africa.documentary: Good Fortune

Screen shot of trailer for the documentary “Good Fortune at the Transient Pictures website.

Good Fortune is a feature length documentary that explores how massive, international efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa may be undermining the very communities they aim to benefit. Through intimate portraits of two Kenyans battling to save their homes from large-scale development organizations, the film presents a unique perspective on the struggle to overcome world poverty.

There is a screening of Good Fortune on June 24th at Walter Reade Theater at The Film Society of Lincoln Center here in New York City as part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Screening details here.

Weekend Music: Spoek Mathambo

It’s been pretty much Spoek Mathambo week, month, year here at casa forota, as the recently hitched South African DJ/singer/rapper/artist has thrown off mixtape after mixtape of tech-y South African house. This is how I am getting my fix of what someone in the twittersphere called “orgasmic” South African electronic music. In addition to showcasing some of his own work as Slush Puppy Kids, Playdoe, Sweat.X and Moleke Mbembe, he mixes in snippets of what is au courant in SA music. E.g. the H.I.V.I.P. Devil House Mafias 2 set below contains a good sampling from DJ Mujava’s latest album. Very cool.

You can download Spoek Mathambo: H.I.V.I.P. Devil House Mafias 2 here.

Track list from Mathambo’s highly informative and entertaining site, Throwing Shade.

SLUSH PUPPY KIDS - WE THE BEST
DJ MUJAVA - PHELINDABA
BANANA CLIPZ - PUSH AM (LEFT, RIGHT)
BAKSTINA - DASHBOARD LOVE
EASTWEST - PSCHADELIC DISCO
THE EXTRA T’S - FLASH BOOGIE
ACSLATER - HELLO (MOLEKE MBEMBE REMIX)
DJ SPYRO - SPYRO SPESH
DJ MURKZ - WWOW DUTTY
**MURKZ - PLEASE DON’T STOP THE MUSIC
T2 - HEARTBROKEN (NASTIBOI RMX)
MOLEKE MBEMBE - HESLOSTCONTROL
BUJO MUJO - ??
DJ MUJAVA - DIPALA TSATWANE
SPIKIRI THE KING DON FATHER- UNIQUE
CHIEF BOIMA - COUPE LIKE ME BABY
SHAKKA ROXX - SHATEH
SLUSH PUPPY KIDS - TOO HIGH
DJ MUJAVA - TSWARA TSWARA
DJ TAKALANI’S HOUSE MAGIC - DONOSA
SIBOT - CHISA
YUKSEK - EXTRABALL (MOLEKE MBEMBE REMIX)
SOLID GROOVE - THIS IS SICK
THUNDERHEIST - FREDDIE
PLAYDOE - ICE CREAM

africa.photography: UG’s first skate park

Screen shot of Yann Gross website

Kitintale Skates 2008. Swiss photographer Yann Gross’ portraits of skaters in Kampala who constructed “the first skate park in East Africa” inspired by MTV skateboarding images.

Colophon: A.V_M Improvements

I finally broke down and made a few changes to this site.

Changes under the hood include an upgrade to WordPress v.2.7.1. The admin back-end interface is much improved and there are more content creation tools and compatibility with more widgets and plugins. And it is goodbye to that sturdy but a little-too-ubiquitous Cutline theme. The new theme Clean Home is minimalist and um, clean; it should also give my site more of an individual visual identity.

Now all I have to do is spend less time over on Twitter and more time finding afromedia goodness.

africa.concerned_photography*

Screen shot from Krisanne Johnson’s portfolio web site. © K. Johnson

Krisanne Johnson: ”I Love You Real Fast”.

Swaziland reports the highest percentage of HIV-positive people in the world, with the hardest hit being women aged 15-24.

SEE ALSO: Generation Next: Youth in South Africa. Images in this series featured in the kwaito story, FADER 52 (AFRICA).

Screen shot from Michael Zumstein’s photo essay at the Oeil Public web site. © M. Zumstein

Michael Zumstein: Mothers against the Atlantic: Senegal 2006 

Since January 2006, about 50 young Senegalese from Thiaroye’s neighbourhood have been lost at sea trying to get to the Canary Islands in dugout.
Getting together mothers who lost their son at sea, the Group of Thiaroye’s Women tries to dissuade the young people to leave and risk their life.

SEE ALSO: Women at war Cote d’Ivoire 2004: Photo essay about women who joined the rebel forces in Ivory Coast’s civil war.

*The Concerned Photographer

“The concerned photographer finds much in the present unacceptable which he tries to alter. Our goal is simply to let the world also know why it is unacceptable.”
–Cornell Capa (b. 1918), photographer

nyt.africa: Malick Sidibe: Prints and the Revolution

Malick Sidibe Prints and the Revolution

Fataumata Cissé wears a Junya Watanabe multicolored top and green plaid skirt. Miu Miu bag. Zoraide shoes. Mamadou Gamara wears a Dsquared2 blue-and-white striped shirt. Missoni multicolored vest and pale blue pants. Gucci shoes. Mariam Sidibé wears a Nicole Miller multicolored dress. Tsumori Chisato multicolored wrap-skirt. Christian Louboutin shoes. Albertus Swanepoel hat. Dries Van Noten necklace.
Photo: Malick Sidibé for The New York Times

Harlem Jazz

Audio-enhanced photo essay by Andrew Sullivan: Harlem Jazz.

Jazz weaves threads of Harlem’s identity. On 125th St., near Hotel Theresa, where Louis Armstrong slept, a clothing store entices shoppers by adding “Jazz” to its name. Street vendors sell John Coltrane and Josephine Baker t-shirts to locals and foreign tourists. Murals of musicians and dancers emerge when shopkeepers pull down decorated security doors at closing time.

Max Lucas, 98, has played his saxophone in Harlem since 1925, when his first gig was a duet with a banjo player in a barber shop. He performed in the Savoy Ballroom as 2,000 dancers covered the floor. During Prohibition and the Great Depression, Lucas worked rent parties, where the hosts had three-piece bands in their homes, sold bootleg liquor and charged 25 cents admission to help pay their landlords. When he joins his son’s band at the Lenox Lounge on Wednesdays, the crowd reveres Lucas as its connection to Harlem’s cultural legacy.

China in Africa: The Great Chinese Takeout

While America is preoccupied with the war in Iraq (cost: half a trillion dollars and counting), and while think-tank economists continue to spit out papers debating whether vital resources are running out at all, China’s leadership isn’t taking any chances. In just a few years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become the most aggressive investor-nation in Africa. This commercial invasion is without question the most important development in the sub-Sahara since the end of the Cold War — an epic, almost primal propulsion that is redrawing the global economic map. One former U.S. assistant secretary of state has called it a “tsunami.” Some are even calling the region “ChinAfrica.”

There are already more Chinese living in Nigeria than there were Britons during the height of the empire. From state-owned and state-linked corporations to small entrepreneurs, the Chinese are cutting a swath across the continent. As many as 1 million Chinese citizens are circulating here. Each megaproject announced by China’s government creates collateral economies and population monuments, like the ripples of a stone skimmed across a lake.

Beijing declared 2006 the “Year of Africa,” and China’s leaders have made one Bono-like tour after another. No other major power has shown the same interest or muscle, or the sheer ability to cozy up to African leaders. And unlike America’s faltering effort in Iraq, the Chinese ain’t spreading democracy, folks. They’re there to get what they need to feed the machine. The phenomenon even has a name on the ground in the sub-Sahara: the Great Chinese Takeout.

Special Report: China in Africa

SEE ALSO: TIME photo essay “China Goes to Africa, images by Paolo Woods

Screen shot from Time web site. Image © P. Woods

SEE ALSO: Current TV documentary: Chinatown, Africa [via Africa is a Country]

SEE ALSO: Nigeriatown: (Accompanied an article, Letter from China, “The Promised Land,” in The New Yorker issue of February 9, 2009)

Screen shot from New Yorker site. Image © D. Hogsholt

Lyle Owerko: Kenya, The Samburu Tribe

Screen shot of Lyle Owerko’s portrait series, “The Samburu Tribe” from Lyle Owerko Photography web site. © L. Owerko

Lyle Owerko’s series of portraits on the Samburu of Northern Kenya is currently on show at the Clic Gallery in SoHo. I just wish work this beautiful could be shown to Kenyan audiences as well, it is an amazing look at fellow Kenyans I know so little about. I’ve blogged about the street studio idea before and why I believe it is such an amazing process.

Weekend Music: SOUL!

Screen shot of Earth Wind and Fire performance from WNET site

First half of a January 1973 show from the SOUL! series entitled “Elements” features a performance by soul/jazz/funk-playing Earth Wind And Fire. Cool: the song “Mom” from the album “Last Days and Time”. Also cool: Verdine White’s Hendrix-esque bass solo (talk about slapping the bass!) Check out Philip Bailey’s pan-African red, green black outfit (yikes!) and all the fly outfits in the audience. In secondary school you could tell my exercise books and geometry kits; they were the ones with the Egyptian symbols on them (the ankh featured prominently) copied from EWF album artwork.

The second half of the show features Broadway star Linda Hopkins and the Soul Quintet (featuring a young Mtume). This is absolute soul gold.

Description of SOUL! from the WNET web site the New York City PBS station which aired the series from 1968 to 1973:

This entertainment-variety-talk show was not only a vehicle to promote African-American artistry, community and culture, but also a platform for political expression and the fight for social justice. It showcased classic live musical performances from funk, soul, jazz, and world musicians, and had in-depth, extraordinary interviews with political, sports, literary figures and more. It was the first program on WNET to be recorded with the then-new technology of videotape, and most of the shows were recorded in real-time—not live, but unedited.