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mind entropy of the ethiofrican

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

cracked earth

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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Untold Stories of She

19 March, 2009 | 7 comments | Category: for.the.love.of.words!, poetry, prose.tales, thinking...


from silence emerges the invisible hero.
cast in a supporting role
she shuffles quickly behind man, carrying the bucket.
mopping stanking rubbish and residue
with her calloused hands that grip flaming coals…
and her belly that muffles pain.
like light and moths her womanhood lures together people
her wisdom hidden in her womb
in silence it bears history and culture
with depth apparent only through action and nurture…
for words forsake her…

words overlook
diminish and maim her
into an object,
a sweep or blanket
a workhorse, a maid
a silent ornament in the scenery

Wonder how she felt
how she’d vent
what she dreamed
…imagination lit
what she desired
…body aflame
what she pondered…
when she seeps pleasurable tastes
as if thoughts were cough drops from her intellect.

Did she ever say, or was she never heard?
When? to hear her ululations as they reverberate from center stage…
They said…
“Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.”
So…She existed?
The individual. Not a skirt among the masses.
Not a scarf among the others. not Misses Proxy.
Looking to hear Miss Loud Foxy.

Stories
…she’s the one who told stories.
the oral historian teeming with juicy tales
mostly abound with stories of the men of her family.
casually more absent than present…
those rambunctious heroes with puffed chests and boisterous yelps…
The soldier who died too young after his trip to the Ogaden.
The adventurer who disappeared into the deep south of cental Ethiopia, Arusi.
The intellectual who mounted francophone education brought on the Addis-Djibouti train
The geologist who mapped the vast lands of the horn of africa, pioneering his field.
The student activist who hid away in roofs from the junta red terror police.
The doctor, a former Haile Selassie boy scout, healed patients across the world.
The farmer who tilled the family land
The auto-mechanic who drove jeep convertibles and fixed archaic Italian fiats.

Interestingly, her life mostly featured courageous women.
Though ears strain for their stories…
I pick up whispers, hush-hushed…
The widow entrepreneur who sold injera on dusty streets under umbrellas blocking a fiery sun
The live-in Italian household maid who financed the men’s education
The wife who walked +50km fleeing an abusive man chased by coarse hills, desolation
The homemaker & her shenanigans: sifting, sewing, boiling, sweeping for her family institution
The mother who showered care, thought and exertion to nurture those around her
The controversial bride whose wedding featured an ex-suitor & his blazing guns
The old maid – a failure for not catching the eligible man
The single professional woman building a house in the outskirts of town

stories of She. Untold.

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the horn’s dustyfoot wordisans

31 January, 2009 | 14 comments | Category: book snip, for.the.love.of.words!, love.of.words!, musiqa, poetry

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 & the sifting of dry pepper fruit … Religious & spiritual hymns resound along with rhythmic recitations of scripture and the echoing sounds of mosque prayers …words spar for justice village elders witness conflicts of village members, scribes record mystical tales as beggars and singers improvise poetry & lyrics to customize to their listeners…

the dusty foot filosofer’s wordy inspiration

‘Somalia tops Forbes magazine’s “Most Dangerous Destinations,” list above Iraq and Afghanistan. And yet it is “The Nation of Poets,” where a poem has the power to inspire peace. Where every weekend, regardless of the climate, one can find a play or concert.’

‘Somalia was dubbed by the 19th century British explorer Richard Burton in his book ‘First Footsteps in East Africa‘ as a nation of bards:

The country teems with poets, every man has his recognized position in literature as accurately defined as though he had been reviewed in a century of magazines -- the fine ear of this people causing them to take the greatest pleasure in harmonious sounds and poetic expressions. Every chief in the country must have a panegyric to be sung by his clan, and the great patronize light literature by keeping a poet. Read more about Somali poetry

.

As Said Samatar explains, a Somali poet is expected to play a role in supporting his tribe or clan, “to defend their rights in clan disputes, to defend their honor and prestige against the attacks of rival poets, to immortalize their fame and to act on the whole as a spokesman for them.” In short, a traditional poem is occasional verse composed to a specific end, with argumentative or persuasive elements, and having a historical context.’

The grandson of Haji Mohamed, one of Somalia’s most famous poets, and nephew of famed Somali singer Magool, K’naan the emcee is creating his own musical orator path through reggae, funk, pop, soul and hip-hop. K’naan says he makes “urgent music with a message”, talking about the situation in his homeland of Somalia and calling for an end to violence and bloodshed. He specifically tries to avoid gangsta rap clichés and posturing, saying:

“All Somalis know that gangsterism isn’t to brag about. The kids that I was growing up with [in Rexdale] would wear baggy [track] suit pants, and a little jacket from Zellers or something, and they’d walk into school, and all the cool kids would be like, ‘Ah, man, look at these Somalis. Yo, you’re a punk!’ And the other kid won’t say nothing, but that kid, probably, has killed fifteen people.

”

“My job is to write just what I see / So a visual stenographer is who I be,” he rhymes in “I Come Prepared.”

here’s the video of his first single from his latest album.

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Wayna & Dinaw: Slums of Paradise

8 December, 2008 | 9 comments | Category: I.dentity, book snip, for.the.love.of.words!, i.mmigration, love.of.words!, musiqa, nostalgia.personal, peace & conflict, poetry, prose.tales

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.

(more…)

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an African Activist speaks!

2 December, 2008 | 3 comments | Category: I.dentity, i.mmigration, thinking...

this material is pure palpable energy that leaps off the computer screen!

really tho!- why don’t we Africans write our own stories, generate our own content…hone our voices, develop our own media… we’re too busy surviving the rock and roll ride which is life! are we now? or stories are transferred orally… |tangent: so there are media outlets out there for African generated content!|

This video is dedicated to those Africans that live in the ‘first’ world and feel confused about ‘what now?’ for the motherland…

video courtesy of Nani

for me, watching this video was like experiencing this from the history boys:

~The best moments in reading are when you come across something -- a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things -- that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.

I was reminded of a kwame nkrumah quote:

Africa needs a new type of citizen, a dedicated, modest, honest and informed man. A man who submerges himself in service to the nation and mankind. A man who abhors greed and detests vanity. A new type of man whose humility is his strength and whose integrity is his greatness.

…ok enough blabber…back to novels written by african immigrants…’The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears‘ and ‘Notes from the Hyena’s Belly‘-- how is it so freakin’ hard to focus on one book at a time wheeew!

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