NEO•GRIOT

Foxx family (Mashpee), 2008
(L to R): Anne, Monet, Majai (baby), Aisha, and Maurice Foxx

Within the fabric of American identity is woven a story that has long been invisible—the lives and experiences of people who share African American and Native American ancestry.

African and Native peoples came together in the Americas. Over centuries, African Americans and Native Americans created shared histories, communities, families, and ways of life. Prejudice, laws, and twists of history have often divided them from others, yet African-Native American people were united in the struggle against slavery and dispossession, and then for self-determination and freedom.

For African-Native Americans, their double heritage is truly indivisible.

The exhibition IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas is a collaboration between the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service (SITES).

A Smithsonian exhibition investigating the union of African Americans and Native Americans.
>http://www.americanindian.si.edu/exhibitions/indivisible/introduction.html

MTV reports:

LOS ANGELES — The energy was electric Monday night (February 1) at Henson Studios as more than 80 of music’s biggest stars gathered for a charity remake of “We Are the World” in support of Haitian earthquake relief.

“I feel like a kid in a candy store,” Wyclef Jean said, speaking to the press about the idea of remaking such an iconic song, which is getting production help from RedOne and Will.I.Am. “What’s bigger than a contribution is that you lend your voice,” the Haitian native said earlier in the day to his peers while trying to inspire them during the session, which began around 3 p.m. and was expected to last well into the night.

Among the voices in the 81-member choir were Pink, Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Nick Jonas, LL Cool J, Robin Thicke, Celine Dion, Akon, Rob Thomas, Wyclef, Jeff Bridges, Vince Vaughn, Barbra Streisand, Jordin Sparks, Good Charlotte’s Madden brothers, Tony Bennett, Josh Groban, Snoop Dogg, Justin Bieber, Jennifer Hudson, Keri Hilson, Jamie Foxx, Tyrese, Katharine McPhee, Sean Garrett, Will.I.Am, Carlos Santana, Melanie Fiona, Enrique Iglesias, Toni Braxton, Jason Mraz, Miley Cyrus, Busta Rhymes, Nicole Scherzinger, Nicole Richie, Usher, Julianne Hough, Raphael Saadiq, Zac Brown, India.Arie, “American Idol” judge Randy Jackson, Musiq Soulchild, Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson, Fonzworth Bentley, Kid Cudi, Iyaz, Bizzy Bone, Nipsey Hussle, the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Al Jardine, Trey Songz, Faith Evans, Mya and Gladys Knight. (At press time, the full list of participants was not yet available.)

Robin Thicke, Lionell Richie, Kanye West.

Swizz Beatz and Snoop Dogg.

LL Cool J, Harry Connick Jr.  Phillip Bailey and Jeff Bridges.

Jamie Foxx

 

Wyclef Jean and Lil Wayne

Among the soloists whose sessions were screened for journalists at press time were Bieber, Dion and Groban. Weezy also came out and humbly noted that he recorded the solo originally sung by Bob Dylan.

The inspirational lyrics were laid down over a track that had a more modern Southern hip-hop bounce to it. The recording session took place almost 25 years to the day since the original song for African famine relief was recorded.

“The experience was out of this world,” said Bieber, who sang Lionel Richie’s original opening line. The video for the song, which is being shot in 3-D, will debut February 12.

WATCH VIDEO CLIP BELOW: (click on words 'VIDEO CLIP')

 

Video report on the "We Are the World 2010" recording session--includes short interview segments with recording artists.

>http://tmottgogo.com/?p=41058

Exclusive Video Direct from Haiti

By amun ra on Well Meaning

Alim

As a nutritional healer with more than 35 years of experience, my work helping people to achieve perfect health is my greatest passion. But in addition, I love teaching and even a little preaching. I play music everyday on my trombone and write poetry. I reside with my wife, Patrice, just outside of Washington DC.

>http://lifeabundantly-alim.blogspot.com/

Too much information? BBC News 24 producers at work. Photograph: Rex Features/HXA

The renewed interest in Tolstoy, resulting from the film about his final days, The Last Station, reminded me that more than a year ago I'd pledged to read War and Peace. As someone who'd tackled the fat charms of Dickens and Thackeray at university, I realised that it had been a long time since I'd read a novel of huge length or, indeed, anything published pre-20th-century. Finishing War and Peace would reassure me that my stamina was intact. I just took the novel from the shelf to discover from my bookmark that I'd reached page 55. I don't even have the excuse of children.

This in itself wouldn't have alarmed me – it is, after all, War and Peace – were it not for the preponderance of other bookmarks that I discovered, erupting from the midst of novels everywhere, like distress flares. Was I finishing any of them? How could it be that someone who loved fiction enough to study it at Masters level, teach it, and then go on to write it for a living had become so distracted from the garden of literature?

The world of my student days, however, was fundamentally different from this one. It was only towards the end of my degree that a friend showed me a marvel named the internet (Him: "Type in anything, it'll find you a website!" Me: "What's a website?") In the 90s, there were a mere four TV channels. Each household had a single phone-line, usable once at a time. Only geeks played "video games". It was much easier to remove oneself completely from the world into the vast architecture of the novel. Now, the reader is under assault from hundreds of television channels, 3D cinema, a computer-gaming business so large it dwarfs Hollywood, iPhones, Wii, YouTube, free commuter newspapers, an engorged celebrity culture, instant access to all the music ever recorded, 24-hour sports news, and DVD box-sets of shows such as The Wire, Mad Men and Lost that replicate some of the scope and depth of literature. Unprecedented levels of consumer debt, and now a recession, have seen everyone working longer hours. A leisure time that was already precious has been chewed into by text-messaging, Facebook and emails. Almost everyone I speak to claims that they "love books but just can't find the time to read". Well, they probably could – they're just choosing to spend it differently.

This has dire consequences for our collective intellect. So besieged are we by the entertainment industry that we are being stimulated only in certain directions. The sound of fizz is everywhere. Sustained concentration on the printed word, whether in-depth argument or fictional narrative, creates a particular cerebral event which visual-dependent media cannot. The assault upon this has meant the very theft of our thinking space.

Obviously media such as the internet offer enormous benefits to (you wouldn't be reading this otherwise), but they also glide easily into the surface world of sleek illusions and infinite chatter which surrounds us. And have you seen Avatar? Have you seen what they can do now? Call me melodramatic, but I am beginning to feel like the protagonist in some SF dystopia myself, having his own thoughts erased, and liking it.

Culture changed quickly and permanently in the last decade. That pregnant, mental pause of reading has come under threat like never before. "Writing is a form of personal freedom," said Don DeLillo in a letter to Jonathan Franzen, who had appealed to him about this very issue long before the arrival of the internet. "It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture, but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals." Exactly the same statement, I think, describes the condition of serious readers.

Pass me that copy of Tolstoy. This is war.

>http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/feb/02/who-stole-reading-time?...

The Cleansing of Bonfim from Bahia to New York

It wasn’t until the 2002 surprise hit film City of God that the Afro-Brazilian experience finally gained mainstream attention on the big screen.

Prior to that, the precious few cinematic and televisual representations of Brazil in the West were largely light and tawny-hued, depicting an image of the country that seemed to belie the full extent of its racial composition.

Despite Brazil having the second-largest Black population in the world, watching some of these films, one could be forgiven for thinking that people of African descent simply didn’t exist in the country. The world seemed oblivious to the voices of Afro-Brazilians and their fascinating and varied experiences.

That all changed with City of God, which brought the stories of Brazil’s Black poor onto center stage and into the collective popular consciousness. The film’s unflinching portrayal of urban decay in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and the struggle to stay on the right side of the law despite the ubiquity of drugs, gangs and violence, evidently resonated with theater-goers. The film grossed over $7m in the US and $23m worldwide, making the top ten lists of the New York Times and Hollywood Reporter, and garnering four Academy Award nominations in 2004.

If City of God introduced Afro-Brazilian cinema into the mainstream, then João Daniel Tikhomiroff’s new Capoeira film Besouro may well cement its place there. The film, which is being hailed as one of the most expensive made in Brazil to date, is attracting all manner of word-of-mouth buzz among critics and film lovers. Although a date for international release has yet to be announced, Besouro earned a nomination to contend for the right to represent Brazil for the 2010 Best Foreign Film Oscar.

Unlike its predecessor City of God, which primarily focused on the violent criminal underworld in Brazil’s slums, Besouro pays homage to the cultural traditions Afro-Brazilians inherited from their slave ancestors and weaves ancient African myths into its narrative for surrealist effect. The protagonist Besouro or Beetle, is based on a semi-mythical Afro-Brazilian folk hero of the same name, who according to oral legend, had supernatural powers which enabled him to fly, dodge bullets and morph into animal form at will.

He was an anti-Establishment figure who fought against the racism and tyranny of Brazil’s plantation owners and championed the cause of his fellow oppressed Black countrymen. He was also a master of Capoeira – a martial art developed by Brazilian slaves as a means of self-defense, but masked as a dance so slave owners wouldn’t suspect their charges of plotting insurrection.

The film also incorporates elements of Candomblé, a syncretic religion brought by Nigerian Yoruba slaves into the New World and blended with Catholicism, so slaves could worship their own traditional gods openly while their masters believed they were reverencing Catholic saints.

What makes Besouro significant is that it represents the junction where world cinema meets high-octane Hollywood blockbuster and gives Afro-Brazilian culture the much-needed exposure it deserves. Besouro bears the hallmarks of alternative film, yet has mainstream appeal, with its use of gravity-defying ‘Wire Fu’ stunts popularized by Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. The film’s sweeping camera shots are polished and its fast-paced action sequences well-executed.

With Kill Bill’s Huan-Chiu Ku on board as action director and a score by Grammy-winning music legend Gilberto Gil, Besouro seems to have all the necessary credentials for box office success.

The film’s domestic release in Brazil last month conveniently coincides with the I Cine Fest Brasil, which took place in New York earlier this year and is now making its way across Europe. Among the films showcased in the festival is The Cleansing of Bonfim from Bahia to New York, which explores Afro-Brazilian cultural rites originating in the north-eastern state of Salvador and now practiced on Manhattan’s 46th Street as part of the annual Brazilian Day celebrations.

With Afro-Brazilian cinema now beginning to gain an increasingly higher profile, both mainstream audiences and industry figures may soon have little choice but to sit up and take notice.

Aaron T Akinyemi is a journalist specializing in global cultural and social issues. His work has appeared in the International PEN Festival of World Literature, The Guardian and the BBC World Service

> http://www.catchavibe.co.uk/afro-brazilian-cinema-sets-it-sights-on-the-mains...

The Marsalis Family (father-pianist Ellis and sons saxophonist Branford, trumpeter Wynton, trombonist Delfeayo & drummer Jason) perform Louis Armstrong's Struttin' With Some Barbeque" brought to you by "Jazz on the Tube."
>http://www.jazzonthetube.com/videos/black-history-month/struttin-with-some-ba...

Radio Netherlands International has a 51-minute, really good, program on the hysteria and violence against gay people on the continent. Guest include Ian Swartz, founder of a gay rights organisation in Namibia, and Scott Long from Human Rights Watch in New York.

Listen here.

Report on homosexuality in Africa.
>http://africasacountry.com/2010/02/02/homosexual/