http://www.senduq.com mind entropy of the ethiofrican Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:08:15 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 mind entropy of the ethiofrican no http://www.senduq.com/2010/the-uncomfortable-truth-nneka/ http://www.senduq.com/2010/the-uncomfortable-truth-nneka/#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:44:23 +0000 Fabay http://www.senduq.com/?p=1837 http://www.senduq.com/2010/the-uncomfortable-truth-nneka/feed/ 41 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. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jlpqew_RY4 “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”. Possibly Related Posts: A Saturday at the Wharton Africa Business Forum When I’m Back Opposite Sides of the Border Murky Kill Aid! 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 [...] http://www.senduq.com/2009/the-horns-dustyfoot-wordisans/ http://www.senduq.com/2009/the-horns-dustyfoot-wordisans/#comments Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:55:23 +0000 tsepeaces http://www.senduq.com/?p=892 http://www.senduq.com/2009/the-horns-dustyfoot-wordisans/feed/ 14 I wrote about the dusty foot philosopher k’naan’s wordskillz last year. looks like the emcee-poet-word artist is back with a new album! a somali wordisan artisan K’naan’s poem ‘too well done’ portrays beyond doubt the power of words to relay messages dripping with passion and energy. It does that as it encapsulates an experience within the horn in a unique and touchingly honest way that no other medium could. Words can shake. caress. arouse. repel. expose. provoke. uplift… It’s intriguing how complicated the history of cultures & their wordplays get. Though, simply -- words sculpt a story through a unique writer-orator’s worldview. enter: the horn immigrant K’naan hailing from Wardhiigleey (”The Lake of Blood”), Mogadishu, Somalia, now a rapper residing in Canada. the horn of africa’s wordy history For a region with communities that raised us teaching you must respect the elders without daring to talk back…words weigh a lot. Though the truth -- our stories are not heard in our voices resounding across the world. We hear stories about wars, famine and suffering, no clear and honed voices speaking out in intricate articulation about people of ancient cultures sharing their glorious humanity, until now. The groove of the horn is deep with a lot of treasure within… as K’Naan put it “The horn of Africa has the deepest wells humanity has ever dug to find the truest sentiments that describe the world and what it contains.” I’ve been reading ‘Notes from the Hyena’s Belly‘, an interestingly written book seeping stories about cultural rituals and traditions through the eyes of a grown man remembering his childhood in Jijiga, eastern Ethiopia -- a cultural crossroads between the interior of Ethiopia and the interior of Somaliland. And I came across a section that described the role of poets in times past, of highland kingdom kings and noblemen, feudal lords and warriors… The key to the kinae lies in the contradictory nature of the Amharic language…Generations of oppression, without freedom of speech, gave birth to this tangling of meaning and intentions. If a man had been mistreated by a feudal lord or local chieftain, he would compose a kinae to read at a social event, a poem that was sweet and heart-rending to the untrained ar, but quite biting to the lord- one of the intended audience. The peasants, by and large, were illiterate and unable to put together a recondite kinae, so the poets did it for them. A poet might compose a kinae to inform the lord that the taxes he had levied on his subjects were expensive, about the brutality of his son, who raped and plundered the locals, or as a plea for forgiveness on behalf of the man he had recently thrown into his private jail. The feudal lord was often trained in the interpretation of the kinae, but if he doubted his own judgment, there were always one or two monks beside him to shed light on the subject. Poets were usually exempt form the repercussions of their kinae, as lords were generally reluctant to be seen as monstrous persecutors of humble poets. Besides, the poet could always plead his ignorance, claiming that his intentions were misread, and offer apologies. It’s quite fascinating really, the horn has such ancient traditions with words…intertwined with the fabric of society where the lifestyle has been dictated by the nature of the location. A location very much at a crossroads and junction point between continents with a variety of cultures. Like most forms of African art, spoken and written words are mixed into the way of life; literature is functional, musical, entertaining, uplifting and has a performance culture fused with it. Like most African art -- it is holistic…interactive…improvisational… communal. The horn is the land of storytelling, poetry, fables, riddles of play, wisdom and double edged words…warrior chants and calls, songs of childplay, lyrics to accompany the grinding of grains [...] I wrote about the dusty foot philosopher k’naan’s wordskillz last year. looks like the emcee-poet-word artist is back with a new album! a somali wordisan artisan K’naan’s poem ‘too well done’ portrays beyond doubt the power of words to [...] http://www.senduq.com/2008/wayna-dinaw-slums-of-paradise/ http://www.senduq.com/2008/wayna-dinaw-slums-of-paradise/#comments Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:21:04 +0000 tsepeaces http://www.senduq.com/?p=659 http://www.senduq.com/2008/wayna-dinaw-slums-of-paradise/feed/ 9 The African immigrant experience within the U.S. …complex, diverse and ridiculously chaotic! Which experience isn’t, eh? A friend recently told me we are ‘transplants’… Surely there is no way that can be less-than-a-chaotic experience! A chaotic experience that’s gotta be told… Why Stories? Stories are powerful and profound… They are ways to …share the most beautiful parts of ‘me’ and ‘us’: stories of sincere, vulnerable, honest, contradictory and complex humanity…(great video on that)…a way to confirm my & our presences in this world, in our own voices…I love stories, always have for some reason. My mum told me, when I was a little girl and wouldn’t eat food, she used to tell me stories so my mouth would unconsciously gape open and she’d slip the food in! We should tell each other our stories to share each other, and to build/reaffirm our commonality – or humanity. Stories make & relay meaning, share, connect, inspire, uplift, persuade, shape thought, teach, transfer history, bring together, affirm culture, enable self-reflection…they confirm ‘you are not alone in your experience’ and describe common narratives of communities. From the political-historical angle…written stories hold weight as Virginia Woolf once said; “Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.”…and as long as the victors tell the prevalent stories, they would have the upper hand. Stories are paths to peacemaking, just as they are to the absence of peace. ‘Stories fill our lives in the way that water fills the lives of fish.’ Stories are as all-pervasive as culture. Wayna’s Slums of Paradise Below are sublime original sounds by Grammy nominee Wayna Wondwossen. ‘Slums of Paradise’ holds her description of experiences as an Ethiopian-born immigrant in the US with parents filled with expectations about her future. She is an incredible neo soul musician wonderfully deserving of her Grammy nomination. Listening to her live rendition of Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ last March, I literally had tears in my eyes and goosebumps! Her voice has a clarity and beauty that is just uplifting. No wonder the incredible Stevie Wonder himself said “She is Incredible!” Slums of Paradise – Wayna Desparate Days – Wayna ft. Tewoderos Taddesse Dinaw’s “The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears“ Also been reading a very engaging novel by Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian Immigrant, winner of the 2007 Guardian First Book Award. The story is about a man, Sepha Stephanos, who flees a communist junta as a teenager to become a transplant immigrant in the US, making attempts to grasp the ‘beauty that heaven bears’- the American dream. The book captures the loneliness, and internal angst involved in the immigrant experience- it is so bare and honest… The best parts of the book, to me, circulate around the emotional narrative behind the illusion of opportunity and Sepha’s attempts to reconcile his ever-present nostalgia. His fleeting romance with a family of a single white mother and biracial daughter is a touching tale of a man fearful of love in his self-doubt. Here is an interview with Dinaw by Tadias Magazine. My favorite part of the interview: “I don’t think most writers ever decide to write. For me, it was something that I did because I had to. It’s been my way of managing and making sense of the world I live in.” It’s exciting that voices like his are starting to get heard. ———————————————————————————————————————————- Below…excerpts organized in random order with titles added for reading-ease. “Going Home It would be so much easier to never return, wouldn’t it? To just keep walking down this road until I hit the city’s edge. And from there I could hop on a bus or train and make my way farther south, or north, and start all over again. How long did it take for me to [...] The African immigrant experience within the U.S. …complex, diverse and ridiculously chaotic! Which experience isn’t, eh? A friend recently told me we are ‘transplants’… Surely there is no way that can be less-than-a-chaotic experience! A [...] wayna, slums of paradise, r&b, jazz, soul