and to map a geography of language.

Give this guy money.