The Uncomfortable Truth: Nneka
4 March, 2010 | 25 comments | Category: Africa, ethnicity, for.the.love.of.words!, musiqa, nation & ethnicity, peace & conflict
photography and article by Fabay
I’m so glad I came across Nneka in 2009. I was instantly in love with her music when I heard the song “Africans”. I was so impressed to see a young intelligent woman who was born and raised in Africa urging fellow Africans to focus on constructive solutions through her art. Nneka dares to point out that it is no longer acceptable for us to exclusively blame colonial powers for the conflict, death, injustice, poverty, exploitation, and corruption that exists in Africa. She urges Africans to take proactive roles in designing and implementing reform. She sings “you keep pushing the blame on our colonial fathers … it’s up to us (Africans) to gain some recognition.. If we stop blaming we could get a better condition.” Nneka’s genuine message of love, awareness, and her call for action is what attracted me. She encourages the African Diaspora to become active stakeholders, take responsibility, and invest their time, resources, and expertise in Africa’s development. She pleads “you got to wake up, please youuuuu got tooo“.
I applaud Nneka for using her talent to share a powerful message. She is among a group of new and rising African artists who give voice to Africa’s new generation. Her music is a medley of sounds, words, and beats morphing and blending with an alluring audacity. Her songs are loaded with moral and biblical references as she reflects on her life in Nigeria and Germany. She touches on issues of capitalism, poverty, war, corruption, and individual and government accountability.
“There are many of us, Africans, black people that leave Africa for a while go abroad, study etc. and instead of going back home to do something they stay, go overseas and make themselves comfortable. What I am really trying to stress here is that we all carry responsibility. There is so much we can do. If we come overseas to study and learn, it isn’t for no reason because God has given me that opportunity to do so. And I believe if I would have not stepped out of Nigera for a while I would not have been able to do what I am doing right now. And now that I have to chance to go back home and do something, why not do it?” ~ Nneka
Get a taste of her music: The Uncomfortable Truth
From her newly released American Album “Concrete Jungle”: Focus
When I found out Nneka was performing at Vinyl Atlanta on February 9th, 2010, I was ecstatic. I wanted to experience her energy in person. I wasn’t disappointed; her performance was filled with powerful messages and humor. Below are some pictures from her show at the Vinyl in Atlanta.
I left the concert feeling a longing for my Ethiopia. Her concert sparked a feeling of homesickness because every verse of her music was for my continent, my people, my leaders, and for me. Even though I was not Nigerian, I felt I could relate, empathize with every word and feeling she was expressing on stage. My love for the continent is beyond what words can express. I didn’t know how much I loved it until I left it behind. How do you feel when you see injustice and lack of resource killing your people? What do you do when the current status of your country breaks your heart but you can’t stop loving it? What do you know of the ache of being away for over a decade and not being able to go home to visit your family? What do you do when you feel powerless? As I patiently wait to set foot on my native soil, go back to a land where my heart is bound, when the journey seems so far away, I will listen to songs by two of my favorite African musicians who speak for me: Nneka “God of Mercy” and Knaan’s “TIA: This is Africa”.
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Flattery: Fast-tracking Success?
1 February, 2010 | 13 comments | Category: Relationships, Senduq- Semhal, Uncategorized, iPerceive, nostalgia.personal, thinking...
photocredit: tsepeaces
by senduQ blogger Semhal
Schmoozers or Ass-kissers …most of us have been drawn to such crowds at some point in our lives. I don’t know how they do it…become magnets of long lines of insecure ambitious people like myself (every now and then) who get convinced that success is only for those who are expert artists of sucking up. I have to admit, I can be too nice to people at times especially when I’m dealing with people seated higher in the job hierarchy. But I have recently become more self-aware of this habit especially after I received some veiled criticisms about this from my dad who noticed my tendency to “worship” my boss. This newfound awareness convicted me every time I gave one of my fake smiles or exaggerated compliments.
So as a new year resolution, I decided to work my way out of this habit even if it means risking the climb up the ladder in the job market. It was a conscious decision that I made. One of the big steps in accomplishing my goal was to choose my acquaintances carefully because you know what they say “evil company corrupts good habits.” I don’t want to boast but I was doing pretty well until…
A few weeks ago, I made a trip to Atlanta for a conference. There were many esteemed people in my field of work, people I would love to work for after graduation. I was fortunate enough to meet some great people who are doing incredible work all around the world. Unfortunately, I also crossed paths with the overt schmoozers: people who would say and do anything to be part of the “IT” crowd. They talk like they have “your back” but they are neither your friends nor confidants. They are polite and politically correct and have the appearance of doing everything effortlessly: but when they get a chance, they will sell you out at any price. I felt obliged to join their group since the person I came with had quickly befriended them (ye habesha yilugntaye:) ~ politeness). So I listened to their gossip about who has more funding or who has more publications or who gave who a face …all day
After 12 hrs of flight and 8 hours of gossip, I was ready to retire for the night so I respectfully declined their invitation to accompany them to the bar. That’s when one of the girls said “You know it is who you know not what you know. If you are not going to come and hang out, you might as well not have come.”
I would normally scratch that, roll my eyes and go on my merry way but I could not help but wonder if there was some truth in this. In today’s society has the value of hard work been compromised? Are people losing faith in the value of hard work? When I think about people who have made significant differences in the world, they have always walked alone, they were even outcasts. Think about Jesus and how he was out-casted by his people, yet isn’t it extraordinary that the life of Jesus thousands of years after his birth should move a sane soul this way? Why do we then roll our eyes to the heavens when we come across people who walk in paths different than ours? I mean let’s get real people…everything is earned…you cannot learn French in 40 hours or calculus in one afternoon no matter how much you click with the teacher. It doesn’t matter if you have the most intelligent conversation with the CEO, at the end of the day if you do not know what you need to know, you may get the job but you can’t keep it. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against networking: you cannot make a difference in anyone’s life if you lock your self in your room all day. But the foundation of success is your ability and confidence to do the work well: At the end of the day it IS what you know not who you know.
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Opposite Sides of the Border
2 November, 2009 | 4 comments | Category: Africa, I.dentity, for.the.love.of.words!, i.mmigration, nation & ethnicity, poetry
by guest writer: Liya
Separated by our connection
Divided by common ground
Enmity no longer needs to be understood
Now accepted the way love once was
From opposite sides of the border
We mirror each other’s DNA
Still found soaking the Earth on both sides
Almond eyes traced in black
Hiding beneath the shadow of
A cliff-like brow
Without words we do not know our enemy
Let us sit in silence
For peace to dare return
Let us make sound only to celebrate
Ilil belu be ye-and-andachu qwankwa (rejoice in each of your languages)
Isn’t it beautiful when joy transcends
Like praise from broken hearts to
Silenced lips
Like music to the Heavens
photo: dreamyourealive
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Murky
16 September, 2009 | 4 comments | Category: I.dentity, for.the.love.of.words!, madness!, nostalgia.personal, poetry, thinking...
by tpeace
floating above
the little balls
solid insolubles
swimming in water
young heroine
skims small solid things
which don’t exist
but burst and smear
a river before her eyes
a world clear as murk
shallow water drowning her mind
sticking her in this dazzling scene
of the real unreal
seething & foaming
subjective froth of a barely
objective reality
draping her
this little bird
whose eyes swim within two-odd decades
lost in the grey ugliness
until she grips hard
what fill the empty cervices & corners of her heart
from the edge of the green hill
she jumps
shrieking all the way down
praying to God that she can
fly skimming the edge of the waterfall
knowing only one single thing -
that she has to jump
—————————————
“I gotta free my mind. I gotta chase my soul. I gotta be myself. I gotta find my glow!”
Ayo’s ‘Slow Slow (Run Run)’
[she calls herself a Nigerian-German gypsy which is all too wicked on its own.]
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Kill Aid!
8 July, 2009 | 16 comments | Category: Africa, Current Affairs, Senduq - Nani, book snip, peace & conflict
(picture courtesy of agent_of.chaos)
by Nani
Finally! Phew! The debate has started… It’s a long time coming. Many Africans have often raised this issue among themselves; it’s a well-known secret.
Aid, as we know it today, is it hurting or helping Africa? Does it really reach the people it’s meant to? Does it even reach the continent at all, or is it true that it simply goes from one bank account to another, from the West’s to the Swiss belly of the African elite? … Well there are enough cases to purport that Aid has very rarely achieved its objective – i.e. to alleviate poverty, achieve long-term economic growth, and create jobs. Think of a country that owed exactly the amount of money its president had tucked away in the Swiss banks. No, Aid as it is implemented in Africa today has never, and will not ever achieve prosperity.
My first encounter with the now famous and rightfully acclaimed economist Dambisa Moyo was when I watched her interview on Charlie Rose of March 25th. I accidentally run into the interview online a day or two later while I was aimlessly wandering on the web. That same night I bought Dead Aid from Amazon.
This book is an absolute MUST read. Niall Ferguson who wrote the forward for the book gives us the perfect reason for why we should seek out and read the book, “The simple fact that Dead Aid is the work of an African black woman is the least of the reasons why you should read it. But it is a good reason nonetheless.”
Ferguson is quoted saying …“ It has long seemed to me problematic, and even a little embarrassing, that so much of the public debate about Africa’s economic problems should be conducted by non-African white men. From the economists (Paul Collier, William Easterly, Jeffrey Sachs) to the rock stars (Bono, Bob Geldof), the African discussion has been colonized as surely as the African continent was a century ago.” — The author herself thanks organizers of her recent debate at The Munk Debates in Toronto, Canada for ‘allowing (her) to say a few things about the state of (her) continent, even though (she)’s not a celebrity
Loved her feistiness there!
One particular country she likes to pick on is Ethiopia, -- and rightfully so. Some statistics show that about 90% of our annual budget is based on Aid, and our government does not seem to have any intention of changing that any time soon. Why should that be a problem? The simple fact that it (Aid) removes the basic incentive in a society is the simple answer. As Moyo put it – we all live in a world of incentives, individuals, governments, policy makers all are incentivized to do the right thing. Remove that and you lose the basic motive that binds all elements together. In an Aid system governments have no incentive to respond to their people. You vote, so what? The government does not rely on tax money for its existence so what its own people say has no bearing whatsoever on its agenda. Moyo points to the startling fact that NO country on earth has ever recorded meaningful economic growth or reduced poverty on an Aid based system. Yet, our government seems to support the notion that more Aid is the only way that the country can survive, (and I’m left thinking – when are we ever going to think beyond survival?) and is seen asking and insisting on getting more donor money year after year. Since the famine that preceded Haile Selassie I’s overthrow we have been known as the begging bowl of the world. But will that change anytime soon? Likely not.
What is also persuasive about Moyo’s argument is that she points to specific facts of how and when Aid has been effective, for Aid has its place. But like everything else, when it’s in check. She also offers specific alternatives countries should consider if they’re serious about developing, which is really what is lacking in most African governments. And despite all the rhetoric, the donors themselves are not really serious about being agents of development in Africa. They have chosen to ignore all signs and evidence that Aid does more ill than good, but they still choose the easy way out, offer and when given accept little band-aid solutions to shut quibbling rumors that the rest of the word does not give a whit. — And so they only give us funny papers, papers we’ve never seen, but are supposed to be thankful for, and are worth nothing! ‘Cause the harsh truth is ‘Africa is to development, what Mars is to NASA. No one really believes that Africa will ever develop, and no one really believes that we can live on Mars’
This post is to thank Ms Moyo for her outstanding work, for attracting attention to the subject and showing the true character of Aid – that it is really ‘the disease of which it pretends to be the cure’ (Karl Kraus).
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