Bad audio aside, Angélique Kidjo‘s recent performance at the opening of the Carnival of Recife in Brazil looks fun as sh*t. Kidjo always brings the party. Check her here reppin Okayafrica at the Okayplayer Holiday Jam.
Benin’s own Angélique Kidjo took the stage at the Okayplayer Holiday Jam at Brooklyn Bowl as one of several acts reppin’ the Okayafrica side of things. Africa’s premiere diva showcased her incredible chops as The Roots threw down an interpolation of Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up.” Jump here for LargeUp fam’s re-cap of Shaggy and Patra. Watch the Angélique live clip above, and stay tuned for a whole bunch more from the jam.
Video shot and edited by Jay Sprogell.
If you want the full play-by-play head here, this one’s for the visually inclined. Here’s a photo re-cap of last week’s Okayplayer Holiday Jam with The Roots, Gary Clark Jr., Big Daddy Kane, Shaggy, Rahzel, Angelique Kidjo, Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew, Patra, Big Freedia, Mr. Eazy, Red Fox, Rayvon, The Wurx, Ray Angry, Robert Glasper, plus DJs ?uestlove, Chief Boima, LargeUp fam Gravy, and OKP’s own Eddie “STATS.” Check out the albums above and below. All pictures by Mel D. Cole.
Win 2 free tickets to see Angélique Kidjo, Dianne Reeves, and Lizz Wright pay tribute to other great ladies of song Miriam Makeba, Abbey Lincoln and Odetta at NJPac on Dec. 18. Their show, “Sing the Truth” is about bringing the soulful voices of the past back to the stage through 3 of today’s most passionate singers. Tickets are $50-$90 but enter your email here to win 2 free seats for this fantastic celebration of jazz. Click here for more info and to buy tickets.
350.org is using the voices of some incredible African artists to raise awareness about the climate crisis. For their Radiowave project, they’ve enlisted Marcina Arnold (South Africa), Marie Daulne (Zap Mama -Democratic Republic of Congo/Belgium), KGzm (South Africa), Angélique Kidjo (Benin), Zolani Mahola (South Africa), Busi Moreng (South Africa), Eugene Skeef (South Africa), Ahmed Soultan (Morocco), Jabulani Tsambo (Hip Hop Pantsula – South Africa) and Okayplayer fam Talib Kweli to “create a song that both tells the truth about how hard climate change is affecting Africa and that also inspires people to join together to create a brighter future for everyone.” Stream and download “People Power” below!
Everyone is invited to remix the song to creatively reflect their community. All remixes will be entered into a contest and the top track will be featured on MTV International on Dec. 9. Click here for more information on the contest and the Radiowave project.
Above, The Wire‘s Gbenga Akinnagbe shows his support for Occupy Wall Street by suggesting that he go all Chris Partlow on Wall Street’s ass. The shot is an outtake from this video, which also stars Talib Kweli, ?uestlove, Kanye, Russell, Angelique Kidjo, and more. Stay tuned here as more musicians will be vid-dropping their Occupy support each n every day.
Angélique Kidjo lends her voice to the Occupy Wall Street movement with her acapella version of Tracy Chapman‘s “Talking About A Revolution.” She is just one among the many musicians who have come out in support of the Occupy movements across the country and the world. Check out Talib Kweli freestyling it up down at the Wall Street occupation itself. And Russell Simmons and Kanye got down with them, too. For all the vids of the musicians and others supporting – check out our Occupy one-stop-shop here – where you can also learn how you can get involved, even if you can’t get your (lazy? across the globe? tired? busy? injured?) ass down there.
Video from Trey Kirchoff
Over 20,000 people gathered in Times Square on Saturday to show solidarity for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Occupation Party – aka the “celebration block” – lead the thousands in a rendition of civil rights anthem “This Little Light of Mine” accompanied by a brass band, during which over 2,000 sparklers lit up Times Square. Were Kweli, ?uesto, Kanye, and Angelique there? Who knows. The party was too damn good to pay that any mind. But they are here, showing their support.
Back at Zuccotti Park the next day, the daily “General Assembly” met – open to anyone who wants to participate in the movement. The movement’s process of participation is deeply democratic, egalitarian, and non-hierarchical, and, according to controversial former Yale professor and activist David Graeber, is drawn from the practices of the Tsimihety ethnic group in Madagascar.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education:
It was on this island nation off the coast of Africa that David Graeber, one of the movement’s early organizers, who has been called one of its main intellectual sources, spent 20 months between 1989 and 1991. He studied the people of Betafo, a community of descendants of nobles and of slaves, for his 2007 book, Lost People. Betafo was “a place where the state picked up stakes and left,” says Mr. Graeber, an ethnographer, anarchist, and reader in anthropology at the University of London’s Goldsmiths campus.
In Betafo he observed what he called “consensus decision-making,” where residents made choices in a direct, decentralized way, not through the apparatus of the state. “Basically, people were managing their own affairs autonomously,” he says.
The process is what scholars of anarchism call “direct action.” For example, instead of petitioning the government to build a well, members of a community might simply build it themselves. It is an example of anarchism’s philosophy, or what Mr. Graeber describes as “democracy without a government.”
Fascinating. We’d love to hear more about this from anyone out there who is a scholar. Hit us up in comments or on twitter.
Angélique Kidjo will perform this Saturday (Oct. 1st) at The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium in NYC. The Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter’s concert is in conjunction with The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibit: “Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculpture.”
We’re particularly excited about this exhibit because, much to the delight of post-modernists everywhere (Kwame Anthony Appiah), it promises to “challenge conventional perceptions of African art.” In short, African art is not to be judged against some Western benchmark.
A New York Time’s review of the exhibit offers hope that the this is indeed true:
“…it argues, through demonstration, against basic misunderstandings surrounding this art. African art has no history? No independent tradition of realism? No portraiture? All African sculpture looks basically alike, meaning “primitive”? African and Western art are fundamentally different in content and purpose? Wrong across the board.”
Click here for more information on the concert event. The exhibit will run through January 29th.
Film: ‘Mama Africa’ An Unforgettable Portrait Of Miriam Makeba
Okayafrica is teaming up with the 19th New York African Film Festival to co-present the opening night of Mama Africa (Germany, 2011) Weds April 11th at 7:15pm at the Walter Reade Theater (or buy tickets here), and read our review of the film below.
Short synopsis/presentation:
An unforgettable portrait of Miriam Makeba (1932-2008), the world-famous South African artist and civil right activist, who devoted her life to promoting peace and justice and fighting racism around the planet. A figurehead of the Black African movement in exile, her music and daily practice incarnated the hopes and fears of Africa through the convulsive 20th century, so that she has come to be considered the voice and mother of the Continent.
Critic:
Finnish filmmaker Mika Kaurismäki continues to devote himself to bringing to light music and protagonists misrepresented and misunderstood by the West. His personal homage to Miriam Makeba comes after decades of intimate engagement with underground cultures in Brazil, culminating in Brasileirinho (2005) a musical documentary that rends tribute to Choro, the first genuinely Brazilian urban music. Now, in Mama Africa, Kaurismäki rhythmically blends interviews with archival footage of live performances and historical events to guide us through a life dedicated to the fight for recognition and human rights on the African Continent.
After her early years of singing in the dance halls of Cape Town and a racially divided Johannesburg, first in the all-girl band The Skylarks and after in more professional jazz bands, Miriam Makeba appeared in Lionel Rogosin’s milestone neorealist and anti-apartheid film “Come Back, Africa” (1959, trailer below). This event changed her life: a year after leaving to present the film in Venice, she was stripped of her South African citizenship and barred from returning home until near the end of her days, passing 27 years in forced exile. Her first stop was the United States, where Harry Belafonte helped launch her career and transformed her into an artist of international scope. First in America, then later in Guinea Conakry, where she was compelled to live due to rejection from the US music industry and pressure from the FBI due to her marriage to Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael, her performances and lyrics became a rallying cry in the struggle for the oppressed. In 1963 she became the first black woman to speak at the United Nations, and was known thereafter as “Mama Africa”. Never giving up on her audience, she remained on stage until the very end, and died after giving a concert while on tour in Italy in 2008.
If there is anything missing in the film, it is the presence of Miriam Makeba herself. The inspiration of the film came from co-screenwriter and co-producer Don Edkins, who was developing the concept with the star when she died. From that point, the idea of structuring the film on Makeba’s memories and opinions had to be forgotten, and the director was forced to rely on archival footage and interviews with important people in her life. The director has, however, used this to his advantage. Since her early years in Johannesburg townships, Makeba was associated with such key figures as singers Dorothy Masuka and Abigail Kubeka and trumpeter and first husband Hugh Masekela, and this tendency was magnified through the rest of her life; textured interviews with these and others of her peers, as well as the director’s own footage from Conakry, give a rich insight into the motivations that informed her personal and professional life.
Hamstrung by legal and economic difficulties in his attempts to acquire footage of Makeba herself, Kaurismäki has opted instead to highlight the iconic voices that surrounded her: thus, great attention is paid to her relationships with Stokely Carmichael, Harry Belafonte, and Jean-Marie Dore, former prime minister of Guinea, among others. In this way, the documentary makes tribute to a time and its people, without passing over the heartache that accompanied Makeba from childhood and reached its zenith in the death, at 35 years old, of her daughter and her companion Bongi. A gifted singer and songwriter responsible for many of her mother’s most memorable hits, she would likely have been Makeba’s successor, had fate not cut her life short. The film’s testament to her talent is one of its most touching episodes.
Makeba, a devoted woman, a unique singer and a mother of a continent, resonates today through her activism and art, through the musical accomplishments of her disciples and family members, especially those of her granddaughter, the superstar Benin Angelique Kidjo, who is one of the documentary’s most powerful and lucid voices.
Her staunchest fans may long for more appearances by Makeba onstage or more songs, but the filmmaker, by recurring to a handful of key songs, has managed skillfully to transmit her generous personality and dramatic life without lapsing into idolatry. The mandatory inclusion of “Pata Pata” does not preclude Makeba’s qualifying comment: “…with no meaning at all about a dance called pata pata. I would have preferred another song to be popular.” Bittersweet irony, a constant in the life of a woman, an artist, a continent…