VIDEO: Bantu - "OYA OYA" > Vimeo

 
BANTU

"OYA OYA" (Official Video)

Directed by: Siji
Label: Pako Productions
Video Release Date: Feb 2013

Bantu is shaking into the year with a video release of their new single “Oya Oya”. Directed by New York based filmmaker and singer-songwriter Siji, the video captures the raw and spontaneous energy of Lagos that is reflected in the upbeat tradition of Bantu’s music.

Featuring dance performances by the Crown Troupe of Africa, the video was shot in a bustling market in Bariga, Lagos. There, the film crew was able to capture spontaneous reactions to the unexpected scenes. The beauty of the video and the song is that one can’t help but get up and dance.

Shake wetin your mama dash you!

Enjoy!

via vimeo.com

 

AUDIO: Malagasy Guitar • Afropop Worldwide

Malagasy Guitar

damily

 

 

The Indian Ocean island is home to guitar styles as unique, beautiful and varied as its famed flora and fauna. In this program, we check in on highlands finger-pickers, salegy pop guitarists in the north, and wild and wooly tsapika guitarists in the south. We’ll also hear music inspired by some of the guitar’s string-instrument cousins in Madagascar: the valiha, the marovany and the kabosy. String Magic from Madagascar. [Produced by Banning Eyre. Originally aired: September 12, 2001]


During Afropop Worldwide’s April 2001 adventure in Madagascar, Banning Eyre made a point of meeting and interviewing as many guitarists as possible. Their remarkable and varied music is sampled on Afropop Worldwide’s 2001 Malagasy Guitar program. Here are some of Banning’s photographs, and some quotes from his interviews with guitarists.

Jean “Colbert” Ranaivoarison

“I work in a bank. As far as music, at the age of 14, I started playing guitar, here in Tana. From then until now, I have done a lot of research in Malagasy guitar, the Malagasy way of playing guitar. That’s why I’ve been with Malagasy groups, making tours in Europe, and also in Africa. I’ve done tours with folkloric Malagasy groups. I play, apart from the guitar, the valiha, the kabosy, and I play some percussion.”

“The valiha was the first Malagasy instrument. In the time of the kings and queens, there was nothing but the valiha. Afterwards, the piano and the guitar came.”

“The history of the guitar in Madagascar is a bit long. It began in the time of the monarchies. You have seen the panorama at the palace of the queen. This neighborhood is for the bourgeois, the families of the kings, and other persons. They are rich. They have a lot of money, and also the possibility to import things, like the piano. The English brought them to Madagascar in the 18th century. People in the highlands could buy instruments like that. By contrast, the people who lived down below, these were the peasants who were poor. They wanted to buy a guitar because it was possible for them. It was probably the French and English both brought guitars. So it was two very different things between the town on top and the one below. The people who played the Malagasy guitar, they played serenades, almost all night in the villages. They would walk around the village playing.”

“Here, everyone has their technique. I too have my way. I started working with old songs. I started from the roots and moved out to the branches of the tree. I started to search for the techniques of playing the guitar. I studied the songs of old people. Guitar songs. There were already compositions by great Malagasy composers like Ratianarivo Andrianary, Naka Rabenaratsoa, and also Justin Rajoro. These are the three composers of the early 20th century.”

“The pianists could make chords like that. The guitarists imitated this way of playing the piano when they played the guitar. There is the bass voice, the second voice, and the first voice, the melody. There’s a way of singing. It’s a Malagasy style.”

 

Germain Rakotomavo

“I was born in the province of Fianarantsoa. I left to do my university studies, but before that, I was a member of a musical corps of boys organized by a Jesuit priest. My goal was not music then. I sang Gregorian chant, the Catholic liturgy. And then in 1977, the father who was organizing us fell sick. He couldn’t continue, so the singing stopped there. I never sang again. But I picked up some instruments, and I started with the guitar.”

“I had two professors…two great guitarists, trained at the national conservatory in Paris. I was lucky, because they taught me classical guitar regiment. And then afterwards, I was astonished by their style. I played a little jazz, a little folk picking–like Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, and Doc Watson. And then I found that I could make the guitar sing like one of our own typical instruments, the valiha. To play the guitar in the style of valiha…I didn’t actually learn to play the valiha, but the repertoire of the valiha. I did not compose the songs that I played. I was not like Haja or Colbert or D’Gary. They play their own music. I play the repertoire of the valiha of the high plateau. When I saw [guitarists like] Martin Simpson, who play traditional music arranged for the guitar, I thought this was a good road.”

“One man, who wrote in journals and who died on the 5 of June, 1998, at the age of 77, said he would teach me. He was the great man for this, Jean Paul Ranovason. He’s unknown. But he’s the one who taught me. If I play now, it’s in his memory, because he taught me his way of playing.”

“The guitar was introduced–it’s a European instrument–I believe during the end of the last century, around 1890. Since then, the guitar has existed in Madagascar. We already had the valiha, a string instrument. But to accompany with chords, that did not interest the Malagasy. They wanted to make the guitar sing. They wanted the guitar to sing. And at that time, there was not method. Most people were illiterate. They couldn’t read or write. They learned by ear.”

“Normally the guitar is tuned the way Europeans tune it. It doesn’t sing. It’s for playing chords. But this way [C, G, D, G, B, E], it sings. [Most guitarist in Tana use this tuning] to have easy fingering in first positions. It’s not just in Madagascar that they use this tuning. Others do too. Chet Atkins used it, and some of the bluesmen. Big Bill Broonzy, and others [including Richard Thompson and Gabby Pahinui of Hawaii--Editor]. We use it a lot. It’s the most typical. But for me, this tuning is not the best one for getting the sound of the valiha. I raise the B up to C, and the D also to C, the A to F, and the E to Bb. [Bb, F, C, G, C, E]. It’s even lower. Now, to get the sound of the valiha, I use the capo.”

“One advantage of this tuning is that you have the very high notes and the very low notes. There’s a big range. That’s why it works well on the guitar. This way, we can have the voice of the women, and also the voice of the men. That’s Malagasy, because when the Malagasy sing, they don’t sing alone. There are always the women and the men. That’s tradition.”

“But the problem in Madagascar is that we are no longer interested in instrumental music. It’s neglected. Even D’Gary. It’s sad, because he’s a big guitarist, a phenomenon. He takes his vacations all the time in Madagascar, but he doesn’t play. That’s the problem, because we have inherited a French tradition that says we must always sing. We must have words. So we don’t make the instruments sing anymore. But we have a rich instrumental tradition.”

“Ny Antsaly was a trio, guitar, valiha and violin. It was the first group that married the valiha and the guitar. Sylvestre Randafison’s big brother was a great guitarist. He is already dead. Remy Randafison. They tried for the first time to marry the Malagasy guitar and the valiha. They married the tradition and modernity in the Malagasy way. It was formed in the 1940s. We could say that they were the original musical ambassadors of Malagasy music. Now, only Sylvestre is from the original group. When they play, I play guitar. He chose me since1988. He tried a few guitarist, but they didn’t get it. I was lucky. I worked hard on those songs, and I was chosen. It was a strong point for me because I couldn’t play any other music without first knowing Malagasy music. I could play any music in the world, but first, Malagasy music.”

 

Haja

“I was born here in Antananarivo in 1965. I started playing guitar at 9 years old. I was brought up in a family of musicians, as my father was a guitarist and my mother was a singer. I had an older brother–he’s dead now–who was a real guitarist also. So in the family, we were almost all guitarists. In addition, we had another advantage. We lived almost all over Madagascar. That is to say, we lived in the south as well. In the little provinces. This is why we have many interesting things from Malagasy music.”

“I try to mix everything I know, including Malagasy traditions. My favorite musicians–especially Rakotozafy, the great valiha/marovany player, and also Randafison the great valiha player, and the great accordion players here in Tana and also in the provinces–I had the idea to transfer all the reharmonizations that exist around Madagascar and put them on the guitar. So I find that there is something not so different in Malagasy music. It’s diatonic. There is major and minor. There are tunings that I’ve practiced a lot. The mixing of kabosy and ba gasy–the way of tuning the Malagasy guitar–I mixed that and put it on the universal guitar. I don’t need many guitars on stage. With a single guitar, I can go far to explore from its roots Malagasy music.”

“I use do-sol tuning [C, G, D, G, B, E], but I also mix the kabosy tuning: [C, G, D, G, B, D]. That’s my preferred tuning. That’s what we call the mixture of kabosy and ba-gasy.”

“This is my guitar. I made it because in the past, the farmers made them this way. They made it a bit like a kabosy, with bizarre things. I like that. [STRINGS ARE DAMPED WITH BUILT-IN RUBBER BANDS.] This way it damps the notes regularly. The strings do sound. I can regulate it. If I don’t want it, I leave it aside, like that. Because the sound of the valiha/marovany in the past was just like the sound of the guitar etouffé. Because, our ancestors played the valiha with fiber strings. Bamboo. I really wanted to keep that sound.”

“Solomiral is my group. It’s kind of a family group. ‘Brothers of Miral.’ Me, Ny Ony, the guitarist of Tarika. I have three brothers also, guitarist, bass and drummer. And then we sing at the same time. I sing lead vocals and play guitar. So Solomiral is now in it’s 25th year, because we started in 1978. That’s when we made our first recording. We are always in solidarity.”

 

Jaojoby

“What is salegy? Salegy is Malagasy folk songs. The beat is 6/8, and it’s played with a band, with electric musical instruments, or at least with an accordion… In the early 1970s, we began to play the salegy. My eldest colleagues, of course, began to play salegy since the ’60s. But at that time, it was mainly instrumental. In 1975, I left the band. I left the nightclub. I joined a younger band called Players. We went anywhere where people called us–in town, in village, in the field, in markets, on the ground, in open air. [We used] an energy generator. We made more African and Malagasy rhythms, and also rhythms from the Indian Ocean, like sega. As African rhythms, we made kwassa-kwassa, sigoma. Most of the African rhythms, we made them Malagasy.”

“I’m not a theoretician, but ‘Afindrafindrao’ is Malagasy. The salegy is Malagasy, but Afindrafindrao is from the high-lands, from the region of Antananarivo, but the salegy is from the whole country. For me it’s the same thing. ‘Afindrafindrao,’ you know? [SINGS 27:50] On that beat, you can also make the salegy.”

“Malesa. It’s a sister of the salegy, you know. But it is slower. Salegy is a little bit speedy. Malesa is love salegy. Even the way of dancing it, you know. You put the woman in front of you, and you from her back. [LAUGHS] And then you move, you dance. Yeah, yeah!”

“I am not a real guitarist. I am a singer. But I can play guitar. Not very good. Yeah, yeah. So in Malagasy music, at the beginning the valiha or the marovany took a great place. Young musicians, or musicians who tried to play the salegy tried to imitate those traditional music instruments: valiha and marovany.”

Jaojoby Elie Lucas, Jaojoby’s son

“Since the age of 7 or 8, I have played the guitar. It was my father who taught me. Afterwards, when I was 14, we formed a group called Jaojoby Jr. Then I was the soloist, from 1997 until now. Certainly he had his soloist who said, ‘I don’t want to play anymore with you.’ He said he wanted to teach me.”

“There was no one to teach me. But on cassettes, I didn’t know how to play, but I just listened. I listened to lots of American, French, Mauritian, Congolese, and South African songs. All that. I watched. When the soloist rehearsed, I did nothing but watch him. And then I began playing myself.”

“For the salegy, there isn’t a real solo style, but there is the valiha style. It’s typical to have the rhythm player using fingers, and the soloist using a pick.”

 

Jean Noel

“In the beginning, I played with a pick. Now I never use one.”

“Tsapika is a name we found. It comes from the movement in the dance. It moves a lot. It’s just a name. There are five people in my group. Bass, solo guitar, drums, and two singers. In tsapika, the original tsapika, there is just one guitar. It began with guitar, no synthesizer.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ernest Randrianasolo, a.k.a. D’Gary

“I come from the south of Madagascar. My father was a gendarme. I was in the town of Tulear during my youth. In Tulear, you can find guitars to fool around with in the neighborhood. Before, the popular music in Tulear was blues, pop music, mixed with traditional music. For that, you would find groups that played dances with one guitar, bass and drums, because before it was blues and pop music mostly. There were no proper guitars, no guitar strings. You tried to manage. It depended on you. If you really love music, you find a way.”

“After my father died in 1978, I returned to my village, Betroka. This was the first time I found my entire family, among the Bara. It’s our Bara custom that when there is a death, there are ceremonies in the family. We call all the distant family. We call the people who know the traditional music of the Bara. It was the first time that I had seen people playing the Malagasy violin, the valiha, the accordion. Acapalla singing. Dancing. When someone dies, the Bara musicians who sing are like people crying. Even among us, all the people, when they cry, it sounds like people singing. It’s the same. The people who cry and the people who sing there–it’s the same melody.”

“In Tulear, I played the musical style of Tulear, the pecto–because before there wasn’t yet tsapika–I played tsapika and other things. But after I went to Betroka, suddenly I changed because I loved these melancholy melodies.”

“The Bara kabosy is not like the Tulear kabosy–the ‘mandolin.’ There just one person plays on five strings. In open (tuning). There you find the accordion, singing, percussion, flute. But I didn’t know these traditional instruments… After Betroka, I came here to Antananarivo to prepare the pension papers for my mother. It was here that people found me playing with musicians, looking for money. I was a mercenary. That’s the story. A friend in Tamotave cared for me. He loaned me a Takamini guitar. I never had a guitar before that.”

“During 1980, right up to 1987, I was a mercenary. I played dances. Above all, I played electric guitar, all the styles of Madagascar. Everything… People didn’t know me. Because me, I hid everything away. Because each time we made a tour around different parts of Madagascar, I took advantage of the time alone in my room, to work. I tried to do all these things that were sounding in my head. Even when I was walking around, I was hearing flute melodies, kabosy melodies, accordion, acapella. These made me find the open tunings. But nobody found me. If somebody came, I wouldn’t play. …because it wasn’t yet ready. It wasn’t really good yet. My thing is not easy. It’s very difficult.”

“I did a thing with Discomad. It’s Studio Mars now. During the time I was being a mercenary, I made some recordings there, just two songs. In 1991, I was touring with a group here in the north of Madagascar. That was when I received a message: ‘Come back to Antananarivo. There are some Americans who are looking for you. You must come quickly.’ It was David Lindley with Henry Kaiser.”

“Before, I always used standard tuning. And I used a pick. I listened and I tried to interpret. That was in my youth. After I began to discover the music of the Bara, among us, I began to play with my fingers. It depends on your research. Since I was playing with a pick, it didn’t work, because there are melodies from, say, the marovany, or the accordion. With the pick, it was a bit bizarre. I needed to be picking. With thumb and index. Sometimes I play with three fingers… Sometimes my tunings are a bit bizarre. [LAUGHS]”

“The name of my style is ‘Gofo.’ Since I began to do research with the guitar, everything has been in the heart. That’s where it begins. If I don’t like something, that’s as far as it goes. Because you see that the culture here is not like in foreign places where it can just be shown like that. Here, the tradition is always at the side. People who live in the countryside always respect their culture, but in the country as a whole, culture is always kept aside. So GOFO is ‘Government’ and Fo “in my heart.” That is to say that I am independent. There is no need to find a minister of culture here. That’s Gofo. Freedom. Everytime I play the guitar, there are lots of open strings. That’s freedom. That’s Gofo. Sometimes I play very fast things. That’s gofo. That’s why, right away, I found my way to adapt the sound of the marovany on guitar. For me, it was no problem. Now it’s the other way around. All the songs on my records–the marovany players in Tulear are taking my things and playing them. It’s good. It’s good.”

“My new album will be coming out soon. ‘Akata Meso.’ That means ‘green grass.’ There are four instrumentals and the rest have singing. I am trying to mix things up a bit. Our rhythms, above all, the Bara rhythms. Because in the south of Madagascar, there are many ethnic groups, and each one has its own things. In the past, I’ve already done the rhythms of the south of Madagascar, but now, I’m doing something else. I keep the rhythms, but I mix in things from rock or even American music. But that’s what we call the wrapping.”

 

 

 

PUB: Call for Submissions from Women of Color: As Us Journal > Writers Afrika


Deadline: 15 April 2013 (issue 2), 1 June 2013 (queer issue)

As/Us is a space to showcase the creative literary expressions and scholarly work of both emerging and established women writers from around the world. We are interested in publishing works by underrepresented writers particularly Indigenous women and women of color.

We are open to works that span a variety of topics – work that challenges conventions and aesthetics either on a narrative or formal level, work with purpose, vision, and something at stake. Send us work that you think deserves a space in the world!

We are currently OPEN for submissions. The reading period for Issue 2 is February 1, 2013 through April 15, 2013.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

As Us accepts original and previously unpublished works by Indigenous women and women of color. Simultaneous submissions are allowed but please inform us immediately if your piece is accepted elsewhere for publication. As Us accepts poetry, spokenword, creative nonfiction, fiction, academic essays, and more. If you have some innovative work or want to send us other genres, feel free to send it. We are looking for writing that moves us in some capacity whether that be on a craft, emotional, or story level.

ALL submissions should be in 12 pt Times New Roman, typed, paginated, and should include your name, address, phone number, and email address in the header of each page.

  • Poetry: please send us 3-5 poems.

  • Fiction: No more than 7,000 words.

  • Creative Nonfiction: No more than 7,000 words.

  • Academic Essays: No more than 7,000 words.

  • Spokenword: please send up 1-3 pieces. You may also include an audio or video of your work as well.

  • Reviews: If you have a review of a book written by an Indigenous author or a woman of color whose work you feel needs to be promoted we are definitely interested. Email as.us.journal@gmail.com for queries.
For international submissions: Please include your writing in your language along with an English translation.

Email submissions to as.us.journal@gmail.com.

  • Include name and genre in the subject line. (First Name Last Name – Poetry / Fiction / etc)

  • Include a brief cover letter with a short biographical statement (including your Indigenous affiliation or cultural heritage) with each submission.
Response time is typically 1-3 months.

FORTHCOMING THEME ISSUES: Guest Editor Samantha Erin Tetangco will be guest editing this summer’s Queer online issue. Submissions for this issue will open June 1, 2013.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For queries/ submissions: as.us.journal@gmail.com

Website: http://asusjournal.org

 

 

PUB: CFP: Asymptote – translation journal special issue on Africa « Africa in Words

CFP: Asymptote – translation journal special issue on Africa

images

 

For our first special feature in the April 2013 issue, we invite submissions of fiction by African writers, whether translated or in English, as well as writings on the subject of Africa as a place and an idea. Does it make sense to talk about such a thing as Africa? Is it a place or an idea? If it is an idea, is it merely so? As a concept, is it limiting or liberating? We are looking for work from and about Africa that goes beyond the anthropological, the idealizing, and the dystopic: work that takes nothing, even the substantiality of its subject, for granted. Submissions of poetry and essays by African writers are also very much encouraged, and will be considered with higher priority in the regular sections.

Deadline: 15 Feb 2013 http://www.asymptotejournal.com/index.php

Maureen N. Eke

Department of English Language and Literature
AN 240
Central Michigan University
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859
Direct: 989-774-1087
Main: 989-774-3171
Fax: 989-773-1271
Eke1mn@cmich.edu

 

FOOD: Healthy Valentine’s Day Sweets > Food Heaven Made Easy

Healthy Valentine’s Day Sweets

February 8, 2013 | Jess

In our Valentine’s Day special, we pay tribute to all you chocoholics by creating a Dark Rum Infused Hot Chocolate and Chocolate Almond Butter Cups. Eat your heart out!

About Jess: Jessica Jones, MS, RD, is a New York City-based Registered Dietitian with a passion for teaching marginalized communities about healthy and sustainable food choices. View author profile.

 

VIDEO: Ava DuVernay — “The Door” > BoldAsLove-us

 

@avaetc directs @itsgabrielleu, @adeperooduye & others in this beautiful short film for fashion designer Miu Miu.

thedoor-cap3

Always glad to see new work by the unstoppable dynamic director-cinematographer duo of Ava DuVernay and Bradford Young (who won Best Cinematographer at this year’s Sundance Festival for the second time!).  This short film is the film in a series commissioned by designer Miu Miu called Women’s Tales, which focuses on the strength and transformative power of female bonds and friendship.

The symbolic centre of The Door is the front entrance of the protagonist’s home. As she opens it to greet a friend in the powerfully framed opening scenes, she is shrouded in an oblique sadness. “In the film, characters arrive at the door of a friend in need, bringing something of themselves,” explains director DuVernay. “Eventually, we witness our heroine ready to walk through the door on her own. The door in the film represents a pathway to who we are.”

Clothing is also a symbol of renewal, each change of costume charting our heroine’s emergence from a chrysalis of sadness. In the final scenes, she takes off her ring, pulls on long, black leather gloves, and walks, transformed by the emotive power of the clothing, through the door.

The short film  stars Gabrielle Union, Alfre Woodard, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Adepero Oduye and singer-songwriter Goapele.  You’ll recall that Ava DuVernay was the first African-American woman to win the Best Director Prize at Sundance in 2012, for her second feature, Middle of Nowhere.

Yeah, it’s a long clothing ad.  But what a joy to see all of these beautiful black women captured in a story by this talented filmmaking team!

And check out the behind the scenes/making of video:

 

 

ECONOMICS: Australia & USA - all around the world the same song: economic gaps

The Achievement Gap

[Infographic]

We’ve come a long way from the days of segregation in schools. Minority groups are no longer banned from educational opportunities, but fractures still exist. Today, the problem is largely economic. Socioeconomic factors play a major role in the achievement gap. The following infographic is a series of statistics showing a direct correlation between achievement and economic status in both Australia’s and the international school system.

What about your area? Do you think the achievement gap is directly related to social or economic status?

Click the infographic to see a larger version.

Achievement Gap Infographic

About

Andrianes Pinantoan is InformED's editor and part of the marketing team behind Open Colleges. When not working, he can be found reading about two of his favourite subjects: education and psychology. You can find him on Google+ or @andreispsyched.

 

__________________________

 

Number of working poor families grows as wealth gap widens

By Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON | Tue Jan 15, 2013 12:02am EST

(Reuters) - The number of U.S. families struggling with poverty despite parents being employed continued to grow in 2011 as more people returned to work but mostly at lower-paying service jobs, an analysis released on Tuesday shows.

More working parents have taken jobs as cashiers, maids, waiters and other low-wage jobs in fast growing sectors that offer fewer hours and benefits, according to The Working Poor Project, a privately funded effort aimed at improving economic security for low-income families.

The result is 200,000 more such working families - the so-called "working poor" - emerged in 2011 than in 2010, according to the report, based on analysis of the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.

About 10.4 million such families - or 47.5 million Americans - now live near poverty, defined as earning less than 200 percent of the official poverty rate, which is $22,811 for a family of four.

Overall, nearly one-third of working families now struggle, up from 31 percent in 2010 and 28 percent in 2007, when the recession began, according to the analysis.

"Although many people are returning to work, they are often taking jobs with lower wages and less job security, compared with the middle-class jobs they held before the economic downturn," the report said.

"This means that nearly a third of all working families ... may not have enough money to meet basic needs."

The findings come three years after the nation's recession officially ended in the second half of 2009.

Brandon Roberts, co-author of the report, said the results were somewhat of a surprise after Census officials last year said the U.S. poverty rate had stabilized.

"As the economy has improved one would expect that the benefits of that improvement would to some extent tie to these low-income families, and we'd see a decrease or at least a stabilization in the numbers," said Roberts, whose project is funded by four groups, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Ford Foundation, and focuses on state policies.

"But the reality, the data show that the benefits of - even though it's modest economic growth - it's not going to these low-income families," he added.

The group's analysis adds to the body of data focused on the slipping U.S. middle class even as there are signs of the nation's economy slowly coming back to life with improvements in the housing sector and lower unemployment rate.

For some Americans, the comeback has yet to begin.

Data showed that the top 20 percent of Americans received 48 percent of all income while those in the bottom 20 percent got less than 5 percent, the report said.

The analysis also found regional differences.

States in the South, such as Georgia and South Carolina, and those in the West, such as Arizona and Nevada, had the greatest increase in the number of working poor. The increase was slower in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

"It's important to draw attention to the fact that there are real families behind those statistics," said Alan Essig, who heads the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, adding that his state is still struggling with housing and unemployment.

IMPACT ON CHILDREN

The effect of near poverty on the growing number of U.S. children living in such families - an increase of 2.5 million youths over five years - is also a concern.

In 2011, roughly 23.5 million, or 37 percent, of U.S. children lived in working poor families compared with about 21 million, or 33 percent, in 2007, the report said.

Part of the problem is that more parents are working in service-sector jobs that require long hours at night and on weekends and so face child-care difficulties, along with low wages and involuntary part-time status, the analysis showed.

About 25 percent of low-income parents work in one of eight jobs: cashiers, cooks, health aides, janitors, maids, retail clerks, waiters and waitresses, and drivers, it said.

Such jobs often pay minimum wage, which can vary state-by-state, although the U.S. federal minimum wage standard has stood at $7.25 an hour since 2010.

"Any little thing - a child getting sick, a car breaking down ... those are quite significant events for these working families," Roberts said.

Focusing on state policies to boost education and jobs training for their parents could help, the report concluded. Others have also pointed to other options such as greater access to paid sick leave and increased minimum wages.

"Folks in our state are working hard, but for many families, working hard just isn't enough. Things need to change," said F. Scott McCown of the Texas-based Center for Public Policy Priorities.

Roberts said some federal policies in the recent agreement averting the so-called fiscal cliff were good news. The law that avoided higher taxes and across-the-board cuts kept two key tax credits and extended unemployment benefits.

He said the recent agreement to avoid higher U.S. taxes and across-the-board cuts helped by keeping two key tax credits and unemployment benefits. But those policies were in place in 2011, when Census gathered its data.

"Even despite those policies ... these families were struggling," he said.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey)

>via: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/15/us-usa-economy-workingpoor-idUSBRE9...

 

 

INTERVIEW + VIDEO + AUDIO: Where Black and Jewish Identity Merge > Forward-com

Where Black and

Jewish Identity Merge

Authors Emily Raboteau and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts Seek Utopia

Plane to Zion: Emily Raboteau, author of “Searching For Zion,” traveled the world on a quest to understand the yearning for the promised land.
courtesy emily raboteau
Plane to Zion: Emily Raboteau, author of “Searching For Zion,” traveled the world on a quest to understand the yearning for the promised land.

By Adam Langer

Published January 27, 2013

Before they had finished their books, before Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts had published “Harlem Is Nowhere” — a finalist for the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award — and before Emily Raboteau had published “Searching for Zion,” which was published in January, the two women used to take walks together. They would amble past the George Washington Bridge, the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Jumel Terrace Books and other landmarks in the Upper Manhattan neighborhoods where both authors currently live.

Both Raboteau and Rhodes-Pitts are young mothers in their 30s whose nonfiction books share a common theme: a yearning for some sort of promised land. For Rhodes-Pitts, whose book is the first in a planned trilogy about black utopias, that place is Harlem; for Raboteau, it is not just one place, but a series of locations where displaced blacks have endeavored to find a homeland.

Raboteau’s journey began in Israel, where her best friend from childhood had moved to make aliyah, but it also led her through such locations as Jamaica, Ethiopia and Ghana, where she came to challenge some of her long-held assumptions about race and religion. The Forward’s Adam Langer invited the authors to have another conversation, this time at Emily Raboteau’s office at City College where she teaches. The writers discussed parenthood, promised lands, and their thoughts on the relationship between blacks and Jews.

Adam Langer: Can you talk about the idea of a promised land and how your impression of that concept changed over the course of researching and writing your books?

Emily Raboteau: One of my favorite lines in your book about Harlem being a promised land is, “This is our land that we do not own,” which is so declarative and simple, but also incredibly complex and troubling and sad.

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts: How do you feel like that applies to the places that you visited? Or does it?

E.R.: Well, it does. For me, when I thought of what the promised land meant, it was always a metaphor for freedom, something I understood in part through the scholarship of my father, who has studied the meaning of the story of Exodus for black Americans in history, in particular what it meant for slaves. And for them, the promised land was the story of the book of Exodus, and the kinship they felt with the Hebrew slaves of the Bible was what gave them personhood in a sense.

E.R.: You had all of these people from different tribes who came here and were yoked by this story, and it was a hopeful story — if the slaves of Pharaoh in the Hebrew Bible could get out of bondage and find a home, then so can we. And for them, it was often a geographical configuration, an idea of the North. In the Great Migration, of course Harlem is a promised land, and for so many people coming from the South during the Great Migration.

But when they didn’t find it, or when it wasn’t exactly the Land of Milk and Honey they had envisioned, I became interested in discovering where else geographically that might be, but also politically what that might mean. I was also interested in how Zion has been configured as a political freedom like we hear in the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King — like an idea of civil rights, not necessarily a place.

A.L.: Both of you began your books before you had children, and now both of you are mothers. How does being a mother affect your work, and your concept of a “promised land”?

E.R.: When you’re traveling the world as a woman alone without a man, without a child, you’re often asked two questions: “Where are you from?” which is not always an easy thing for people to identify with me, and, “Where are your children?” Here I was, a woman around 30 and people didn’t understand: “What are you looking for?” “What is your journey about?” “Shouldn’t you be a mother by now?”

S.R.P.: Because I was conducting my research — as that is loosely understood in my life as a writer — in Haiti while pregnant, it imposed a weird question. There was my child coming soon; what was I doing traveling around in a foreign country? For what? What quest was I on?

E.R.: And I think that you as a pregnant woman become a walking metaphor for creation and creativity in a way. People want to care for you, people gravitate towards you. They want to touch your belly. It does create a different response, even among strangers when you’re circumnavigating a place like Haiti — you were there in the aftermath of the earthquake, you have this land that I imagine is still rocking and reeling from that destruction, and you’re walking around with something you’re building, a newness: Life still happens, life goes on.

A.L.: When someone asks you those sorts of questions — who are you or where are you from — what’s your response?

E.R.: The answer depends on who’s asking and why. I think often for me, it’s a racial question. People are insecure or unsure of what my racial background is, and so often, I think what they really want to know is the answer that satisfies that question, which is that my father is black and my mother is white and that’s why I look the way I do. What about for you? Particularly as someone who wrote about Harlem but isn’t from there technically.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

S.R.P.: It’s not a place I really claim to be from. Even after a decade of living in New York, I never say I’m from New York. A friend of mine from Houston, which is where I grew up, always calls me out on this. I never say I’m from Houston; I say I’m from Texas, which he points out rightly is my own mythmaking.

E.R.: Part of my journey for this book really began in my 20s, and it had to do with an unease I felt about that question: “Who are you?” “Where are you from?” I didn’t feel it was an easy answer for me, or that it was an answer that often satisfied, so at the age of 23 I went to Israel. It was during a time when I had a sense of disillusionment with America because it was right after the Bush regime had stolen the election.

I wanted to get out and see the world. I felt like, “Screw this place.” When I visited Israel, I was surprised to feel as jealous as I was of my best friend from my childhood, who had made aliyah and moved to Israel — her ability to claim a new place, a new homeland, which at that time I would have liked to have done. Of course Israel was a mess, too; it was at the time of the second intifada. I discovered black people there and was sort of shocked and amazed, because in my mind, these two identities were very compartmentalized — Jews and blacks.

And I thought, what are these people doing here? How did they get here, and why? And I thought, all right, I want to keep finding black people who left America out of a sense of disillusionment or disenchantment or hope to find the Zion on earth somewhere else and see if they discovered it, in part because I wondered, even for myself, is there someplace else I’d like to live?

A.L.: Can we talk about the historically troubled relationship between blacks and Jews and how your conception of it may have changed while writing your books?

E.R.: I wouldn’t say I had much of a sense of a troubled relationship between blacks and Jews as much as a kinship between them, although I do remember the Crown Heights riot. In the wake of it, I remember my father taking my friend Tamar, the friend I visited in Israel, and I to an exhibit at The Jewish Museum, which was about the links in history between blacks and Jews. I must have been 13 or 14 at the time.

I remember learning about the shared histories of oppression and pain, but also hope because of that story that tied these two people together, so for me the project of this book wasn’t to talk about tensions between these two communities so much as ties between them. I went to Jamaica specifically because I was a fan of reggae music, and I kept hearing time and time again “Zion” in the lyrics of these songs.

And I wanted to know more about the Rastafari faith and what the ties between that faith and Judaism were, and was as surprised to discover in Jamaica a synagogue with white Jews in its congregation, as I had been surprised to discover black Jews in Israel. To a degree, one of the processes of my journey was a falling away of thinking about those terms so categorically, because, of course, one can be black and Jewish at the same time, and many people are.

S.R.P.: Well, the question of change in Harlem, which is something my book is concerned with, requires us to think about the different neighborhoods Harlem has been over time, and one face of Harlem historically was Jewish. There were Jewish sections of Harlem, there were Irish sections of Harlem, there were Italian sections of Harlem.

And so the mythical Harlem that carried its fame around the world through most of the 20th century from 1905 is about the time Harlem begins to be a black neighborhood. There are lots of synagogues that are now Christian places of worship.

E.R.: There’s a synagogue on old Broadway, very close to the 1 train, which is still an active synagogue with black Jews as well as white Jews, if you want to use those terms.

S.R.P.: I took a class in college with Jamaica Kincaid, who is from the British Caribbean and converted to Judaism, and her reading of the black American story of Exodus was really interesting to me because she said the Hebrew slaves had a different God than their oppressors and that when they were fleeing toward freedom, it was with the vision that their God would not do this. Certainly the slaves found inspiration in Exodus, and certainly the black church has been a force for liberation struggle. But I always wonder what would have happened if people had refused the God of the slave masters.

E.R.: Well, a lot of them did. I was interested in part in learning about links between blacks and Jews, because you have this sort of flowering of black Judaism and people like Jamaica Kincaid, who, decades earlier, were embracing Judaism.

A.L.: In taking your journeys, do you have any hope that your children won’t be brought up with the same need to search for answers, that they will already have the answers you’ve written your books to search?

E.R: I don’t like to think of my children being people who would not search or ask questions. At the same time, I hope for them to have a more secure sense of themselves and who they are in the world than I did as a young person.

S.R.P.: I imagine the question of black liberation, of black freedom, is a different question for our generation that it was for our parents or our grandparents. So it’s going to be a different question for our sons’ and daughters’ generation, but I don’t think it’s a question that will have evaporated.

E.R.: Something that was carrying on my journey was this provenance of my own blackness. I was interested in talking to black people who’d left home to find the Promised Land, and then I kept arriving in these places and having that question upset or overturned. The Ethiopian Jews I talked to in Israel, for example, don’t think of themselves as black or even necessarily as African.

Your son is of two places; my children have that experience, as well. So, the questions they ask will be different because their backgrounds are different than ours were and are. These questions of identity are shifting as boundaries and borders change.

 

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The Search for a Black Zion

Adrift at home, a woman sets out to find the Promised Land — in Jamaica, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Israel

About a decade ago, novelist Emily Raboteau went to Jerusalem to visit a childhood friend who’d made aliyah. The trip provoked yearnings in Raboteau, the biracial daughter of an African-American father and white mother, for a place where she could feel at home, a Zion of her own. Six years later, that yearning led her to embark on a long journey to learn more about those who leave everything behind in search of a better life in a place they feel they belong. Following in the footsteps of others in the African diaspora, she traveled back to Israel to talk to Ethiopian Jews and African Hebrew Israelites; to Jamaica and Ethiopia to meet with Rastafarians; and to Ghana, home to expats from the United States and elsewhere who wanted to return to the place from which their ancestors were forcibly deported as slaves.
 As she chronicles in her new book, Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, Raboteau learned how difficult and disappointing the pursuit of Zion can be and came to recognize Zion less as a geographical destination and more as a place of inner strength and well being. In this episode of Vox Tablet, she speaks with Julie Subrin about these and other discoveries.

 

 

HISTORY + VIDEO: Black Athena > Dynamic Africa

blackfilm:

Black Athena

Examines the claims of Professor Martin Bernal who questions the assumption of the Europeans of our civilization placing instead the black Egyptians and Phoenicians at the center of the West’s origins.

Black Athena examines Cornell Professor Martin Bernal’s iconoclastic study of the African origins of Greek civilization and the explosive academic debate it provoked.

This film offers a balanced, scholarly introduction to the disputes surrounding multiculturalism, political correctness and Afrocentric curricula sweeping college campuses today.

(via diasporicroots)