Horn Paradigm: Blow it!
21 August, 2007 | 3 comments | Category: ethnicity, I.dentity, peace & conflict
countries have issues staying countries…other regions have unions and communities ‘east african’, ‘west african’ ‘central american’ …some share cultural similarities through connections : former british east africa, southern african ‘mining’, latino culture etc … why isn’t there one for the horn? Why can’t i have a typical conversation with a djiboutian about the pop culture in the horn… about this for instance? I wanna be like these folks here….
Nigerian: ghana dey lookin good in that 2face video, sha!
Ghanian: fo real?…I no dey know he dey come from naija to film a video here! That’s off da hook! Crazy be dem pop singers exploding all over the place these days o?
ha! anyhow, enough on envy…what does one need for a common consciousness? common threads…to weave the pattern?…dibble with the same tune, step the the same rhythm? apparently …its the work of novelists and artists….
I dey be artist…follow me….
imaginary Ingredients:
coexisting muslim-christian for centuries, fusion cultures, anglophone-francophone, railroad & ports, diversity of peoples, beautiful women 
…then… some laughable stereotypes, spicy imagery and poetry…along with war, strife, drought and instability…. et Voila! you got a dynamite smoothie for peace!
as I have found out…one artist is actually blowing this horn, check out “blues 4 the horn” by K’naan
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3 comments to “Horn Paradigm: Blow it!”
Tobian, August 24th, 2007 at 11:35 am:
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hey, I just found this blog
nice.I like the west african accents you got going on der
So i’ve found that there’s a bit of cross cultural interaction between ethio/sudan/sumalia and of course eritrea where people listen to random stuff produced in Addis. On the Ethio side, growing up I remember a few Sudanese songs, but to date I don’t recall any music from Djibouti or Somalia (unless K’naan counts)In my experience, if you want to have a cross-cultural experience with Kenya, you petty much have to learn about their music and that’s that
(and I don’t blame them … Ethio music is a bit, eh, shall we say different?)
tpeace, August 24th, 2007 at 8:32 pm:
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thanks for the visit Tobian
too true about those Sudanese beats and K’naan …me likie likie knaan!
…i’m diggin’ his tunes -like his… wash it down…” …my people, drum on water, drink on water, live on water, die for water…” & his blues 4 the hornhehe…the only kenyan song I know has pretty simple lyrics and I heard it cos someone said it was ridiculously silly…
I think ppl in the ethio-east listen to some somali/yemeni music but can’t say I’ve heard of ethio-westerners listening to popular/traditional sudanese music…unless we’re talking about the far west where there are a lot of sudanese refugees?… would be interesting to see what Yared Musiqa school has to say…
playing life in thingthing: iQa-Qa « |y?hasab s?nduQ|, October 14th, 2007 at 5:25 pm:
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[...] ‘there are so many big trees!!’ Don’t you ask me what big means! Ask me ‘whenis Big’? and I might try to recall how tall I was then….hahaha… or not! trees were the kind unique to that area of the world. the ones with the “monkey money” next to small plants with “trumpet flower” & ”bird’s seed Qolo”…my favorite was the ‘bogambil’ it made for a mean hoooot pink stew concocted in a mud pot which had been very crispy-crunchy well done under the horn of African sun. [...]