King of Africa /Culture

Dicken Marshall established Rafiki Records in May 2009 after hearing a story where a choir paid £3500 pounds to record an album that never came to fruition. Solace Studios is now Rwanda’s premier recording facility thanks to a dedicated team including Marshall, Rob Hoy, Jim Mortimore and others, as well as Solace charity themselves.

Check out the Rafiki Sampler and the label’s artists.

Here’s an article in The Independent by Adam Stone. Also, check out Adam Stone’s 250 SECONDS IN RWANDA.

Audio Pro International article.

Following from an earlier post on the Sapeurs, I am glad to see someone has produced a fairly comprehensive book showcasing the dandies of the Congo. Photographer Daniele Tamagni captures the fascinating subculture where designer suits and luxury items are the order of the day. Published by Trolley Books.

Exactly as the title says: awesome tapes from Africa, complete with awesome tape inlays.

http://awesometapesfromafrica.blogspot.com/

The Bills were a youth subculture that dressed in cowboy outfits and opposed the current political view of late 1950s Léopoldville, Zaire (modern-day Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo).

They proliferated in the African sections of Léopoldville and based their image of blue jeans, checkered shirts, scarfs, boots, and hats on the American Western movies of the time, especially those of Buffalo Bill, like ‘Pony Express’ featuring Charlton Heston.

From the Bills came a new generation of sounds and bands, such as Zaiko, Bozi Boziana and Minzoto Ya Zaire, which differ from the Congolese rumba known by most. Jef De Laet (who became better known as Pere Buffalo), was a Passionist missionary at the time began working with the youth where the Bills roamed and helped channel their energies into a positive movement and helped start Minzoto Ya Zaire, as well as a cultural centre, Cabaret Liyoto, which featured a recording studio.

The photos are by Jean Depara, an Angolan-born photographer who was living in Kinshasa at the time, where he worked taking photos of celebrations, portraits and families, but at night he hung out in the Kinshasa clubs and here he captured an Africa stripped of conventional social codes. 

More on Depara.

  

The evolution of a soundsystem.

“Chillin in Ghana”… check GHANA MUSIC – My Mankessim Impressions, a Project of the AFRICA YOUTH SPACE Media Club of Mankessim.
By drumghana

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Made In Queens is a short film about a group of imaginative tinkerers from Trinidad were working late into the nights creating something nobody had ever seen before: enormous stereo systems jury rigged onto ordinary bmx bikes.

Travelling together, each behind the handlebars of his or her own massive homemade creation, they treat the neighborhood to an outrageous impromptu music and dance party on wheels. Directed by Randall Stevens, Made In Queens is a documentary film celebrating America’s first stereobike crew.

http://madeinqueensfilm.com/

The Ugandan Skateboard Union is a youth orientated upliftment program based in Kitintale, Kampala District in Uganda. Big up.

UPDATE
Check this video preview for Board Master.

African Salad is not a new book, but is definitely worth bumping your under utilised Jamie off the kitchen shelf.

Not that you will be cooking too many of these dishes, it’s pages are filled with a salad of South Africans at home, honestly portrayed without any trace of a patronising onlooker. Each person stands proudly in front of their shack, hut, cottage or mansion and with a smile offers a glimpse of their day to day life in their intimate surroundings.

The photographs celebrate a South Africa of today and one of years ago, where saturday afternoon and sunday morning visits to friends, aunts and grannies were being played out.

Published by dayone. Photographs Stan Engelbrecht. Text Tamsen de Beer.
Link to site.

A look at two artists that have put a smile on our dial.

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Johan Fanozi ‘Chickenman’ Mkhize began making art objects to sell on the street after being laid off work at a dairy farm. 

He began with a moving dance sculpture while his road signs could found nearby along the kerb. It was these ‘road signs’ with their witty observations and odd typesetting, that captured the public’s imagination, and soon Chickenman signs were being snapped up by art and objet collectors.

More on Chickenman here and here.

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You may have choked on your blini at Greenmarket Square seeing this man with his giant headdress made of eggs and artifacts. 

“The guy with all the eggs on his head” is Gregory Da Silva, aka the ‘Egg Man’ or ‘Ei man’, a walking work of art and fast becoming a mobile ‘tourist spot’.

His headdress weighs up to twenty five kilograms and, initially, it was so bizarre, the bemused City Police detained him in a vehicle and called their superiors for advice. Naturally, he was free to go and is now very popular with tourists, posing in hundreds of photos during season and has also been hired to receive guests at hotels and airports!

More on the Egg Man here and here.

After William Kamkwamba shot to fame with his windmill (TED, Afrigadget), we loosely connected African ingenuity with a few more things that spin around.

From Dreaming
Self taught artist Sibusiso Mbhele who was so thrilled to see a plane circling above the mountains in his native Kwazulu Natal that he went home determined to build one out of oil drums, wire and scrap. He earned his living creating scrap metal sculptures of planes, cars, and bicycles, and, after making the headlines in the local newspapers, Mbhele’s neighbors, jealous of his recognition and success, destroyed his creations and his beloved life-sized, hand-built ‘fish helicopter’ which he had called home.
Sibusiso Mbhele and His Fish Helicopter by Koto Bolofo is published by Power House books.
Book review by Wayne Ford, eye magazine.

To Doing
24 year old Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi has built his own helicopter using scrap metal and a second-hand engine from a Honda Civic. The four seater aircraft is fitted with seats from an old Toyota saloon car and some of its other parts come from the shreds of a Boeing 747 which crashed near Kano some years ago.
It was first reported on Yahoo News, but the link has gone off the radar, try here.

To getting paid
Jelani Aliyu, who hails from Sokoto, Nigeria, is currently General Motors’ lead exterior designer and designer of the Chevy Volt concept car. After schooling and studying in Nigeria, he was accepted to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, to study Automobile Design, and, the rest, they say, will be history.
Editorial on Jelani Aliyu.
Chevy Volt site. 

Managed to catch this on the telly a couple of nights ago and was bowled over at the level of skill and originality that this form of dancing has become. Weee-yooow!

The Red Bull BC One is the foremost one-on-one B-Boying contest in the world, and the fourth event was held right here in Afrika.

Click here for more on Red Bull BC One South Africa 2007
Also read Urb Magazine’s take on it.