"Tikur Sew" directed by Tamirat Mekonen Teklu and produced by Teddy Afro is:
Based on the historical Battle of Adwa (March 1, 1896) in which Ethiopian forces, under the leadership of Emperor Menelik II and Empress Taytu Betul, defeated the invading Italian army and secured Ethiopian sovereignty.
“I really wanted to make the audience to feel and experience the six-hour historical battle,” Tamirat said. “Honestly, though, I did not expect that people would have such a positive and emotional reaction to the music video.” He added: “There were two main messages, which are found in the Amharic quote at the end of the film: ‘In order to define yourself now, you have to look at your past,’” he said. “If those who fought in the battle did not sacrifice their lives for us, we would have lost our culture and identity. We would not be who we are today.”
Tamirat continued: “There was a price that was paid for us to be the only non-colonized African nation. The last scene I created in color was a fantasy scene of the young people of our generation honoring and acknowledging what Emperor Menelik and Empress Taytu Betul accomplished.”
Shortly after D’Angelo disbanded The Soultronics in late 2000 to begin working on his (still) long awaited follow up to Voodoo, Roy Hargrove, a former member of The Soultronics and an established jazz musician in his own right, decided to take his music in a more funk and soul oriented direction.
In late 2002, Hargrove debuted his new band, The RH Factor, at the Monterey Jazz Festival. This new group included two other Soultronics alumnus, Chalmers “Spanky” Alford and “Brother Jacques Schwarz-Bart. Your interest should be piqued. If not, just press play and listen to the interplay of the dual drum kits held down by Willie Jones III and Jason Thomas. Add the keyboard stylings and soulful vocals of Miss Renée Neufville and it is clear that Mr. Hargrove had hit upon quite a combo.
The band went on to put out an EP and 2 albums featuring many guests, including D’Angelo, Q-Tip, Meshell Ndegeocello, Erykah Badu and Common. All 3 discs are highly recommended. In the following years, Hargrove continued to tour sporadically with The RH Factor in Europe, although with various members changes. To my knowledge their most recent tour was in 2009. Let’s hope that Hargrove again decides to divert his attention from his straight ahead jazz in favor of the deep jazz funk that this group produces.
Roy Hargrove & The RH Factor April 2nd, 2004 Cully Jazz Festival, Switzerland @ Chapiteau de Cully FM/SBD > ? > CDR > EAC > WAV > MP3
1. In A Silent Way 7:18 2. It’s About That Time 6:14 3. It’s About That Time (cont.) 4:51 4. Hardgroove > Pastor T 24:06 5. Forget Regret 10:40 6. “Truth Be Told” 3:50 (fade out, end)
Roy Hargrove (tp, voc) The RH Factor: Renée Neufville (voc, keyb) Keith Anderson (ts, as) Jacques Schwarz-Bart (ts, f, g) Bobby Sparks (keyb, org) Chalmers “Spanky” Alford (g) Reggie Washington (b) Jason Thomas (dr) Willie Jones III (dr)
Nasimiyu is a singer, songwriter, pianist and performer. Her original music, which she composes, arranges, and produces herself, is a mix of rootsy folk, funk and forward-looking contemporary soul, influenced by her own travels and experiences as well as the deep musical heritage of New Orleans, her adopted home. She is a resident of the Crescent City, but a citizen of the world.
NASIMIYU MURUMBA
Rules Aren't Real
Getting jazzy and soulful, AP member Nasimiyu shares her latest video for 'Rules Aren't Real'.
The song is the title track to her album to be released June 29th. "Eclectic, genre-bending, retro-soul/indie-pop" are on the program. Stay tuned.
Literal Latté currently offers five — count ‘em, FIVE — annual writing contests. The deadline dates given below apply every year, so there’s always a contest just around the corner.
All entries will be considered for publication.
The current reading fee for all contest entries is US $10.00, and there are discounts for multiple entries. Make sure to read the guidelines below for detailed information.
All reading fees — payable by check or money order — should be made out to Literal Latté and mailed to:
Literal Latté Awards
200 East 10th Street, Suite 240 New York, NY 10003 (212) 260-5532
The TED Fellows program is designed to bring together young world-changers and trailblazers who have shown unusual accomplishment and exceptional courage. The program targets individuals from the Asia/Pacific region, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East, though anyone from anywhere in the world, age 18 and over, is welcome to apply.
Forty Fellows will be recruited each year. Of those Fellows, roughly 10 will be selected for the extended, two-year Senior Fellows program. Read more about how it works »
BENEFITS TO FELLOWS
Attendance to one TED or TEDGlobal Conference with all expenses paid (conference, travel, room and board)
Participation in Fellows pre-conference activities
Private social networking on TED.com
Potential to speak on the TED Fellows or TED University stage
Potential to have that talk posted on TED.com
Participation in the SupporTED coaching program
RESPONSIBILITIES OF FELLOWS
Full attendance and participation at the Conference
Submission of a post-conference report
Regular participation in the TED Fellows community
ADDITIONAL BENEFITS TO SENIOR FELLOWS
Attendance to four additional TED and TEDGlobal Conferences with all expenses paid (travel, room and board)
Participation in four additional Senior Fellows-centered pre-conference activities
Potential to deliver a full-length talk on the main stage
Potential to have that TEDTalk posted online
ADDITIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF SENIOR FELLOWS
Full attendance and participation at four additional TED or TEDGlobal Conferences over two years
Submission of a post-conference report after each conference
Regular posting on the TED Fellows Blog
Hosting a TEDx event for 50+ people
Giving a talk on the TED Fellows, TED University or main TED stage
WHO SHOULD APPLY
We are looking for an eclectic, heterogeneous group of young thinkers and doers from the fields of technology, entertainment, design, the sciences, engineering, humanities, the arts, economics, business, journalism, entrepreneurship and NGOs.
At TED, we can take risks on unconventional innovators. We value achievement over credentials -- making and doing over merely talking.
We are targeting applicants of ages 21-40 from five target regions: Africa, Asia/Pacific, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East. However, anyone over the age 18 from around the world is welcome to apply.
HOW TO APPLY
To apply to become a TED Fellow, please complete the application form in its entirety. (Before beginning the application, please review our applications tips and our terms and conditions.)
In addition to basic details and contact information, the application asks applicants to answer essay questions and provide three references. Applications must be received complete and on time to be considered.
The application cycles for TED and TEDGlobal are different. Applicants apply to one conference.
THE SELECTION PROCESS
TED Fellows are selected by the program staff.
Once a year, an international selection committee meets to select the TED Senior Fellows for the following year.
The selection committee is comprised of people who represent the breadth of interest and achievement that makes up the TED community. Committee members bring experiences from various fields and come from countries representing our target regions. Selections are made by the group as a whole, not by individuals.
The competition is open to anyone worldwide who has not published a complete book. We are looking for creative submissions in one of three categories: Poetry, Fiction or Life Writing. Please see the terms and conditions on page 4 of the entry form.
Simply fill in the entry form and send it to us with your entry and fee.
£300 will be awarded to the winner of each category and their work will be published in Wasafiri.
Founding Editor of Wasafiri, Susheila Nasta, will be joined by three distinguished judges on the panel this year: John Haynes, award-winning poet, teacher and lecturer; Maya Jaggi, cultural journalist, writer and broadcaster and Colin Grant, writer, playwright, historian and broadcaster.
Payment of entry fees to the New Writing Prize
Cheques and postal orders made payable to Wasafiri Ltd
Bank transfers - contact us at wasafiri@open.ac.uk and we will give you the necessary details
Paypal - click on the link below and enter the amount you wish to pay.
Fathers Week continues here at Clutch as we take a look at some of our favorite representations of black dads in TV and internet media. From Bernie Mac to James Evans, there’s plenty here to make you smile and/or reminisce.
Take a peek:
1. The Bernie Mac Show: Bernie’s “Real” Dad
The Bernie Mac Show remains one of the most underrated black sitcoms of all time. Its ability to mine serious family issues for comedy was second to none, and its rendering of those dramatic moments was believable and thought-provoking. One of the earliest and best examples of this blend is the multi-part episode where Bernie returns to his native Chicago with wife, Wanda, and his nieces and nephew, to attend the funeral of his “uncle.” Not only does he step in to father his rebellious, resistant eldest niece, Vanessa, whose old friends jump her while she’s off looking for her crack-addicted mother, but he also gets the shock of his life when he discovers his beloved deceased uncle was his biological father.
2. The Cosby Show: “I’ll Ride a Motorbiiiike.”/”I Brought You Into This World…”
In the very first episode of The Cosby Show, Bill Cosby establishes himself as the quintessential black father by first giving his son, Theo, a lesson in money management for non-college attendees, then telling him his heartfelt speech about being an average achiever was “the dumbest thing I ever heard before in my LIFE.” Cosby would go on to have countless great black father moments during the course of the show, but this one would remain in the top ten.
3. Daddy-Daughter Dance: Wedding Edition
When Ashley Richmond got married last year, her wedding reception daddy-daughter dance made national headlines and the video went viral, as she and her dad, David Sparks, cut a choreographed run to everything from The Temptations to the Jackson 5 to the GS Boys to Beyonce.
4. Good Times: James Freaks Out About Thelma Growing Up
When Thelma brings home an older man (Philip Michael Thomas), James is full of rage–especially when he finds out he’s interviewed Thelma for his college thesis, “Sexual Behavior in the Ghetto.” It’s a pretty cool moment.
The “How come he don’t want me, man?” is widely regarded as one of the best moments in the history of the hit ’90s sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It showcased some of Will Smith’s earliest effective dramatic acting, and highlighted a situation that resonated with many viewers: absenteeism.
What’s your favorite black dad moment in film, TV, or other media?
CNN Health has dropped a gem on us with this article featuring some of the greatest minds in neuroscience, music, and improvisation. Dr. Charles Limb, known for his studies into the brain and how music affects it as well as where improvisation lies within the brain, gives insight with his expertise and more. Bassist, composer, and educator Victor Wooten chimes in with his theory on language and music. Definitely a great read.
Music: It's in your head,
changing your brain
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
updated 9:55 AM EDT, Mon May 28, 2012
Bassist Victor Wooten says you don't need to start with the rules of music in order to play an instrument.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
When you can't get a song out of your head, it means neural circuits are stuck in a loop
Music, like sex, drugs and food, release the brain chemical dopamine
People tend to agree on the emotions they hear in music
Victor Wooten, a famous bassist, approaches music as a language
(CNN) -- Michael Jackson was on to something when he sang that "A-B-C" is "simple as 'Do Re Mi.'" Music helps kids remember basic facts such as the order of letters in the alphabet, partly because songs tap into fundamental systems in our brains that are sensitive to melody and beat.
That's not all: when you play music, you are exercising your brain in a unique way.
"I think there's enough evidence to say that musical experience, musical exposure, musical training, all of those things change your brain," says Dr. Charles Limb, associate professor of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at Johns Hopkins University. "It allows you to think in a way that you used to not think, and it also trains a lot of other cognitive facilities that have nothing to do with music."
The connection between music and the brain is the subject of a symposium at the Association for Psychological Science conference in Chicago this weekend, featuring prominent scientists and Grammy-winning bassist Victor Wooten. They will discuss the remarkable ways our brains enable us to appreciate, remember and play music, and how we can harness those abilities in new ways.
There are more facets to the mind-music connection than there are notes in a major scale, but it's fascinating to zoom in on a few to see the extraordinary affects music can have on your brain.
Ear worms
Whether it's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" or "Somebody That I Used to Know," or even "Bad Romance" or "Bohemian Rhapsody," it's easy to get part of a song stuck in your head, perhaps even a part that you don't particularly like. It plays over and over on repeat, as if the "loop" button got stuck on your music player.
Scientists think of these annoying sound segments as "ear worms." They don't yet know much about why they happen, but research is making headway on what's going on.
The songs that get stuck in people's heads tend to be melodically and rhythmically simple, says Daniel Levitin, a psychologist who studies the neuroscience of music at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. It's usually just a segment of the song, not the entire thing from beginning to end. A common method of getting rid of an ear worm is to listen to a different song -- except, of course, that song might plant itself in your thoughts for awhile.
"What we think is going on is that the neural circuits get stuck in a repeating loop and they play this thing over and over again," Levitin said.
In rare cases, ear worms can actually be detrimental to people's everyday functioning, Levitin said. There are people who can't work, sleep or concentrate because of songs that won't leave their heads. They may even need to take the same anti-anxiety medications given to people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, drugs that relax the neural circuits that are stuck in an infinite loop.
How we evolved to remember music
Given how easily song snippets get stuck in our heads, music must be linked to some sort of evolutionary adaptation that helped our ancestors.
Bone flutes have been dated to about 40,000 to 80,000 years ago, so people were at least playing music. Experts assume that people were probably singing before they went to the trouble of fashioning this instrument, Levitin said. In Judaism, the Torah was set to music as a way to remember it before it was written down.
"The structures that respond to music in the brain evolved earlier than the structures that respond to language," Levitin said.
Levitin points out that many of our ancestors, before there was writing, used music to help them remember things, such as how to prepare foods or the way to get to a water source. These procedural tasks would have been easier to remember as songs. Today, we still use songs to teach children things in school, like the 50 states.
What about remembering how to play music?
When you sit down at the piano and learn how to play a song, your brain has to execute what's known as a "motor-action plan." It means that a sequence of events must unfold in a particular order, your fingers must hit a precise pattern of notes in order. And you rehearse those motor movements over and over, strengthening the neural circuits the more you practice.
But musicians who memorize how to play music often find they can't just begin a remembered piece at any point in the song. The brain has a certain number of entry nodes in the motor-action plan, so you can only access the information from particular points in the song.
"Even though it feels like it's in your fingers, it's not," Levitin said. "It's in the finger representation in your head."
Music and pleasure
Music is strongly associated with the brain's reward system. It's the part of the brain that tells us if things are valuable, or important or relevant to survival, said Robert Zatorre, professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Montreal Neurological Institute.
One brain structure in particular, called the striatum, releases a chemical called dopamine in response to pleasure-related stimuli. Imaging of the brain can reveal this process is similar to what happens in your brain in response to food or sex.
But unlike those activities, music doesn't have a direct biological survival value. "It's not obvious that it should engage that same system," Zatorre said.
Musicians can't see inside their own brains, but they're aware of moments of tension and release in pieces, and that's what arrangers of music do.
Zatorre and colleagues did an experiment where they used whatever music participants said gave them pleasure to examine this dopamine release. They excluded music with words in order to focus on the music itself rather than lyrics -- the melodic structure, for example.
At the point in a piece of music when people experience peak pleasure, part of the brain called the ventral striatum releases dopamine. But here's something even more interesting: Dopamine is released from a different brain area (the dorsal striatum) about 10 to 15 seconds before the moment of peak pleasure.
Why would we have this reaction before the most pleasurable part of the piece of music? The brain likes to investigate its environment and figure out what's coming next, Zatorre explains.
"As you're anticipating a moment of pleasure, you're making predictions about what you're hearing and what you're about to hear," he said. "Part of the pleasure we derive from it is being able to make predictions."
So if you're getting such a strong dopamine rush from music -- it could even be comparable to methamphetamines, Zatorre said -- why not make drug addicts listen to music? It's not quite that simple.
Neuroscientists believe there's basically one pleasure mechanism, and music is one route into it. Drugs are another. But different stimuli have different properties. And it's no easier to tell someone to replace drugs with music than to suggest eating instead of having sex -- these are all pleasurable activities with important differences.
Rocking to the beat
Did you know that monkeys can't tap their feet to songs, or recognize beats?
It appears that humans are the only primates who move to the beat of music. Aniruddh Patel at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California, speculates that this is because our brains are organized in a different way than our close species relatives. Grooving to a beat may be related to the fact that no other primates can mimic complex sounds.
Snowball the cockatoo can dance to song beats, whereas monkeys cannot, says Aniruddh Patel.
Curiously, some birds can mimic what they hear and move to beats. Patel's research with a cockatoo suggests the beat responses may have originated as a byproduct of vocal mimicry, but also play a role in social bonding, Patel said. Armies train by marching to a beat, for instance. Group dancing is a social activity. There also are studies showing that when people move together to a beat, they're more likely to cooperate with each other in nonmusical tasks than if they're not in synch.
"Some people have theorized that that was the original function of this behavior in evolution: It was a way of bonding people emotionally together in groups, through shared movement and shared experience," Patel said.
Another exciting arena of research: Music with a beat seems to help people with motor disorders such as Parkinson's disease walk better than in the absence of music -- patients actually synchronize their movements to a beat, Patel said.
"That's a very powerful circuit in the brain," he said. "It can actually help people that have these serious neurological diseases."
There's also some evidence to suggest that music can help Alzheimer's patients remember things better, and that learning new skills such as musical instruments might even stave off dementia.
There still needs to be more research in these areas to confirm, but Limb is hopeful about the prospect of musical engagement as a way to prevent, or at least delay, dementia.
"That's a pretty amazing thing that, from sound, you can stimulate the entire brain," Limb said. "If you think about dementia as the opposite trend, of the brain atrophying, I think there's a lot of basis to it."
Music and emotions
You may associate particular songs with events in your life -- Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" might remind you of your graduation day, if you had a graduation in the 1990s or 2000s, for example.
Despite variation in any given person's life experience, studies have shown that music listeners largely agree with one another when it comes to the emotions presented in a song. This may be independent of lyrics; musical sounds themselves may carry emotional meaning, writes Cornell University psychologist Carol Krumhansl in Current Directions in Psychological Science.
Advertisers exploit music in many commercials to make you excited about products. As a result, you may associate songs with particular cars, for instance.
Here's one way you might not already be using music: Making a deliberate effort to use music to alter mood. Listen to something that makes you energetic at the beginning of the day, and listen to a soothing song after an argument, Levitin says.
Music as a language
Victor Wooten of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones isn't a scientist, but he has thought a lot about the process of learning to play music. For him, introducing a child to music shouldn't be different from the way a child begins speaking.
"I just approach music as a language, because it is," Wooten said. "It serves the same purpose. It's a form of expression. A way for me to express myself, convey feelings, and sometimes it actually works better than a written or verbal language."
Traditionally, a child learns to play music by being taught how an instrument works, and learning to play easy pieces that they practice over and over. They might also play music with other beginners. All the rules come first -- notes, chords, notation -- before they play.
But with language, young children never know that they're beginners, Wooten said. No one makes them feel bad when they say a word incorrectly, and they're not told to practice that word dozens of times. Why should it be different with music?
"If you think about trying to teach a toddler how to read, and the alphabet, and all that stuff, before they can speak, we'd realize how silly that really is," Wooten said. "Kids most of the time quit, because they didn't come there to learn that. They came to learn to play."
He remembers learning to play music in an immersive way, rather than in a formulaic sequence of lessons. When he was born, his four older brothers were already playing music and knew they needed a bass player to complete the band. "My brothers never said, 'This is what you're going to do,'" he said.
Wooten took this philosophy and created summer camps to get kids excited about music in a more natural way.
"It's rare that I ever meet a musician who doesn't agree that music is a language. But it's very rare to meet a musician that really treats it like one."
There you have it: Music that gets stuck in your head can be annoying, but it also serves a multitude of other purposes that benefit you. If you treat it like a language, as Wooten suggests, you might learn new skills and reap some of the brain health benefits that neurologists are exploring.
It's more complicated than "A, B, C," but that's how amazing the mind can be.
In 1974, playwright Ntozake Shange published a choreopoem called For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf. The book would go on to inspire legions of women for decades and would later become the subject and title of a hugely popular movie in the fall of 2010.
While the film was selling out movie theaters, young black gay men were literally committing suicide in the silence of their own communities. It was around that time when Keith Boykin, a New York Times bestselling author, and Magnus Books publisher Don Weise first discussed the possibility of working together on a book in response to the outbreak of suicides among young men of color.
In the same time period, a young Rutgers University student named Tyler Clementi took his own life after a roommate secretly videotaped him in an intimate setting with another young man. In response, syndicated columnist and author Dan Savage created a YouTube video with his partner Terry to inspire young people facing harassment. Their message, It Gets Better, turned into a popular movement, inspiring thousands of user-created videos on the Internet. Savage’s project targeted people of all races, backgrounds and colors, but Boykin wanted to create something special “for colored boys.”
The new book, For Colored Boys, addresses longstanding issues of sexual abuse, suicide, HIV/AIDS, racism, and homophobia in the African American and Latino communities, and more specifically among young gay men of color. The book tells stories of real people coming of age, coming out, dealing with religion and spirituality, seeking love and relationships, finding their own identity in or out of the LGBT community, and creating their own sense of political empowerment.
This collection includes writers who are African American, Latino, Asian American, British, and Jamaican. Their ages span over five decades from young to old, and they represent all parts of the country and a wide cross-section of occupations, including students, published authors, recording artists, reality TV stars, military veterans, doctors, and lawyers.
We hope their stories will educate, empower, and inspire you.
