by Sandy | Aug 18, 2009 | Blogroll, Books, Culture
Do you ever get the feeling that westerners do not understand Africa at all? Even after so many years of interference, Europeans still don’t have a clue about the people they colonized. They, along with we Americans, black or white, don’t really understand how a continent beset by such poverty, misery, cruelty and waste can still produce men and women who keep on going. Putting one foot in front of the other, bringing children into their world and expecting good things to happen – somewhere/sometime.
English correspondent Richard Dowden attempts to explain it in his new book, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles. He proposes that the African has a different approach and reaction to life, a different appreciation:
“Terrible times produce strength. Grief enhances joy. Death invigorates living…Africa lives with death and suffering and grief every day, but to be alive is to talk and laugh, eat and drink – dance”.
Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles, by Richard Dowden
Btw: The author also thinks that “only Africans can develop Africa.” (Hmmmm.)
by Sandy | Aug 13, 2009 | Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Creativity, Culture, Film, Movies
“I Bring What I Love” – is a documentary film about Youssou N’Dour, the pop music superstar from Senegal, West Africa.
N’Dour is revered for his “remarkable range and poise and for his prodigious musical intelligence as a writer, bandleader and producer. He absorbs the entire Senegalese musical spectrum in his work, often filtering it through the lens of genre-defying rock or pop music from outside his culture. N’Dour has made “mbalax”—a blend of Senegal‘s traditional griot percussion and praise-singing with Afro-Cuban music—famous throughout the world during more than 20 years of recording and touring outside of Senegal with his band, The Super Étoile”.
The director of “I Bring What I Love”, Elizabeth Chai Vasahelyi, followed the singer for 2 years throughout Africa, Europe and the U.S. to bring us a picture of this super talented and complex man who spread the music and rhythms of his homeland worldwide.
Youssou N’Dour * “I Bring What I Love“
by Sandy | Aug 7, 2009 | Art, Blogroll, Culture, Exhibits, Museums
Until October 11, the deYoung Museum of San Francisco will have on display over 50 masks and sculptures from 4 Central African cultures, Luba, Chokwe, Songye (fetish figures) and Luluwa. Even though the 4 groups are different, they did share common beliefs. The pieces, fashioned mostly of wood with brass and bead touches, were made to appease the spirits and were thought to have the power to protect an individual from harm.
According to the museum catalog, the exhibit “examines the artistic traditions of the heart of Africa within the context of historical change, thus countering the commonly held perception of African art as an art without history. “
“Art and Power in the Central African Savanna” thru 10/11/09
de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA
by Sandy | Aug 4, 2009 | Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Books, Culture, Fashion
In 1968 she was on the cover of Ladies Home Journal. Amazing enough that an African- American woman was on the cover, but this woman was my color – Mahogany!
She was a first and paved the way, beginning in the 70’s, for the influx of models, in an assortment of colors, that started to parade the runway and appear on magazine covers in both Europe and the U.S. The mind set determining who was pretty and who wasn’t started to change.
Naomi Sims was smart, beautiful, elegant and black – thank you. 1948 – 2009 *R.I.P.
by Sandy | Aug 3, 2009 | Blogroll, Books, Culture, Writers
A local book reviewer described the latest Toni Morrison novel, “A Mercy”, as “ferociously beautiful”. (Actually, you can describe many of her books this way.)
Ms Morrison has such a fantastical, spiritual approach to her characters and plot, but she’s also got “edge”. She can set a tone, paint a picture, capture identifiable feeling/emotion and describe events so clearly and with such poetry that it makes you laugh or, it makes you cry. There are some passages in her much acclaimed book “Beloved” that are so painful that your throat clutches and closes. Her “truth”, cloaked in make believe, is sometimes difficult to handle – sort of a ground glass in the oatmeal type of thing. You feel it.
(“Beloved” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and Ms Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.)
I think she is amazing and a real gift. “A Mercy”, by Tony Morrison
“Writing was … the most extraordinary way of thinking and feeling. It became the one thing I was doing that I had absolutely no intention of living without.” Toni Morrison
by Sandy | Jul 31, 2009 | Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Culture, music
Salif Keita, a native Mali, (the home of Timbuktu) blends the music and songs of his homeland with those of Cuba, Spain and the West coast of Africa (Senegal, Ivory Coast)
An exciting performer, Keita’s CDs capture all of the passion and emotion of his live performances.
Salif Keita’s recent releases:
Soro
M’Bemba
The Mansa of Mali…A Retrospective
