“Preserving Memory as Future”: An Interview with AIDA Muluneh

by Sionne Neely

MARIE-Ange BORDAS: “I was too young” | photo courtesy of Addis Foto Fest 2012

AIDA MULUNEH is definitely a force to be reckoned with. The photographer and filmmaker heads up ADDIS FOTO FEST – a biannual, international photography festival in Addis Ababa that brings a diverse cadre of African photographers together to showcase their work [the third installation is Dec 2014]. In direct response to how Ethiopia has been popularly imagined by western development + media agencies since the 1980s, Aida is building an appreciation for photography among the Ethiopian public by re-working how photography takes shape in the country. The festival develops the capacity of emerging Ethiopian photographers to tell their own compelling stories.

I caught up with my fellow Howard U Film Dept. comrade on a recent trip to Accra. Here we rap about Addis Foto Fest and how emerging Ethiopian photographers are in a unique position to transform the country’s visual future.

Drive AIDA Drive | photo courtesy of Addis Foto Fest 2012

A Shout-Out on Liberation [Sheroe Sci-Fi]

ANGELA DAVIS arrives for a court trial, April 1972 [via US Prison Culture]

I fell in love with Angela Davis

In one fell swoop

I was 8 and bored that summer

My daily feen was a focused search through my parents’ awesomely Black book collection

If They Come in the Morning was a treasured favorite

That fro did me in

Her quiet fire spoke it all

Eyes steady, gait straight

Her radical be fly

Fly high, soul hi

Up up to the sky sky

That’s when the whole affair began

It endures for eva eva

Let it rip

Hands up for Prof. Davis

And a Black girl’s fantasia of possibility

SRN  |  03.13.13

TITICA: Africa’s Tightest Female MC?

by AIGERIM SAPAROVA

TITICA RAPS TIGHT via DynamicAfrica

It was just another song that you heard playing at the club last night. Your head was bobbing, body swaying, and you craved her flow and that bass like no other – you wanted it to play again and again.

Maybe you didn’t know that the lightning quick fire of “Ablua” is by TITICA, a 25-year-old kuduro pop star from Luanda, Angola.

Titica is a transsexual. For some, this may be an insignificant detail but for others it’s quite a pill to swallow. She’s also no stranger to prejudice. Titica has been beaten and stoned before. But growing up in a majority-Catholic country where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by hard labor has not diminished her sexual confidence and electric personality.  In fact, she has quickly amassed a dedicated fan base and become the new face of kuduro, Angola’s unique urban rap-techno fusion music style. With rhymes on end, Titica could definitely go toe to toe with Azealia Banks.

“Ablua” is the second single off her first album, Chão, released in December 2011. Unless your feet are glued to the floor you can’t help but tap them to the rhythm of this bombastic track. 1:52 onward is quite brilliant—the way she stomps the earth and how clouds of smoke and dust sweep up from her feet. Perhaps this reflects Titica’s shaking up ideas about African gender and sexuality.

Titica was first involved with kuduro as a backup dancer for popular acts such as Noite e Dia, Própria Lixa, and Puto Portugeus. Since the adoption of her new persona five years back, Titica has compiled an impressive record of musical feats in the local Angolan music scene as well as other Portuguese-speaking countries.

MOTIF LIGHT SHOW via DuttyArtz

CHALE WOTE 2013: Open Call for Visual + Performance Art Proposals

CHALE WOTE Chillin x Tei Huagie’s Mannequin Installation

ACCRA [dot] ALT in association with REDD KAT Pictures, Foundation for Contemporary Art Ghana, Dr. Monk and Attukwei Art Foundation have begun preparation for the third annual Chale Wote Street Art Festival 2013 which will be held on Saturday, September 7 – Sunday, September 8th.

The Chale Wote Street Art Festival is an alternative platform that brings art, music, dance and performance out into the streets in James Town Accra. Its aims are to cultivate a wider audience for the arts, break creative boundaries and use art as a viable form to rejuvenate public spaces.

THE WINNEBA MASQUERADE

The Chale Wote Street Art Festival challenges local and international artists and Accra residents to connect by creating and appreciating art together. The festival includes street and sidewalk painting, graffiti murals, large photography displays, interactive art installations, live street performances, extreme sports, experimental community theater, independent African film screenings, a fashion parade, a music block party, recyclable design workshops and much more.

Somewhere OUT There: Ghostpoet’s Gamut

by AIGERIM SAPAROVA

GHOSTPOET via The Guardian

Let it be known that Obaro Ejumiwe better known as Ghostpoet carries a power to hypnotize. This discovery was made whilst listening to the sounds of his debut album Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam, released back in February 2011.

Ghostpoet’s music weaves a mellow yet magnetic mumble-speak with the penetrating backdrop of beats, rhythms, and sounds to create his unique noise. His music speaks of the bare-bone reality of getting through life – falling in love, paying the rent, battling the fear of loneliness, and the melancholic tick of time.

Although born & raised a London boy, the down-to-earth artist traces his roots back to Nigeria and Dominica. He first made his mark on the UK music scene with the release of his first EP, The Sound of Strangers (2010).

GhostPoet 101: Here are three tracks that you’ll want to keep on loop.

INNIT? via The Tab Cambridge

R.I.P. Capital Steez, 1993 – 2012

CAPITAL STEEZ, photo via The Smokers Club

JAMAL DEWAR aka Capital Steez of Pro-Era. Soldier of the Light.

FREE THE ROBOTS. Indigo on the Rise.  

IND!E FUSE 2012: LIVE ELECTRO MUSIC SHAKE UP IN ACCRA, DECEMBER 14TH &15TH

#Live #Electro #Accra

This December Accra will beam a new signal to the world. The homegrown sounds of the city’s most progressive indie acts will congregate for the annual genre-bending sound simulators mash up. Look out for the artists line up in coming weeks.

#Live #Electro #Accra

There Were 27: Fela’s Queen Science

FELA KUTI + THE QUEENS

The revival of interest in FELA ANIKULAPO KUTI has immortalized the musician as a global pop culture icon. In fact, Fela’s personal life was just as fascinating as his AfroBeat music.

Fela just didn’t give a damn. He lived his life.

In 1978, Fela married 27 women in a ceremony to recognize the one-year anniversary of the attack on his Kalakuta Republic compound by the Nigerian military. Many of Fela’s new wives were his Africa ’70 bandmates – dancers, singers and composers – who lived and traveled with him. After the wedding, the group honeymooned in Ghana. (SIDE NOTE: 1978 is the same year Fela was banned from Ghana for being “liable to cause a breach of the peace.” The order was issued to Fela because youth fans confronted police at an Accra concert when “Zombie” began to play.)

Fela called his wives “Queens” explaining that these “women have special powers to see the future – to see front and back. Important people always have them around…they advise me what to do” (Music is a Weapon, 1982). After serving a 27-month jail term on a trumped-up charge for currency smuggling in 1986, Fela divorced his remaining 12 wives musing that “marriage brings jealousy and selfishness…no man has the right to own a woman’s vagina.”

Meanwhile Fela’s ex-wives have been quiet as kept about life in Kalakuta Republic. What speaks volumes, however, is the undeniable style, spirit swag and fierce personality these women had each in a distinct way.

AfroPop nostalgia in full effect. Check out these fresh photos of Fela’s Queens:

GATO PRETO: Tropical Bass BeatDown

GATO PRETO: LEE BASS + CARMEN BROWN

GATO PRETO is one black cat you won’t mind crossing paths.

Their masked mystique is the music – a tropical bass thunderstorm of candy rain and sound clouds. The duo – producer Lee Bass and rapper/singer Carmen Brown aka Gata Misteriosa – unveil the African music paradise reflecting their roots in the polyrhythm of Bass’ Ghana and the Portuguese slang of Brown’s Mozambique. Brown also grew into her rhyme scheme on the Portugal club scene. She told Funkhauseuropa in July, “It’s very important in music that you have the freedom to express yourself and find your own language.”

Such freedom reaps a hypersonic wave – a mix of old skool sweet/ thick R+B synths; delicate Highlife strings; infectious 80′s video game pop rock; back bending Miami bass; and an ATL freaknik beat parade with hi-def kicks of kuduro.

Download the “Voodoo Drums Mixtape” for free:

Based in Germany, Brown shares about Gato Preto’s sound: “We are saying something about bad systems, corruption, things are not really working in this world so we just want to speak it out. The other point is we want to dance. A lot!”

For more, check out GATO PRETO’s flava in “Tschukudu”:

KWABS’ Magnetic Sound

Simply put, Kwabena Adjepong aka KWABS can sang.

The Ghanaian-British singer/songwriter began turning heads with his killer windpipes last year as a contestant on the BBC Two reality TV Show, Goldie’s Band. The popular show preps emerging UK artists for the big stage. One show performance at the Buckingham Palace produced gasps, head shakes and tears from audience members unprepared for the bigness of Kwabs’ sound.

First off, how bold + beautiful is it that Kwabs chose the old Negro spiritual, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” (circa 1870) to sing in the Buckingham Palace.

The hymn of the enslaved – filled with the crippling sorrow of being ripped from home and brutally made to work in a strange land, of being split again from family and sold off to different plantations – carries the memories of stinging loss through the vehicle of the throat. His almost-indictment of colonial empire and the grave debt owed to the Gold Coast and its diaspora is absolutely chilling.

Kwabs sings an original tune, “Lay Back”:

Kwabs’ voice is bright and deep…like a moon river, wide in big-belly girth, cold like melting stone. Melancholy drips through glitches of hope. Endurance peaks and spills over into tomorrow. His voice is all bass yet pulse steady – daring you and drawing you in at the same time – as if to say, THE FIRE THIS TIME.

If you are as hooked as we are, check out Kwabs’ cover of “The Wilhelm Scream” by James Blake.

And peep his musings on returning to Ghana to visit family for the first time after leaving the country as a kid at kwabsmusic.tumblr.com

Follow Kwabs’ musical journey – @kwabsmusic /  www.facebook.com/KwabsOfficial