To take on any song sung by Nina Simone is brave – or perhaps even foolhardy – as no other vocalist in the history of jazz or pop has ever been able to make a song more completely their own than Nina did.
Wisely, Meshell goes her own way on these 14 songs, inviting other singers to join her on some of the songs and taking on main vocals herself on about half of the tracks.
A duet with Sinead O’Connor is breathy, heavy and the occasionally ponderous moment is leavened with bright country guitar licks, the whole being surprisingly enjoyable. Other vocalists like Lizz Wright (soaring over ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’), Toshi Reagon and Valerie June supply the more agile vocal moments. Valerie in particular steals the show with a remarkable and highly stylised rendition of’ ‘Be My Husband’.
‘Please Don’t Let Me Be Understood’ features Meshell on vocals and she uses the smokiness of her voice to stamp her own distinctive brand on this musical warhorse, while ‘Suzanne’ takes on a subtly different meaning in the tender care of Meshell.
Prize: $500, publication of chapbook and 50 copies Deadline: January 31, 2013 postmark Reading fee: $18 (make check payable to Grayson Books) Submit: 16-24 pages of poetry, two cover sheets (one with contact information and one anonymous). SASE for results only.
Simultaneous submissions are permissible if we are notified immediately upon acceptance elsewhere.
This year’s judge is Brian Clements. He coordinates the MFA in Creative and Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University. Clements is the author of several books of poetry, most recently Jargon from Quale Press, and is editor of An Introduction to the Prose Poem. He is the founding editor of the small press Firewheel Editions and of Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics.
Grayson Books PO Box 270549 West Hartford, CT 06127
I was told once that you can’t call yourself an ‘Africanist’ before attending an ASA meeting. I am not sure they were referring to the academic discussion… Deadlines: March 15 XxN
CALL FOR PROPOSALS 55th Annual Meeting RESEARCH FRONTIERS IN THE STUDY OF AFRICA
November 29-December 1, 2012 Marriott Philadelphia Downtown Hotel, Philadelphia, PA
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: March 15, 2012
PROGRAM CHAIRS: Tejumola Olaniyan, Departments of English and African Languages and Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison (asameeting2012@gmail.com)
Staffan Lindberg,Departments of Political Science at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and University of Florida (asameeting2012@gmail.com)
ABOUT THE MEETING We are soliciting proposals for papers, panels, and roundtables. Presentations may focus on the theme of“Research Frontiers in the Study of Africa”or on broader social science, humanities, and applied themes relating to Africa. We strongly encourage the submission of formed panels. This year the ASA will make every effort to provide AV equipment to as many applicants as possible who indicate such needs in their application.
HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL PLEASE NOTE: If your proposal is accepted, the conference pre-registration fee must be paid by May 1, 2012 by ALL participants. Payment of the pre-registration fee will result in a final acceptance. Failure to pay the pre-registration fee by May 1, 2012, will result in an automatic rejection.
New! We have added a shopping cart feature which will allow individuals to purchase membership and pre-registration at the same time.
Mix Digital 2013: text on screens; making/discovering/teaching call for papers and presentations
Following on from a successful 2012 event, Bath Spa University is co-hosting a second Mix Digital conference, in partnership with The Writing Platform. This small-scale, intimate series of events will take place over three days at BSU’s Corsham Court campus, set in a Grade One-listed Jacobean mansion in the bucolic Wiltshire landscape.
This year, the themes will be ‘Text on Screens: Making, Discovering, Teaching’. The organisers welcome papers and presentations about creative works that focus on making digital work, including fiction, e-poetry, videopoetry; mobile, locative, and site specific forms; digital non-fiction, games, text-based digital art, and other electronic, hybrid forms. Papers and presentations of creative works that focus on discovering digital work are also invited, including publishing, curating, gate-keeping, distributing, discoverability, search, audience and performance. And papers and presentations that focus on pedagogy and pedagogical issues in the fields of ‘text on screens’, digital transformations and digital humanities are requested, too.
Papers will be published in a peer-reviewed e-journal; further details to be announced in 2013 with an e-journal edition to be published in 2014.
Proposals are welcome on the topics including, but not limited to, the following:
• What does it mean to put text on a screen?
• What new forms of storytelling are emerging?
• Does reader/writer interaction – via, for example, social media and social reading platforms – transform the work?
• Is writing itself altered by digitisation?
• Publishing, distributing, gatekeeping and curating digital forms
• Discoverabilty and search in the digital landscape
• Transliteracy and transmedia
• New forms of narrative and narrativity
• Audience, performativity, e-performance
• Disruption and transformation of narrative forms
• Pedagogy: how do we teach, collect, and distribute new forms to students?
As well as this, we invite practitioners to send in proposals for presentations or performances of their creative digital works.
Conference Committee: Katharine Reeve (BSU), Lucy English (BSU), Sarah Tremlett (artist), Kate Pullinger (BSU), and Donna Hancox (QUT). Conference Keynote Speakers will include Naomi Alderman and The Literary Platform’s own Sophie Rochester.
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts‘Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America is gorgeously written. The gifted Harvard graduate’s debut is the first offering in a trilogy meant to imagine and explore Black Utopia through three landscapes: Harlem, Haiti and the Black Belt South. The Texas native began in Harlem armed with the requisite research–she’d read and absorbed her Renaissance authors, studied Van Der Zee‘s elegant snap shots of Black life on upper Manhattan’s wide boulevards–but she was also prepared to let her research recede, to allow the place and the people and her own experience and interaction with them and the space unfold. Rhodes-Pitts is obsessively observant and the scribbled notes she’d puzzle together when it was time to sit and write pin down the otherwise vaporous moments that make a day, a place, a life and a living. She’s part diarist, part anthropologist. Her Zora Neale Hurston-sized love for “the people” is natural and nuanced, but where Zora may have been weaving tall tales over a makeshift bar in a cramped uptown kitchen, Rhodes-Pitts finds herself cross-legged in a tenant-organized anti-gentrification meeting, copiously taking notes on how to push back against zoning. Here, we talk about her amazing debut, her next two books, land shark realtors, earthquakes and floods.
Life + Times: I believe I’ve read you talking about your mother’s book collection, and in particular, her Black women’s fiction from the early ’70s through the early ’90s. Do you remember spending time with any particular author or piece of work more than the others? Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts: My mom is a visual artist and an avid reader, she came of age during that moment when Black women were really claiming the artistic stage in America. So her shelves were full of those books; I took them for granted. The summer I was 18, I had a job to save for college and during my lunch hours I disappeared with three books taken from my mother’s collection: Alice Walker‘s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, June Jordan‘s Civil Wars and Lorraine Hansberry‘s To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. They fortified and grounded me as I was about to leave home to attend college in New England. Creatively, the mix of history, personal experience, and politics in those books inspired me and solidified my interest in essays as a form. Later, I abandoned those beginnings–I read widely, across gender, race, nationality, and genre. The writers I found on my mother’s shelves were a foundation and then I had to broaden my tribe. In that camp, some crucial writers are: W.G. Sebald, Virginia Woolf, and Elizabeth Hardwick. But lately I’ve had a desire to go back to some of the Black women’s literature I began with… I have a lot of reading and re-reading to do.
L+T: New York is a walking city and some of your book is about being in the streets on foot and overhearing conversations. In a city as noisy as New York, what about a conversation makes you tune in, to listen? Do you have a favorite pair of listening shoes? SRP: Hmmm. So much of that is about kismet, you know? Being on a certain corner at a certain moment when some improbable tale flies out of someone’s mouth. Or stopping to talk to someone when I could have kept walking. I had a meditation teacher talk once about every human encounter having the potential for resonance. When I first arrived in Harlem, I walked really slow and made eye contact with everyone and was so obviously not a New Yorker, and this provoked all kinds of experiences. I would usually follow those moments where they led, so there’s some kind of faith in that. No favorite listening shoes, but I spend summers in Dr. Scholl’s; in other seasons I do a lot of time in clogs. I’m happiest of all in the country feeling invincible in sturdy boots.
L+T: It appears you spent time while researching this book studying maps. Part of what you discover and argue is Harlem is constantly shifting, both in the imagination and then again in reality, with certain physical and/or corporate encroachments, as with, say Columbia University. Harlem is of course named for Amsterdam’s Haarlem, and even though it was once Dutch farmland, do you think that efforts to protect it as a literal Black space are important? SRP: Yeah, the question of whether the physical space is worth protecting is really crucial. Once I was visiting the studio of my friend, visual artist Leslie Hewitt. It’s near the old Renaissance Ballroom on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. The Renaissance was built by Garveyites who put their money together to start an establishment where Blacks could be entertained, since the most famous nightclubs, like the Cotton Club, were segregated. We provided the entertainment and labor but couldn’t go there. So the Renaissance is this incredibly symbolic space, where self-determination in Harlem was expressed physically, through this enterprise. But in the early 1980s, it closed and fell into ruin and was neglected for decades by its subsequent owner, the Abyssinian Development Corporation. A few years ago, they argued against having this historic building named a city landmark because they wanted to build a high-rise condo there. And they won that battle. Sitting with Leslie, just a few steps away from this half-demolished building, I started ranting about how it was a perfect example of the need to preserve the physical traces of our history. But she had a whole different take on it, challenging me to consider how as a people, our relationship to space has always been fugitive, always threatened. And that we’ve always had to claim space in other creative ways. But I still have an attachment to land. When I moved to NYC, I actually could not comprehend that someone would buy a piece of real estate, an apartment, that was nothing but a floating piece of sky without land attached to it. That’s a Texas perspective. I’m obsessed with that Malcolm X quote: “Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice and equality.”
L+T: As a woman raised in the South, are boundaries important to you? Does it affect your interviewing style? Are you careful not to pry? Or do you ask difficult questions straight out? SRP: In certain ways, I have no boundaries. I’m constantly talking to strangers. But I’m fairly passive about it. I didn’t do interviews for the book. Any conversation that is mentioned happened in the course of my life. It was my life. It wasn’t research. I’ll have to approach that differently for other books, perhaps. I think I’m actually bad at interviews, but I’m told I’m good at listening. I listen a lot more than I ask questions. I observe and stare a lot, too. Whether or not it comes from being Southern, I do have a sense of propriety and privacy that means I don’t push or pry in the way a journalist would. I’m more interested in the person than in “getting the story.” So things unfold. Or they don’t. Maybe that’s a limitation. But it seems to me people reveal what they want to and need to in their own time. And what people don’t say, their silence, often interests me, too…
L+T: Did you go to Harlem with the intention of writing Harlem is Nowhere? If so, were you surprised at yourself when you ended up in advocacy meetings about fair housing with your neighbors? SRP: My move to Harlem in 2002 was improvised. I’d graduated from college two years before, saved money to travel (in India and Europe), then went home broke to my mother in Texas. I started working an office job while I figured out how to become a writer. When I couldn’t live at home anymore, I went back to the East Coast. I arrived in Harlem with ideas and notes for a historical novel set in Texas; writing about the neighborhood was not on my agenda. The writing came about because of my experiences: I was always meeting Harlemites who seemed as obsessed with history as me. Based on those early encounters I wrote a long essay. When it was published, it got a strong response and I started thinking about a book. I was absolutely surprised when I joined the organized resistance against gentrification in Harlem. My parents were both activists in the ’70s–that’s how they met–so I grew up around a lot of politics and was prematurely jaded. I never had a romanticized idea about The Revolution; I wasn’t throwing fists up in the air. Though I saw myself as politically committed and informed, I had never joined a movement. In 2007, I began attending community meetings expecting to do my regular thing: listening, observing, taking notes. Then I was asked to stand up and give testimony at hearings about development in Harlem. And then I was asked to lend a hand–I threw myself into it. I stopped writing the book because I was organizing and going to meetings. I didn’t plan to write about those experiences at all. Later, when the campaign was over and I was burnt out and trying to get back to work, I realized I had just lived through something that was part of an ongoing story about land, power and politics in Harlem.
L+T: Can you please explain to me your vision for these three books? As I understand it, this is a trilogy of Black Utopia where you write about three places. Was there any other collection or even single work that inspired you or that you referenced when conceiving yours? SRP: The trilogy project is about three places: Harlem, Haiti, and the Black Belt of the South (in that order). Once I wrote that long essay on Harlem, the path for the book was pretty much set. My interest in Haiti is long-standing, way before the earthquake–I’ve been researching its history for years. So I had the notion for the Harlem book, and the glimmer of an idea for a Haiti book that would meld history and travel. I was talking to a mentor who said, “It’s three books–what’s the third place?” At some point I realized, “Duh… after going away to other places, I’d eventually need to reckon with home.” All three places hold power in the hearts and minds and souls of Black folk, our political, creative, spiritual aspirations. There’s Harlem: the Black mecca. And Haiti: the first Black republic. I want to trace the relationship between Black Americans and Haiti and the ongoing American interventions in the country. In the South, I’m concerned with the idea of the Black Belt as a separate nation within America. This idea has a long history. I’m also interested in the all-Black towns that cropped up before and after the Civil War. I imagine it as more of a road-trip book, traveling from place to place but also traveling in time. At the end of the road I’ll be in Texas. I don’t know if it was influenced by any writer or work in particular. I just want to follow a set of ideas across space and history, and use my own experience as the frame through which those stories are told.
L+T: Now you’re in New Orleans. I’m assuming some of your research centers around Faubourg Tremé, America’s oldest black neighborhood and the home of the Civil Rights movement. Where it’s possible Harlem may be swallowed by the rest of Manhattan, much of Black New Orleans was literally washed away when the levees failed. What are the challenges of writing about Black New Orleans even as the demography so dramatically shifts? Does any of your work involve interviewing those who fled the flood? SRP: I live in the Treme. It’s been a powerful place to live. I first lived here briefly in the spring of 2005, just a few months before [Hurricane] Katrina. I went to New Orleans the first time without any knowledge about it at all. I was curious since there’s a Creole element in Houston’s black community…it’s nearby but culturally very far away. So I arrived and found a place to live via Craigslist without even having heard of Treme. I met a man a few days into that first stint who, when he heard I lived in Harlem said “Welcome to Treme, the original Harlem of America.” He said that “Harlem was *left* by Dutch people but Treme was *built* by blacks.” I felt like I’d walked into a vortex. At the time I was working on the book proposal for Harlem but all I could read and think about was the history of New Orleans and that neighborhood and this very palpable sense that things were not worked out here. There was not even the illusion of things being worked out. I had this sense of Reconstruction having ended yesterday. And everything that was swirling around suddenly became international news when the levees failed. I ended up back in New Orleans in 2010 in a roundabout way. I was supposed to start my research in Haiti in January 2010 just around the time of the earthquake. Suddenly I didn’t know how or whether I could proceed. I went to New Orleans for a short artist residency and just stayed. So I didn’t come to New Orleans to write about it, either. Maybe I will eventually, but this short time has been about living and listening and learning. Being a part of the community, to the degree a transient newcomer can. I’ve felt welcomed and nourished here. But it hasn’t been directly about writing, if that makes sense.
L+T: From New Orleans you’ll head to Haiti. Will you live there as you are living in New Orleans? Before going, are you anticipating a connection between New Orleans and Haiti? SRP: The shape my research and experience in Haiti will take is unknown to me. I have some lines of inquiry I want to follow and certain locations to visit. And I’ve read a lot of history and keep up with current events. But probably the most important preparation will be forgetting everything I think I know. And surrender.
L+T: Are you influenced at all by the work of Maya Deren? Of Zora Neale Hurston? SRP: Somehow I’ve avoided Deren, though I need to get up on her. Hurston is important to me in a way that’s hard to talk about…I feel similarly about someone like Baldwin. I can’t rhapsodize in very academic ways about their work or how it’s affected me. They are family; I have a reverence and appreciation for them that is similar to how you’d feel about a beloved great-aunt or great-uncle. They gave me a sense of what is possible…
L&T: What are your writing rituals? Your restorative ones? SRP: I practice ritual procrastination. I usually have to sneak up on myself to get writing done. I write ideas on the backs of discarded envelopes along with scribbled grocery lists and to-do lists. Eventually those shards get pieced together. It starts off very disorganized but I can’t really start writing until I have outlines and notecards. But in the midst of the plan there are lots of surprises. In more tranquil moments I keep a notebook. For restoration: lots of baths; my house in New Orleans has a claw-foot tub which I love. I also have a little garden, and spend time out there to get my head clear. I drink tea all day long. When I’m not traveling I’m a homebody and burrow into my domestic life. By all appearances it’s rather idle and boring but being still and quiet makes room for the ideas to land…
As a child, Bernadette Lahai of the Sierra Leone People's Party was told not to whistle; like politics, decision-making, and so many other aspects of the national culture, whistling was felt to be the sole preserve of men. For a decade, Lahai and many other women have been fighting a campaign to increase female representation in parliament. Though disappointed not to achieve their target of a 30% quota ahead of November's elections, they have made significant headway in the battle for gender equality – and with their goal in sight, they won't rest until the struggle is won. This is their story
Directed by Anna Cady and Emily Cooper (with animation by Emily Cooper), this film looks at the Sierra Leonean women's movement's campaign for increased participation for women in Sierra Leone politics and their aim to achieve legislation for a minimum 30% quota. The film looks at this issue through the stories of Dr Bernadette Lahai of the Sierra Leone People's Party, Barbara Bangura, National Coordinator Women's Solidarity Support Group, and Salamatu Kamara who hopes to run for member of parliament.
Background
Sierra Leone experienced a brutal civil war between 1991-2002. As a result of the brutalities suffered by women during the civil strife and their active involvement in the peace process, the government adopted gender equality as a cross-cutting issue to be mainstreamed into all policies, projects and programmes as part of its post-conflict peacebuilding agenda.
Yet, the issue of gender parity in politics has been more widely publicised by 50/50, a non-partisan advocacy group. 50/50’s rallying slogan of gender equality in politics and public affairs and the organisation’s efforts to increase women’s participation in governance, rattled the status-quo and galvanised women into action to advocate for a minimum 30 per cent in all elective and appointive posts. Women have organised both at societal and state levels not only to make the quota issue part and parcel of post-war Sierra Leone’s political discourse, but to ensure that it becomes a reality.
Two years ago, Sierra Leone's government invited the women's movement to draw up a bill to usher in the quota system which they have been demanding for the past 10 years. The women set about working tirelessly to draft and push through a bill stipulating that women should have a 30% representation in government and public decision-making spaces. It was to be a private members' bill that came from those demanding the change.
However, despite the women's demands that the bill be pushed through as a government bill by executive order through a certificate of urgency, and eight other bills being enacted just before the close of parliament in September 2012 for elections held in November 2012, gender equality was not included in the pack.
Although the quota bill has yet to be passed, a positive outcome has been how, against the odds, women have organised themselves so quickly and effectively – a sign that things are changing. Prior to the war, not one female independent candidate had won an electoral seat. Yet the increase in female independent candidates from single digits in the pre-war years to double figures and then, finally, the success of three candidates in the 2004 and 2008 local elections is a remarkable achievement that should be celebrated. Regardless of whether the quota bill is eventually passed, it will go down in history that Sierra Leonean women have forced the government to acknowledge their role and status as a political force that can no longer be overlooked.
Laura Lindegaard was in Liberia for RAPOLITICS. Read her blog about krump, hipco and Liberia’s youth.
The sound of heavy breathing and feet rhythmically stomping the floor hit me from across the room. I’m looking at Abraham Vahn through my camera. He is 21 years old and a krump dancer. The only sound I hear is the heavy breathing, the sneakers as they stomp the floor and the sounds of a body making aggressive movements. It looks almost as if he is fighting an invisible enemy. The hip hop beats that would normally accompany the dance only play in his headphones. It gives an almost poetic feel to the moment as I capture the movements of krump in a house in the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia.
I’m in Liberia with RAPOLITICS to find two dancers who will go to Denmark in September 2012 to conduct a number of workshops with Danish youths. Abraham Vahn is one of the two dancers. Through the RAPOLITICS youth project “Exaggerate”, funded by the Danish Center for Culture & Development (DCCD), the Liberian dancers will teach Danish students about krump and tell them about life as a youth in Liberia.
Krump emerged as a hip hop dance form in the ghettos of Los Angeles, USA, in the beginning of the 00’s by young Afro-Americans. The main inspiration came from “clowning”, another dance style from LA created by Tommy the Clown, but while clowning is playful and teasing, krump got a distinctly more aggressive and expressive feel to it. Krump became a form of expression that was not merely a dance form but also a lifestyle, presenting itself as a faith based art form. Krump stands for Kingdom Radically Uplifted Mighty Praise and draws on inspiration from the bodily possessions churchgoers experience in the Afro-American church where body shaking and cramps show as the physical manifestation of possessions by the Holy Spirit. However, even though Liberia is a highly religious country and religion plays a major role in everyday life, there is no immediate connection between the church and the great popularity krump has gained in Liberia.
In 2009 some young guys from J.J .Roberts High School in Monrovia stumbled upon some krump videos on Youtube. They liked the style and started practicing. Hip hop dance was gaining popularity in the capital, but it took another few years before krump and hip hop dance really took off. Today most school kids in Monrovia know krump, who the best dancers and dance crews are and where and when the next show or competition is taking place. Which is practically every week. Recently a TV show similar to X-Factor, but with hip hop dancers, started on national TV and another reality TV show about dancers is in the making.
In a country like Liberia where the luxury of having a hobby is reserved the few, dancing and particularly hip hop dance and krump is a way of expression that allows for the average (often poor) youths to show off their skills, gain popularity, express themselves creatively and form friendships as they join dance groups. Liberia is one of the poorest countries in the world. From 1989-2003 the country was torn apart by horrendous civil wars that killed 250.000 people and had 1 million fleeing to the neighboring countries. In a country with only 3,4 million citizens, everyone was affected. The physical infrastructure was destroyed, but also social norms, culture and creativity suffered.
Liberia is facing an interesting yet difficult time. It has been eight years of reconstruction, yet the United Nations Mission to Liberia (UNMIL) still has 8,000 peacekeepers stationed in the country and there is no prospect of an early withdrawal. One of the greatest problems Liberia is facing is the extremely high unemployment rate, which particularly hits the youth, who cannot find work and therefore can’t gain independence from their families. The frustration of the youth who don’t feel that they are being heard is in itself a threat to a permanent stability.
However, young people of today’s Liberia are the first (post-war) generation whose teenage years were not lost in the civil war. And they are now in a position to create and define their own culture where the fast spread of access to mobile phones and (a still very slow) Internet play a major role. One of the things the youths are defining themselves through is hip hop dance. Another thing is hipco music. Hipco is the Liberian version of hip hop music. The -co stands for colloquial – everyday Liberian English. The lyrics reflect the everyday problems Liberians experience; from police harassment to the love of chicken soup or relationship issues and the hipco rappers are seen as local heroes who publicly express life as young people in this small West African nation experience it. Hipco plays an important part in giving the youth a voice in the public debate. In 2007 one of the most famous hipco artists, Takun J, was arrested and beaten by the police for a song about police bribery. Since then, the musicians have gained more freedom of speech as they have the support of the people and particularly of the youth, who is the majority of the population. Music plays a role in exploring the limits to freedom of expression and plays an important role in keeping the discussion of censorship and free artistic expression alive in the fragile democracy.
Even though there is a long way to go, both hipco and krump are cultural contemporary expressions that are instrumental in shaping post-conflict Liberia in a positive and necessary direction. There is a great need for attention and support to the creative expressions of the youth in Liberia.
RAPOLITICS’ krump project is a small but significant contribution to the dance scene in Liberia. Almost no adults, and even less so foreigners, have yet paid attention to the interests and artistic talents of the youth. Because of the lack of financial output one can gain through arts in Liberia, creative expressions are not encouraged by the older generation. By providing young dancers with the opportunity to go to Denmark, not only the ones going but also other skillful dancers step up their game in order to change their future opportunities for the better. Abraham Vahn told me that the salary from the workshops in Denmark will pay his enrolment and student fee at the University in Liberia. Dance is his passion, but he knows the importance of education.
Laura Lindegaard holds a Master’s degree in Cross Cultural Studies from the University of Copenhagen. She wrote her Master’s thesis on youth and performativity in post-conflict Liberia. Since 2010 she has lived in Liberia on/off for a total of 10 months interning for an NGO, conducting empirical research for her master’s thesis and working on a documentary.
If you found your appetite whetted by the handful of tracks Chief Boima embedded in his recent article about the most politically and socially powerful sound in Liberia today, Hip-co, and its "indigenous" cousin, Gbema, then start downloading his Lone Stars Mix while you read.
As you no doubt sussed from that piece, Boima spent pretty much most of the summer in Liberia, immersing himself in the music, discovering how these sounds were connected to the recent history and day-to-day experience of Liberians and hooking up with the key artists.
Lone Stars Vol. 1 is a mix of his favourite tunes from all that he heard during his visit. Full songs set for release very soon on Benjamin Lebrave's Akwaaba Music label, so hang on to your hats!Until then, download and enjoy Boima's heady mix. TRACKLIST(as experienced by Boima) 1. Takun J-Tu-ka-ka-ya-tu feat. Byronic and Nasseman I heard this song on the radio during a Monrovia traffic jam the first week I arrived in Liberia. It has a special place in my mind and heart as the first song I recognized, and had to track down.Takun J is one of if not the most popular Hipco artist currently in Liberia. With lines like “said she want me email, but the email didn’t work”, Takun always manages to come up with subtle and inventive lines (off the top of his head) that depict daily life on the ground in Monrovia. I also love the chipmunk high voice that Liberian producers tend to play with. Nasseman, also featured on the track has his own style that borrows from Jamaican Patois, and is just as popular. This was produced by Infectious Michael.2. F.A.-Bump It Remix featuring Takun J, K-Zee, and Cypha D’King A really great song from a group of Liberia’s most popular artists. This song comes from the powerhouse studio Bluelinks in downtown Monrovia. Bluelinks also has a radio station called Hot FM, which is run by DJ Blue a repatriated Liberian from Monrovia. The Bluelinks crew throws a lot of events, and they’re probably the most avid promoters and supporters of Liberian artists.3. Genesis Crew-Champagne I got this track from DJ Cole at the Heritage studio in Gbarnga, Bong County. I came to find out that there was a recording studio located in the center I was lodged in on a visit there. It was truly a surprise that in the war torn former capital of Charles Taylor’s I found the most technologically advanced studio in the country (running Logic Pro on an Apple Mac Tower)! The area I was staying also had really good palm wine, but I didn’t try their champagne.When Benjamin and I were going through tracks to include on the comp, I felt that this song was a unique addition, something unlike anything I’d heard in rest of the country, but I wasn’t quite sure it was polished enough. After a few listens the catchy chorus and the raggamuffin style verse really grew on us. But in the end, two words can sum up what really convinced us to include this one: Auto-tune breakdown!4. Deboy’s Crew-Polo Mabo Deboy could be considered an innovator of the Gbema-Hipco fusion. He was running one of the original home studios right after the war years. Benjamin and I visited him and the crew after a long series of shared taxi rides to the northern suburbs of Monrovia.I had heard this song on repeat at my favorite drinking spot in Paynesville, Club 704. It became one of my favorite songs during the months I stayed in Liberia. I loved the play between the halftime bass drum kicks at 180 BPM, especially the part in the middle when they suddenly sing in English “somebody positive, and somebody negative”. Being able to include this song on the compilation made the journey worth it.5. Junior Freeman & African Soldier-Damyarea Number one heard song in Liberia this summer all over the country. I went to a market in a rural area, and the tapes for this album were moving like hotcakes. It was so popular the current president even used the song to kick of her re-election campaign.6. Big J-Kalaman Another one from Heritage stuido in Gbarnga. Big J is from Lofa county in the remote, northern tip of the country, bordering Sierra Leone and Guinea. The song clearly takes elements from Sierra Leone, including the word Kala which means money in Temne, a Sierra Leonean language. If you can get the meaning of the chorus it’s pretty hilarious. The daughter telling her father she wants money (“I want eat Kala”) to go to the market, and if she doesn’t get it she will, “holla”. The father simply replies “go and tell yo ma.” Brilliant!7. Master Black-Dakamaly Master Black was in Ghana for much of the war, where he was able to pick up some computer training and music production skills. Now he runs a little computer lab in his neighborhood (on my visit I saw folks editing a movie, Lollywood!) While Master Black mostly does his own production, this song was produced by Infectious Michael, who was also in Ghana. While in Ghana, Michael went to music school where he learned engineering and composition. This is the sound of the new Liberia.8. 2 Kings-Fine Girl 2 Kings representing the Liberian diaspora in Ghana. The song was recorded at Shadow’s studio in Budumburam Camp outside of Accra. I love the rhythm and interplay of the vocal delivery of this tune.9. K-Zee-Kountry Chicken feat. Pepsi and Skinny Another song produced by Deboy that I had to track down, after seeing the video on local TV, and it really is a popular tune. Benjamin and I got to see how popular one evening, when K-Zee performed at Groovies, a local bar. Every Friday night a live house band holds an open mic session and local singers and rappers perform their own songs and classic Afro-pop hits from places like South Africa, Congo, Ghana, and Nigeria. When K-Zee performed this Jump-up Soca inflected Gbema-Hipco hybrid, the crowd’s enthusiastic singing along and hand-waving participation made me feel like I was on the road at carnival. Since recording this song K-Zee has become part of Infectious Michael’s crew.10. Noy-Z-4 Noy Z Bizness Hipco artist John Bricks told me and Benjamin that Noy Z’s “I’ll Boke You”, and it’s message derailing the political corruption of the post-war transitional regime, really ignited the spread of Hipco across the country. On this song Noy-Z takes his turn at the Gbema-Hipco style, with fine results. Noy-Z’s brother Alonzo is a popular reggae singer based in Freetown.11. L 2 Sweet-O Gye I saw L 2 Sweet perform this song while I was DJing an Anti-gun rally run by Youth Crime Watch of Liberia in the Red Light market on the edge of Monrovia. His crew really impressed me with their coordinated dance routine, and the quality of their songwriting and productions. When we were looking for songs for the compilation, this is another one that I chased down, asking everyone I could about where it came from. Of course, it’s another Infectious Michael production.12. David Mell-Hero David Mell is Liberia’s R&B heartthrob. He mixes the crooning of American and Nigerian R&B singers to come up with a style he calls Soul-co. This was the only song included on the compilation that I actually heard about before getting to Liberia, thanks to the nice video of it on youtube. Another Infectious Michael production he told me he used a Ghanian rhythm to construct the Gbema backbeat.13. Marie Nyenebo-Joya Infectious Michael was actually the first producer I met in Liberia after linking up with Tan Tan another one of the rappers in his stable. He gave me this tune in a collection of songs for me to check out, and I was instantly drawn to this 218 BPM scorcher!14. Shadow-Killing Me Shadow is a producer, singer, and rapper based out of the Budumbura Camp in Accra (known locally as “Liberia Camp”.) Benjamin sent me to visit Shadow and his crew when I visited him for a week in Ghana. I was really amazed by what he was able to accomplish with the limited equipment that he has. All of the Liberian producers, Michael, Deboy, and Shadow are working on virus laden PC’s and pirated production software. It goes to show that you really don’t need the best and most expensive equipment to make it sound good! Shadow won best song with this tune at the 2010 All African Traditional Music Awards in Benin.15. Shadow-Killing Me (Chief Boima Remix)16. J.P. & De Royal Force-Make You Dance This song blows my mind and my body. The bass kick interplay, between the American Crunk (or Juke) sensibility and the traditional rhythms at blazing speed, really makes me want to dance every time I hear it. This Shadow produced track might the pinnacle of the Bubu-Gbema-Hip Hop cross breed I’ve been looking for since I first heard it at a Sierra Leonean wedding years ago.
In a small room painted bright blue in central Monrovia, a scratched CD of background beats is blasted over an old stereo. Against one wall is a small shelf lined with impeccably clean, multi-coloured sneakers. There is a mattress on the floor and crammed into the rest of the smoke filled space are two men, free-styling about women, corruption and war. Welcome to the heart of Liberia's hip-co scene.
Hip-co is Liberia's version of hip-hop, the "co" is short for colloquial or Liberian English. In a country slowly putting itself back together after over a decade of civil war that ended in 2003, music has been crucial to expressing collective pain and hopes for the future. In the run up to this October's presidential election, the hip-co artists have been singing about unemployment, education and government dismissal of the issues facing everyday people.
The two men in the room, spitting out rhymes at breakneck speed, are Takun-J and Rabbie Nassrallah, or Nasseman, as he goes by on stage. Takun-J, with his silver medallion and cornrows, looks like an imposing cross between Samuel L Jackson and Snoop Dogg. Rabbie is a wild, dreadlock-flinger, who filmed his latest music video in the bombed-out shell of a bank in the heart of Monrovia. Around 100 people now live in the building, carefully washing their clothes and feeding their babies among piles of rubble and mosquito infested puddles. These are the people the hip-co scene is not only trying to represent through music, but also to entertain.
From venting their frustration about government abuse or crooning shyly about their girlfriends, hip-co is fiercely Liberian and its artists are determined to show that more things can emerge from their country than civil war.
1) Rabbie Nassrallah, known professionally as Nasseman, is Liberia's foremost reggae artist. With a little artistry, an abandoned mansion destroyed during the civil war became the set for one of Rabbie's latest music videos [Cameron Zohoori]
2) Rabbie's home, two rooms rented on the side of a pastor's house in central Monrovia [Cameron Zohoori]
3) West Point, an informal settlement in Monrovia and home to 80,000 Liberians. Takun-J says: 'If you come from West Point, people might not take you to be a good person, criminals come from there, rogues, thieves. But a lot of good people live there, a lot of families. They feel like they are outcasts, like nobody pays attention to them' [Cameron Zohoori]
4) Jonathan Koffa, AKA Takun-J, is Rabbie's best friend and one of the most popular hip-co artists in Liberia. A uniquely Liberian genre, hipco combines hip-hop sensibilities with the the Liberian English dialect known as Colloqua. Takun-J: 'This is the way we all relate to one another easily, through the hip-co. It's the way we talk everyday, put into song; it has great potential. I want to make sure this hip-co thing takes the world' [Ansu Kromah]
5) Takun-J: 'A lot of people say: "Takun-J, you be wasting your time behind the hip-co." I believe in faith, it's faith that got you and I living right now. The hope that it will take you somewhere tomorrow. I always keep the courage and the vision, I let nothing discourage me in my music.' Rabbie and Takun-J make their way across the parking lot of a local radio and recording studio. Like all Liberians, they must contend with poor local infrastructure, particularly during the May-October rainy season [Cameron Zohoori]
6) As a child, Rabbie lived in the centre of Liberia's capital Monrovia throughout the 1989-2003 civil war, witnessing the killing and destruction caused by rival warlords such as former president Charles Taylor. He brings those experiences to bear on his socially charged lyrics [Cameron Zohoori]
7) Buzzy Quarter slum in central Monrovia is home to many of Rabbie and Takun-J's friends, and was the setting of one of their recent music videos [Cameron Zohoori]
8) Rabbie and Takun-J have an intensive two-hour freestyling, writing, and recording session to make a collaborative track for an upcoming album. Rabbie: 'We coming musically in two dimensions, the reggae and the hipco, the Liberian thing. It's a double sword, sharp from both edges' [Cameron Zohoori]
9) Takun-J relaxes at his home, a room above a bar in downtown Monrovia. 'I don't know what I do with money,' he says. 'I just give it away as it comes. I don't prioritise it. I prefer giving it to the ones that need it. I prefer taking the pains, going through the strife.' [Cameron Zohoori]
10) A poster of US hip-hop artists in Takun-J's home. Takun-J: 'My inspiration don't come from one person. I got Bob Marley, I got Tupac, I got Lucky Dube. I visit everywhere, I get concepts from everywhere. Hip-hop, hip-co, R&B, reggae, ragga, I get a taste of everything. If I could do a feature track with anybody in the world right now, it would be Akon. That's my boy, he inspires me a lot' [Cameron Zohoori]
11) Rabbie: 'They're depending on us, because we relate the message, the information, directly in the heart, minds, and souls of the Liberians out there. They feel us, every hood, every ghetto, every little kid that is within the ghetto, the slum, the higher places, they feel us' [Cameron Zohoori]
"Together Liberia" is a promotional film which documents the Newhouse School's initiative to train Liberian students and journalists in multimedia storytelling. The project was led by Asst. Professor Ken Harper of the Multimedia Photography and Design Department at the SI Newhouse School of Public Communications. For more information please visit togetherliberia.org/
It’s 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday in Gbarnga, Bong County Liberia, and I awake to someone frantically calling my name. I jump up and scramble out of my room to see James, my Liberian bunk-mate sitting next to a radio with a huge smile on his face. A Crunk Hip Hop beat rattles the speakers, and over it, a voice raps in a language I can’t decipher. In disbelief he turns and says, “Boima! This is Kpelle Rap… and it’s good!”
Crowd at the Youth Crime Watch Anti-Gun Rally in the Red Light Market in Paynesville, Monrovia.
In Liberia, music has tremendous social and political power. In a country with high rates of illiteracy, it is a central mode of communication, and the main component of countless communal activities. It has potential as a powerful tool in its ability to connect with the numerous disaffected and marginalized youth in the country. On the other hand, it has been used as a rallying tool for the campaigns of corrupt politicians and warring factions. Even now, as Liberians enjoy a relative peace and some form of elective government, the music industry is deeply involved in the politics of the nation. For the disgruntled youth of Liberia, Hipco, Hip-Hop in Liberian “Colloquial English”, has served as a voice for their dissatisfaction with the nation’s leaders and wealthy elite, and has arguably inaugurated the beginnings of a cultural revolution.
Hipco rapper Takun J.
Liberia was declared an independent “state” by a group of freed American slaves in 1847, who had begun settling in the region as early as 1820 with the support of the American Colonization Society, a group of white abolitionists, clergymen, and slave-owners. “Citizenship” in the new country depended on lineage and membership within the elite minority that created the state. Liberia’s colonizers lacked the military might possessed by those of other colonies with aboriginal populations like the U.S., South Africa, and Australia, and so the Americo-Liberians, and “Congos” (repatriated slaves from ships captured after the slave-trade was abolished), exerted control over the indigenous peoples through a system of indirect rule, and over time fused their own political and religious cultural norms with those of the indigenous groups. As Stephen Ellis demonstrates in his book The Mask of Anarchy, reverence for ancestors and elders, a central organizing principal of the indigenous Liberian social hierarchy, was incorporated into national politics, creating a patrimonial system with the president sitting at the top of a social-spiritual-political patronage pyramid. This model of rule persisted for over a century. With the implementation of recording technology, the Liberian music industry, like everything else, was financed and controlled by politicians. This sometimes resulted in pro-ruling party propaganda songs like the following:
Popular local music during the industry’s early years was mostly Highlife (which Liberians say originally came from the local Kru fisherman) and American-influenced R&B. While the capitol’s elite enjoyed Western-oriented sounds, some artists did push against the Congo-Americo hegemony by performing songs that were from, or celebrated the interior.
Takun J and his crowd.
In 1980, Samuel Doe led a group of young army officers into the Executive Mansion, and assassinated the Americo-Liberian president William Tolbert. Becoming the first president of full indigenous descent, he could have taken advantage of his position and initiated a democratic revolution. But Doe never managed to fulfill the revolutionary potential that such a rebellion carried, and instead, he placed himself at the top of the political pyramid. When Charles Taylor enacted a coup against Doe in 1989, it sparked a seven-year stretch of violent conflict later dubbed Liberia’s First Civil War.
In the heat of this nightmarish period, Liberia’s most popular recording artists fled into exile. Record production all but halted, but music was to still leave an indelible mark. Much of the front-line fighting was carried out by young people who had been drafted into battalions like Charles Taylor’s “Small Boys Unit.” Taylor himself became widely known by the nickname “Pape.”
Young soldiers often “learned” how to fight from American pop-culture icons, like Rambo. Hip-Hop legends, The Notrious B.I.G. and Tupac who were embroiled in their own “civil-war” of sorts, served as patron saints of the battlefield in both Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone.
It wasn’t until 1997, when Charles Taylor was voted into office, that a lull in the fighting allowed for cultural growth and reconstruction to resume. With personal computer recording technology on the rise, artists from different regions across the country began recording local folk and gospel songs using software and synthesizers in home studios, initiating a new indigenous-oriented sound called Gbema.
Young people who had weathered the war years, yet retained an ear for music, also took advantage of the new digital home studios and started recording rap songs in Liberian Colloquial English, birthing Hipco.
Easy S and L 2 Sweet on the mic performing at Red Light.
After a few years of Charles Taylor’s rule, the fighting resumed when LURD, a group of loosley affiliated warlords associated with the Mandingo community, invaded from Guinea. In the midst of the fighting, Taylor was indicted by the Special Court of Sierra Leone for war crimes, and in 2003 he was exiled. A ceasefire was declared, but the remaining warlords fought amongst themselves to steal as much money and influence they could in the transitional period. It was during this period, interestingly enough, that Hipco was able to find its own political potential, speaking against the injustices of the transitional government.
Noy-Z – I Boke You
Soon after the departure of Charles Taylor, Liberians in exile started returning home in droves, and a whole new wave of artists would come to make their mark on the Hipco scene. Cypha D’King and DJ Blue from the U.S., David Mel from Nigeria, and a significant number of artists and producers arriving from Ghana. When I started to ask some of Liberia’s biggest artists like KZee, Infectious Michael, and Master Black about Liberian artists I had met at the Budumbura refugee camp in Accra, not only did they know them, but many had started out recording together there. Through these connections U.S. Hip Hop, Naija Pop, and Ghanian Hiplife (and the trends that are happening there ) have all been picked up, and brought back home to Liberia.
Today things are improving in in the country, but there is still a long way to go to have a truly representative government of the people. Africa’s first democratically elected woman president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, has become a darling of the international community (the best way to win an election), and the Liberian government does everything they can to pander to a pro-West agenda. One can still sense a significant disconnect between the government, aspiring politicians, and the average citizen. Many youth in Monrovia are disillusioned by their current situation, reflecting the sentiments of young people in places like Tunisia, Egypt, and Senegal:
So Fresh – They Coming Again
The legacy of the war and its politics are still a strong consideration for local producers. In a studio session in Monrovia I was sharing some of my own productions with the engineers, and they asked me for any sample sets or loops I could give them. One of the sets they wanted was a Dancehall Sound Effects pack that was circulating around the Internet. An engineer started cueing up samples and when he reached the folder filled with bomb drops, sirens, and gunshots, a debate ensued on whether or not to include the sounds in a track. One side was going for a global sonic aesthetic while the other side was against using the explosions, pointing out, “we are a post-conflict society”. As we sat and auditioned samples, engineers and musicians in the studio were having fun guessing which kind of weapon made which noise. Their intimacy with the sounds was a little unsettling.
If there is a style of music in Liberia that could really voice this political discontent, it’s Hipco. Even when rappers are not expressing overtly political messages, the music remains politically relevant and powerful in its ability to reach out and connect with ex-combatants and Liberian youth in general.
What’s more, the independent music scene is probably the only universally accessible institution in the country. Today you can find artists challenging entrenched notions of Liberian identity by performing in various local languages such as Krahn, Bassa, and Kpelle (as mentioned above), and artists have also started sampling “indigenous” sounds like Gbema. It’s these kinds of cultural fusions that excite me the most, they’re something I’ve been chasing for years.
L 2 Sweet – O gye
Despite Hipco’s activist potential, it has not yet been able to exploit its positive social influence to the fullest. While it is helping to define a new national identity for an entire generation of young Liberians, the economics of the industry are still entrenched in the same old patronage systems. While home studios have allowed artists to record independently, CDs and tapes still dominate the market, as opposed to Ghana, where the MP3 is the most common currency, and one company holds a monopoly on the manufacture and distribution of CDs and tapes. A political system that has traditionally kept many Liberians from forming local businesses combined with the growing problem of local piracy has made independent music a risky enterprise. Cellcom, one of the only local corporations, does sponsor events, but they seem to be the only ones doing so. Other locally operating corporations like Firestone, Chevron, and various mining companies are foreign entities, who don’t tend to have much interest in connecting with local youth. As a result, the only way for many artists to make a living is through sponsorship by politicians or foreign businesses.
Since it was an election period while I was there, I saw many artists scramble to politicians to do tribute songs in hopes that theirs would be picked for use in the campaign. Politicians also chase down the most popular artists to “persuade” (read: bribe) them to support their camp.
Jakanese performing with Chief Boima as DJ.
However, even with all this recognition, local music is still not getting the financial and promotional support it needs to comfortably sustain itself. When foreign artists come to town they’re payed tens of thousands of dollars by local sponsoring companies, while the invited Liberian artists, who often steal the show, may get only paid fifty. Ghanian, Nigerian, and American music dominates the airwaves, and sets the aesthetic barometer for local artists, and while there are some DJs and radio stations that do promote local music, many DJs just won’t play Liberian music unless they’re paid. It is still evident that the upper classes don’t fully appreciate local music.
As a clear example, one Sunday afternoon in Monrovia I was invited to a prominent politician’s house for lunch by his son, a rapper. After we ate, and the son and his friends performed for the guests, we all sat through a lecture by the politician’s wife on how being a musician wasn’t a serious job.
Master Black – Dakamaly
The above song is the Kpelle rap song that I talked about in the introduction of this piece. What’s significant about my friend’s reaction is that it really represents the Liberian attitude towards their own country. The current industry is one of those institutions that shows real potential to deliver on the democratic promises made by politicians. But, while democratic waves such as the Hipco movement are starting to stir, the general population can’t believe its happening.
In order to to ensure that those waves manifest in Liberia and similar countries, they’ll need more solidarity and support from like minded young people in other countries around the world. Whether or not Hipco will truly spark a youth led revolution in Liberia remains to be seen. Whatever happens, the music will stay strong just talking about daily life in the L-I-B:
Shadow and act profiled the documentary "Black Russians - The Red Experience". A story of the lives and experiences of the black Americans who went to the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era in search of an ideal life. Escaping from racism and the Great Depression, they dove into new lives, having “nothing to lose” and no reason to turn back. Did they find what they were looking for? Their descendants who live in Russia and America today will share a story of their ancestors as well as their own.
The subjects include Wayland Rudd Jr., a Moscow-based singer and the son of an African-American actor who moved to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and Russian TV personality Yelena Khanga, granddaughter of a Mississippi cotton farmer and a Polish-Jewish American woman who relocated to then Soviet Uzbekistan, the cradle of the country’s cotton industry, around the same time. See video below.
Also check the story "US filmmaker on the trail of Soviet Black Americans" of the director of the film, the New York–based filmmaker Yelena Demikovsky. She was captivated by “The Circus,” a 1936 Stalin-era musical about a white American circus performer and her illegitimate black son who find racial harmony and acceptance in the Soviet Union.
The reality today is that Russia is a completely different environment for black people, check out some of the links below.
