Dead Prez
"The Beauty Within"▲❍ ▲❍ ▲❍ ▲❍
Concept by Underdog the DJ
Call for Essays - Deciding Moment: The State of AIDS in Black America 2011 (Black AIDS Institute)
Deadline: 1 May 2011The Black AIDS Institute is looking for 30 Black Americans 30 years old or younger
to share their views about HIV/AIDS. You could be one!2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were diagnosed in the United States. Who would have thought that a strange disease first identified among a small group of gay men in Los Angeles would turn into the leading health issue of our time, killing tens of millions across the globe and threatening the national security of countries all over the world.
This June, the Black AIDS Institute will publish its 2011 State of AIDS in Black America report commemorating 30 years since the first AIDS cases were diagnosed in the United States. The report will include a supplement featuring 30 essays from Black Americans age 30 and younger. We want to hear from this unique generation of Black Americans who have never known life without HIV/AIDS. We invite you to share your thoughts about HIV and AIDS.
Today, Black America bears the brunt of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, accounting for nearly 50% of the estimated 1.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS, nearly 50% of the 56,000 new cases each year, and almost 50% of AIDS related deaths to date.
What do you think about the HIV/AIDS epidemic? How has it impacted your life? Even if you’ve not been touched by the disease or don’t know anyone who has, we want to know what your think. What do you think should be done to end the epidemic in Black communities? Have you’ve been tested for HIV? How was that experience for you? Have you ever met someone living with HIV/AIDS? Do you talk about HIV with your friends or partners? What do you talk about? Write to us. Share your thoughts. The world wants to know what young Black America thinks about HIV/AIDS.
Submission requirements: Submissions must be no longer than 800 words. All contributors must be age 30 or younger on June 1, 2011. Submit essays EMBEDDED within your email to 30under30@blackaids.org . Please include a short bio (one paragraph please), a high resolution photo of yourself, and a contact phone number. Due to the high volume of submissions, we can only respond to submissions we intend to publish. Submission deadline is May 1, 2011.
Contact Information:
For inquiries: 30under30@blackaids.org
For submissions: 30under30@blackaids.org
Website: http://www.blackaids.org
Call for Applications: Fidelity Bank's Creative Writing Workshop 2011 (Nigeria)
Deadline: 11 May 2011The workshop is a component of Fidelity’s corporate Social Responsibility, through which the bank continues to push for a better society. Participants are expected to read and discuss a wide range of fiction as well as complete short writing exercises. Entries open on Monday 18 April 2011 to Wednesday 11 May 2011. Participation in the workshop is limited to those who apply and are accepted. A public symposium featuring readings and panel discussions will be held on the last day of the workshop.
To apply, send an e-mail to: Creative.writing@fidelitybankplc.com. Your e-mail should bear the title – “Workshop Application”.The body of the e-mail should contain the following:
1. Your name
2. Your address
3. A few sentences about yourself (not more than 50 words)
4. A writing sample of between 200 – 1000 wordsPlease note that the workshop is purely meant for fiction writers. Any entry that does not fall into this category will be automatically rejected. Acceptance will be based on quality of the entry. The entry must be pasted or written in the body of the e-mail. Do NOT send any attachments. Applications with attachments will be automatically disqualified. If accepted, you will be notified by June 10, 2011.
Contact Information:
For inquiries: Creative.writing@fidelitybankplc.com
For submissions: Creative.writing@fidelitybankplc.com
Website: http://www.fidelitybankplc.com/
Call for Contributions on the Works of Léon Gontran Damas
Dr. Hanétha Vété-Congolo (Bowdoin College) is calling for contributions for a “Léon Gontran Damas: A Thorough Negritude,” a special issue of Negritud: Revista de Estudios Afro-Latinoamericanos, as a tribute to the poet on the 100th anniversary of his birth in early 2012.
Description: Born on March, 28th, 1912, the Martinico-Guyanese Négritude thinker and poet, Léon Gontran Damas, is the one the exponents of the transformative ideas of Négritude, who has been generally overlooked. Only a handful of academic analyses can be found on his writing and his contributions to Négritude. Yet, Damas is the very first one of the three thinkers and poets– Césaire, Damas, and Senghor–to have published works within the conceptual domain of Négritude. Additionally, the particularities of his writing—poetically and politically intense—are the elements that make Négritude a thorough revolutionary movement.
Aimé Césaire affirmed that, had Damas not imprinted his poems with his astoundingly incandescent power, his [Césaire’s] Notebook of a Return to my Native Land would probably never have been written. Explicitly entitled, “Pigments,” in the mid-thirties, Damas’ first collection of poetry was seized and banned by the French Administration.
To celebrate and commemorate Damas’s powerful creativity and thought, Dr. Vété-Congolo requests articles on his works in French, Spanish, English, or Portuguese. These peer-reviewed articles should follow the writing standards of the MLA and be no more than 30 pages long, double spaced (including footnotes and bibliography). Articles should be submitted electronically, no later than October 30, 2011, to mvete@bowdoin.edu.
For more information on Damas, see http://english.emory.edu/Bahri/Damas.html (in English) and http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/damas.html (in French)
2011 Competition Guidelines
via web.mac.com
Background
Acommon marketplace in South Africa for creative township entrepreneurs is therobots, where one can buy anything from car phone chargers to ear muffs, from knock-off sunglasses to country flags. What you’ll also find there are the awesomely talented Robot Artists.
Risking arrest, harsh weather and enduring the often the rude and judgemental comments of passer-bys, these artists are committed to sell their township art to support their families often left behind in Zimbabwe and Malawi...
"Robot Artists" was featured at the Really Short Film Fest hosted in Cape Town.
Music in the film courtesy ofAndy Schar. Download the exclusive feature song "Big Dreams".
"Robot Artists" was filmed and edited by the talented bunch at New Creation Collective.
The Short Film
Buy their art
It's the simplest way to help support these robot artists. You'll love their creative 3D paintings made from recycled materials (as seen in the short film above). Checkout with your preferred size and shipping option below:
Donate to the workshop
Help us raise the funds to rent workshop space in Cape Town where the artists can work from. Here we aim to create an environment where talents can flourish, collaboration with other artists is encouraged and artistic boundaries are pushed.No donation is too small!
GET A TOWNSHIP PAINTING MADE BY A PARTICULAR ROBOT ARTIST
View all the robot artists
DAILY DISPATCHES
Daily Dispatches: Nairobi is an innovative exploration through photojournalism of a fast-evolving 21st-century African city, unfolding day by day in real time. We will spend each day of April searching out stories from all corners of Kenya’s capital, stories which will paint a compelling, informative and surprising portrait of the city, and the lives lived by those who call it home. Each day, we will send our images and reports back to a series of US universities and colleges we’re working with, who will in turn print them and mount them in an exhibition which grows day by day.
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Food costs double as Arab crises hit Nairobi’s markets
Hundreds of traders descend on Wakulima Market early each morning
Staple foods are twice the price they were at the start of 2011. Mike Pflanz hears how this is hurting traders and customers alike.
CITY CENTER, April 26, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – It is not yet dawn but Wakulima Market is chaos. Bystanders duck as men carrying 150lb bags on their shoulders hiss past. Handcart pullers jostle for business in the fluorescent half-light. Vegetable trucks reverse blindly.
This is Nairobi’s largest wholesale farmers’ market. Suppliers who have often driven through the night from their fields strike deals with traders who then sell goods on to the city’s supermarkets, restaurants and small-scale market stalls.
But here, those deals and those trades are in trouble. Soaring food costs caused by increasing international oil prices driven by revolutions in North Africa, and Kenya’s weakening currency, are hitting these businessmen and women hard.
Elsewhere in Africa, this has caused riots. There are fears Nairobi could be next.
Bernard Kihanda comes here every morning to buy 110lb of watermelons, which he then loads into his truck and sells in the city’s upmarket suburbs. Prices at the wholesale market are up 29%.
“I have to pass that cost on to my customers,” he said, haggling for better prices as dawn began to lighten the sky. “Watermelons are not corn or milk, they are not essential foods. I know people will start to complain, and then where is my business?”
Three stalls down – the traders sit on crates with their wares spread on cardboard on the floor – Margaret Mwaura, selling mangoes, is already feeling the impact.
Mangoes on sale at Wakulima Market, where customers struggle to pay new high prices
“This stock I’ve had since Friday, and it’s still here now, it will go to waste if I don’t sell today,” she said. “Prices used to be 8¢ for each mango, now it’s 11¢. I am not able to charge my customers more, they have no money in their pockets. I am the one taking the loss.”
As the sun rose and immediately slipped beneath a blanket of low cloud, trader after trader came back to this common theme.
Mary Njeri, Jane Wanjiru and Elizabeth Nyambura, grandmothers all aged over 60, rise at 4am each day and come to Wakulima to buy a variety of goods to then sell door-to-door on housing estates ringing the city.
“Our customers complain, they cannot afford the high prices we have to ask, but we cannot buy the food here unless we pay those prices,” Njeri said.
“We are the ones making the loss. Especially because people are no longer buying exotic vegetables, they want only the basics, and they refuse to pay the new prices,” Wanjiru added.
Kenya’s staple food is corn, usually ground to flour and boiled into a kind of dense cake called ugali. On this, Kenya survives.
But the wholesale cost of a 250lb sack of green corn has risen from $40 in February to $70 today, a 75% increase, according to figures from Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture.
Prices for potatoes, another staple, have doubled. Beans are up 34%, tomatoes by 20%. In a city like Nairobi, where the majority of households struggle by on less than $5 a day, such price hikes are crippling.
A man hangs on in the back of a truck delivering onions to Wakulima Market
The Consumers’ Federation of Kenya, a watchdog protecting buyers’ interests, has planned demonstrations to protest at what it says is the government’s failure to help the country’s poorest.
“Fuel and food prices are fast becoming unbearable for the majority of Kenyans,” said Stephen Mutoro, the Federation’s secretary general.
Several excuses had been advanced, he said, from a weak Kenya Shilling, the high inflation rate and the Northern Africa and Arab world crises and their impact on oil prices, which trickle down to gas pumps across the country.
“But those are just excuses not because they are not valid but because there is little Kenya can do about them,” Mutoro said. “On the contrary, no one is talking about the internal factors of the high prices, from lack of political will, to outright corruption and institutional gross inefficiencies.”
These are potentially fighting words. Similar sharp statements in neighboring Uganda prompted mass demonstrations which led to police firing tear gas on protesters, many of whom were arrested.
In Wakulima market, few thought that Nairobi was yet ready to revolt.
But Rosemary Nyambura, who sells bundles of used plastic bags (prices up 50%), conceded that “we are all getting very frustrated”.
“Corn flour is almost double what it was only a few short months ago,” she said. “It’s just mathematics – I have the same money in my pocket, but food costs twice as much, so my family can eat half what it used to. Now we are taking only one meal a day. This is the reality of today.”
Slideshow
Related: Brendan’s full-size images from Wakulima Market
Stories from the streets
One of Nairobi’s street-children walks through Westlands’ traffic
Uncounted hundreds of children and young men live rough on Nairobi’s streets. They tell Mike Pflanz their stories.
WESTLANDS, April 25, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – It used to be worse, people tell you. The kids would swarm around your car, ready to launch a handful of faeces straight at you should you fail to pay. Keep your windows up, doors locked, that was the only way to drive through Nairobi.
Today, that doesn’t happen anymore. The government, in operations with questionable motives and methods, have moved many of the city’s street children to ‘homes’ on the outskirts.
Many, however, remain, struggling to find the money even for a cup of tea, constantly fleeing authorities, homeless and with fuzzy futures often devoid of opportunity. Too often ignored, each, however, has a story. (more…)
Faith, hope and charity?
An overflowing crowd watches Pastor David Adeoye at Nairobi’s Winners’ Chapel on Easter Sunday
Congregations are growing across all beliefs in Nairobi. Mike Pflanz explores what faith means to religious leaders and their followers in a fast-changing world.
WOODLEY, April 24, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – The main hall, brick-built with a high tin roof, is packed. The tents outside, three of them, are packed. And still people are streaming in.
Welcome to Winners’ Chapel, early on Easter Sunday morning. As the choir, smartly dressed in white shirts and black skirts, take their seats, a compact man in a charcoal suit jumps to the stage, beneath a sign promising “Financial Fortune Is My Heritage: Deu 8.18”.
This is Senior Pastor David Adeoye, a Nigerian ministering here in Nairobi to what claims to be one of the fastest growing churches in Kenya, an evangelical mission preaching prosperity through sacrifice to Jesus. (more…)
Faithfully reporting Nairobi
Muslims gather for Friday prayers at Nairobi’s Jamia Mosque, the largest in Kenya
CITY CENTER, April 23, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Nairobi, cosmopolitan city that it is, hosts people of pretty much all faiths and religions you can imagine. By numbers, the most prominent are Christians, then Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and a plethora of traditional belief systems.
This weekend, as the city shuts down for the Easter holidays, Daily Dispatches is taking a little time out from the hustle of turning around a story a day. We’ve not stopped the work though – far from it. We’re talking to religious leaders from the three main faiths, and to their congregations, about what faith means to them, and how it is changing as the city modernizes and expands around us.
We’ll post the Dispatch we hope late Sunday or early Monday. We’re really keen to hear what kinds of questions you would want us to put to these leaders: an evangelical Christian preacher, the Imam of Kenya’s largest mosque, and a Hindu priest at one of Nairobi’s many temples. Please leave us a comment here, or on our Facebook page, and we’ll do our best to feature their responses in the Dispatch.
Happy Holidays to all, if you’re lucky enough to be off work this weekend.
A city, stalled
Future movement? Rebuilt roads aim to ease Nairobi’s infamous congestion
Mike Pflanz discusses Nairobi’s notorious traffic jams, and sees the efforts being made to break the bottlenecks
THIKA ROAD, April 21, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Let’s think of this city as a body. Let’s think of its heart as its businesses, pumping vitality and sustaining circulation.
Let’s think of its brain as its universities, schools, and policy panels, all – in theory – scheming for a brighter future. Its soul, let’s imagine somewhere in its pubs, clubs, churches, mosques and temples, and in its family homes.
Its roads, then, are its arteries, veins and capillaries, keeping the whole system alive. Here, today, in Nairobi, they have became so clogged that we are slipping into coma. (more…)
Wheels of fortune
A new Nissan SUV on sale in a downtown Nairobi showroom
Mike Pflanz charts the rise of car ownership in Nairobi, and sees how what were once toys of the few are now available to the many.
INDUSTRIAL AREA, April 20, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – It was once the ultimate symbol of power in Africa, a car which gave its name to the continent’s often crooked elite: the ‘WaBenzi’.
But the Mercedes Benz is losing its position as the only car to buy to boast of your success, as sales plateau, overtaken by Japanese SUVs and muscular 4x4s.
“You cannot overestimate the importance of cars as status symbols here,” said Gavin Bennett, director of the Kenya Motor Industry Association. (more…)
The bone collectors
Dr Emma Mbua examines Turkana Boy’s jawbone at the National Museums of Kenya
In the vault of Nairobi’s National Museum lies one of the world’s most important fossil collections. Mike Pflanz hears why it is so precious, and why financial struggles might delay fresh finds.
MUSEUM HILL, April 19, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – The steel cabinet looks little different from the other 22 here in this chilly, climate-controlled strong-room.
On its door, sticky tabs printed on an old hand-held labeller cryptically say W. Turkana Hominids, 85S, Eliye Springs, Nariokotome. Inside, seven compact wooden cases with black metal clasps lie on shelves, all marked KNM-WT 15000.
Dr Emma Mbua reaches straight for the second one down, “85S/B Cranium and Mandible”, pulls it out and gently sets it on a foam-covered table in the middle of the room. (more…)
VOX NAIROBI | 3
Mary Cherop Maritim buying raw corn just after sunrise at Nairobi’s Kangemi market
Name – Mary Cherop Maritim
Age – 44
Work – Entrepreneur, Cherubet Company
Lives – Westlands
DONHOLM, April 18, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Mary Cherop Maritim launched her frozen food company by going straight to the managing director’s office at Kenya’s biggest supermarket chain with 11lbs of sample produce in a borrowed cooler. Four years later, now shipping 2,000lbs a week, she talks to Mike Pflanz about starting out, expanding her firm, and why financial independence is important for Nairobi’s young businesswomen. (more…)
Friends in our night
P.O.P. heads out into Nairobi’s fast-changing night-time party scene
Nairobi’s character changes after the sun’s gone down. P.O.P and Richie Rich, hip-hop musicians with the city’s Ukoo Flani collective, tell Mike Pflanz how past midnight is not as you might imagine.
WESTLANDS, April 16, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – It’s way into tomorrow already, and the DJ at the Skylux club, on the 3rd floor of a nondescript office block, has packed the dance floor.
It filled up late – the Barcelona vs Real Madrid soccer game kept most of the partygoers in the pub longer than usual. But now the beats deepen, and the dance-floor darkens.
RICHIE RICH – Something new’s coming to Nairobi in the last five years. You know there’s a lot moving in this city, there’s construction, there’s new apartments everywhere, guys are feeling that there’s a hype about the place, it’s picking up. Money’s moving around. People have it, or they’re chasing it. (more…)
The karate grandmothers
A grandmother practices a palm strike against a punch bag during self-defense classes
Mike Pflanz meets Korogocho’s Gender Defenders: grandmothers in self-defense classes learning how to fend off attackers amid a surge in sexual violence
KOROGOCHO, April 15 (Daily Dispatches) – First a prayer, then a stretch, then a hammer-fist blow.
Two dozen women, none younger than 60, were gathered at a school for disabled children for their latest lesson how to fight back against an epidemic of violence sweeping this Nairobi slum.
Under coach Beatrice Nyariara, a spry 68-year-old, each squared up to the punchbag in turn to practice hammer-fist blows to the head, upward palm-strikes to the nose, backwards punches and strong kicks. (more…)
Rapping a revolution in Nairobi’s slums
Nairobi’s hip-hop sensation Octopizzo, during a tour of Kibera
Octopizzo, a hip-hop artist rising from Kibera, talks to Mike Pflanz about his contempt for US gangsta rap, representing the city’s poorest, and why music must be a business for artists to survive
Arrest this development?
A view of new apartments through the shrouds wrapping one of Nairobi’s under-construction shopping centers
Mike Pflanz offers a personal view on Nairobi’s construction boom, and what it could mean for the city’s future.
WOODLEY, April 13, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – The face of this young city is undergoing radical plastic surgery. In what the media here never fail to call “the leafy suburbs”, 1930s stone-built bungalows behind manicured hedges are being torn down and multistory apartment blocks rising high in their place.
Out on the upgraded highways snaking into the city, red tiled roofs stretch across acres of what was once empty grassland tended only by Masai cattle.
Malls are morphing from charming clusters of family-owned grocers and butchers, where everyone knows your name, into many-outlet monoliths to Mammon.
At well-to-do dinner parties, this is a constant topic of slightly disapproving conversation. Think of all the traffic. Have they upgraded the sewer pipes and the water supply? How will the electricity grid cope with all this extra demand?
Railroad rebirth?
A schoolboy watches from the window as a commuter train passes people walking to work in Nairobi’s outskirts
Mike Pflanz joins commuters on one of a recently doubled number of early morning train services to the city. Does this signal a rebirth of the railroad that helped create the country that is Kenya?
ON THE 06:40am TO NAIROBI, April 12, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – We pull slowly out of Athi River station, leaving behind the run-down railroad shed that is now home to the Jesus Victory Center and a tinshack kindergarten.
Ahead, an hour-long commute, through the Athi plains once swarming with wildlife, beneath final-approach to the international airport, through the smoggy iron-roof slums and the industrial area, and into the heart of Nairobi.
“Ah, we love this thing,” smiles Steve Nyahe, 40, a graphic designer, who like most aboard the train used to have to sit cramped in a 14-seat ‘matatu’ minibus taxi to town, stalled in jams and pollution, for two hours or more. (more…)
A bright future?
Workers correct colors at a Nairobi printing firm looking forward to expanding its business
Economic growth, stalled by the global financial crisis and Kenya’s election violence, is rising once again. Nairobi’s businesses are poised to reap rewards, Mike Pflanz finds.
INDUSTRIAL AREA, April 11, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – With an incessant computer-controlled hiss clack clack, hiss clack clack, a million-dollar machine the size of a bus was churning out 14,000 bank flyers an hour.
Over in the corner, sales pouches for a cellphone firm’s SIM cards were being folded. Nearby, neat stacks of An Introduction to Public Health stood ready for shipping.
This 44-year-old firm, Colourprint, housed in a nondescript factory off a pot-holed road, is one of hundreds of companies clustered in Nairobi’s industrial area. (more…)
Vox Nairobi | 2
Name – Peter Olendo
Age – 59
Work – Photographer, Lens Image Creation Center
Lives – Kibera
KIBERA, April 10, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Peter Olendo talks to Mike Pflanz about his business as a studio photographer – his first camera, the advent of digital photography, and never forgetting a customer’s legs.
(more…)
“We are all in the night together”
Daily Dispatches takes to Nairobi’s streets for two hours either side of midnight on Friday, to talk to people who earn their living during darkness. By Mike Pflanz. Photos by Brendan Bannon.
CITY CENTER and WESTLANDS, April 8-9, 2011 (Daily Dispatches)
Walter Njau, 36, Taxi Driver, Kenya Taxi Cabs Association, Koinange St
“This is a business when sometimes you lose, and sometimes you profit. Weekends are busiest, but people come drunk in my car, I drop them far away then they say they don’t have money. What can I do? Other times, customers drop their money in the car then leave, that’s mine, that’s my profit. Or you are new to Nairobi, you say you want to go to Hurlingham, it’s just here but I tell you it’s $25, and you agree. That’s profit for me, you see, because Hurlingham is only $5.
“When it’s quiet, I’m standing by my car, I’m looking around like a crow looks around from the air to the ground, looking far for something. These people coming, can they be customers? Can they need me to drive them far? I hope so. I ask almost everybody who passes by, need a taxi? On a weekend, I can go home with $40 or $50 after my all-night shift. Other days, sometimes only $10. I buy food for the kids, I save some, I drink some.
“There are some rules we have, there is an association, they arrange for every driver to be posted in a certain place. If a freelance guy comes to my spot, I’ll puncture his tires, I’ll beat him or chase him away. He can’t work here. Sometimes it’s dangerous. Once when I was dropping some customers at their house, in was raining heavily, five guys with guns jumped us, they opened the boot, told us to enter inside. It was like 11pm. They roamed with us to 3am, then they dropped us in a different place. They released us, “get your car and go”, they said. They had taken all our money, our phones. But they did not kill us. The other good thing they did was they filled the car, full tank. They used the car for robberies, while we were inside. The police when I went to them they told us the car was seen in robberies all over town.” (more…)
Fast news day
NTV’s Robert Nagila reports on international court cases against Kenyan politicians
Mike Pflanz profiles one of Nairobi’s fresh breed of TV journalists on one of the country’s busiest news days of the year
CITY CENTER, April 7, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – The red digits on the clock on the newsroom wall climb steadily towards 10:30am. Guys in shirtsleeves thumbing BlackBerrys march past to meetings. Desk-phones peal.
A plasma TV shows a smiling Kenyan politician spilling out of a shiny Mercedes by a smart office block 4,000 miles away in Europe.
He is one six men accused by the world’s war crimes court of organizing election violence here three years ago. He and two others will appear before judges in Holland for the first time this morning. (more…)
Ivory orphans
Elephants play after their morning milk feed at a rescue center in Nairobi
Rescued baby elephants whose mothers have died or disappeared end up in a very different kind of city orphanage in Nairobi, Mike Pflanz discovers
LANGATA, April 6, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Five years ago, Abdi Kashel was a waiter in a safari lodge serving gin and tonics to well-heeled tourists.
The only elephants he saw were those drinking at the watering-hole below the guest cottages, or the occasional distant herd spotted from the bus taking him home for holidays.
Today, he lives with elephants, full-time, in Nairobi. He watches over them as they browse the bush for fodder in the city’s National Park. He feeds them specially-formulated milk, every three hours without fail.
And at night, he sleeps sharing a stable with one. (more…)
Scrap metal market
Dickens Otieno swapped to using recycled metal after paint prices rose and sales fell
Nairobi’s artists are struggling amid an economic downtown and a shrinking market for fresh work. By Mike Pflanz
INDUSTRIAL AREA, April 5, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Mid-morning Mondays, round the back of Nairobi’s middle-class pubs, you’ll find Dickens Otieno waiting.
He’s after the empty beer and cider cans swept up after the weekend’s merrymaking. For this 32-year-old artist, trash tin is sprung tight with colorful potential, waiting to be reborn.
Otieno is one of the hundreds of painters and sculptors struggling to make a living in a city far from famous for its art, or its art market. (more…)
Old media and new in a revolution reaching young Kenyans
Anonymity assured: “DJ B” records his pirate radio show
By Mike Pflanz
KAREN, April 4, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – The collection of hipsters, artists and passionate young designers that is the team at Shujaaz.fm has broken many taboos and launched itself into the consciousness of an entire generation of previously ignored Kenyan young people in its short life.
The group is behind the immensely popular Shujaaz.fm comic book, a linked radio show broadcast daily on 22 FM stations nationwide, and a booming online community on Facebook, Twitter, text message and a website.
Together, all these media are used to one end: to boost the confidence, pride and outlook of the 27 million people, 73% of Kenya’s population, who are aged under 30. (more…)
AFF 2011 Preview - Music Documentary “Beatboxing - The Fifth Element Of Hip Hop”
Landing at this year’s Atlanta Film Festival (April 28 - May 7), the music documentary Beatbox - The Fifth Element Of Hip Hop examines the art form of “beatbox” and how it’s aided the expansion of hip hop music.
Directed by Klaus Schneyder, the film focuses on such things as the inception of the art form to various techniques utilized by beatboxers worldwide including Doug E. Fresh and Biz Markie.
Synopsis:
It was in the late 70s that a youth culture evolved in the poorer parts of New York which combined several disciplines under the name of Hip Hop. Apart from the four classic elements of Graffiti writing, DJing, Breakdancing, and Rapping, the musical side of this culture was enhanced by a fifth element called ‘Beatboxing’.
From the hardship of poverty and the lack of instruments, a pioneer was inspired to imitate drum rhythms with his mouth – his brilliance creating the term ‘Human Beatbox’. Very soon other Hip Hop artists picked up his style and added this technique of music making to their own shows, but at that time beatboxing never left the realm of Hip Hop culture.
At the end of the 80s the first big wave of beatboxing was over and beatboxing only existed in an underground scene. It took until the late 90s that the art of Human Beatboxing was explosively revived. At that time the Internet had emerged and offered new ways of communication for young artists. All of a sudden beatboxers from all over the world were given the opportunity to connect and share their knowledge on websites through videos and online tutorials.
Since then Human Beatboxing has become a global phenomenon, which is organized and celebrated in the annual Beatbox Conventions and through Beatbox Competitions, that are being held in an increasing number of countries every year.
The documentary aims at providing a full picture of this incredible art form starting with its genesis within Hip Hop Culture and continuing with its further developments and its use in various musical fields in several countries throughout the world.
The documentary features artists from New York, California, Florida, Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Belgium, Canada, Austria and Germany, who demonstrate their amazing techniques, which often seem impossible to audiences at first sight, but see for yourselves…
Below is the trailer and for screening info go HERE.
Maya Angelou and Common talk about transformation, responsibility, influence and more (Video)
April 27, 2011 by Verse
In this amazing interview, the good folk at Gowhere HipHop sat down with the poet/civil rights activist/living legend/”Godmother of American Hip Hop” that is Maya Angelou and one of the greatest rappers ever Common at the first annual Common Ground Foundation Gala last week, where Common honored Dr. Maya Angelou. They discuss how they first met, her influence on hip hop, taking responsibility for the younger generation and more.
“The truth is, we make a mistake when we think that generations can be separated. The truth is, you need me so that I have shoulders you can stand on. And you need me so that you have shoulders somebody else can stand on. We are one. And to separate us and decide that we’ll be polarized, is ridiculous, it’s stupid, and it’s dangerous.”
“I am responsible to that 5 year old, that 15 year old, that 30 year old, that 55, I am responsible to you. And I try to live my life as a responsible teacher, giver. Yes, I try to live my life that way. So that I will encourage Common to live his life that way, and this is what he’s doing with Common Ground Foundation. He’s living his life, so that younger people can stand on his shoulders. That’s about right.”
- Dr. Maya Angelou
Interview By: Jeff Baraka
Video By: Cam Be x Maks G
Preview - “Ebony Goddess:
Queen of Ilê Aiyê”
(Challenging Standards Of Beauty)
Intriguing-looking documentary here from Brazilian filmmaker Carolina Moraes-Liu titled Ebony Goddess: Queen of Ilê Aiyê, which tells the story of 3 young women searching for identity and self-esteem in a competition for the Queen of Ilê Aiyê crown.
The film and its central focus seek to challenge prevailing Eurocentric standards of beauty in Brazil, a country famous for its slim supermodels and plastic surgery, by reinforcing Afrocentric notions of beauty, as contestants for the crown dress in, and perform dances in Afro-Brazilian tradition.
Carolina self-funded the low-budget documentary, which has screened at several film festivals across the globe to critical acclaim. Carolina, by the way, produced, directed, shot and edited the film, which is currently being distributed by Third World Newsreel.
Watch the trailer below, and if you’re interested in seeing the entire film, DVDs are available on the film’s website: ebonygoddessdocumentary.com; or if you’re in Seattle, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, or Detroit in the June, it’ll screen at festivals in those areas. The website has more info: