lundi 26 janvier 2009

POST-UTOPIAN REALITY...


...it's NOT a Fucking Free World.

mercredi 21 janvier 2009

Shut up and Listen to... Mudibu!


If there is something I hate more than talking to people who don't listen; it's talking to people who don't even hear.
Matter offact, I don't think I even want to extrapolate on this man (MUDIBU is his name, he lives in London apparently).
But I'll still ask y'all to please check him out, and LISTEN to that voice and that vibe...
Oh.. and ladies, he's quite a 'fine brova' too.
Oh² and he's also my countryman (well almost my countryman; I've spent more years in his country - Burundi - than anywhere else; besides, our current borders were drawn by the germans and the belgians bla bla bla).
His myspace here.

The Best stage outfit nominee N°2 is...


I used to think that this guy looked like a hobo.
Now I realised he has much more style and guts than your average artist.
So once again I'm givin' props where due...

George Clinton is a freakin' freaky style maverick!

mardi 20 janvier 2009

OBAMA DAY in Paris


Just came back from a solo trip @ Bizz'Art (ex-Opus).
Parisians were celebrating Obama in Style, Xüly Bet (the brand and probably the designer, I'm not sure if it was him I saw) was there, selling Obama tees, dresses and jacket.
Funkin' Fashion it's called, Funkin' Fashion it was.
I couldnt afford them so I stuck a sticker that I got from an overjoyed couple on my left shoulder.
I thought it was pretty Funky too.
Everyone was looking Funkin' hot.
But above all, the DJ was Off the Funk!
Long live Obama, 'coz the Funk sure is here to stay!

jeudi 15 janvier 2009

The New Black Avant-Garde (By Ronnie Mc Grath)... Loving IT!

DEAR POET

Why you write that neo-surrealist
Intertextual quiltwork of untreated fabulation stuff
That seems to make no sense
And gives me a headache trying to figure out
Why brothaz like you
Mr Ronnie McGrath
Anthony Joseph and Sun Ra
Be complicating things
And filling our headz with nonsense about
The African Origins of UFO’s
“Breaking out the sky like the indelible mark of a comet
Like an ankh”
Like the “Negro of my features is as absent as the pharaohs nose”
The “Provocative lips of your colouring pencils drowning in a watercolour”
Come on, man!
What’s that about?
Lets face it!
You brothaz be getting praised
Be getting paid for Nothin!
And now white people be laughing at us
Thinking that we have truly lost our mindz in an
Outpouring of a perpetual search for the new
Thinking our body of literature is penned by four year olds in kente-cloths with dashiki patterns
Thinking our music isn’t really music at all
Just a sound texture in search of form
YEAH!
Thanks to you
Ronnie McGrath
Thanks to you
Anthony Joseph
Thanks to you
Mr Kamau Braithwaite
Nathaniel Mackey
Bob Kaufman
Amiri Baraka
Clarence Major
Darius James
Ted Joans
Ornette Coleman
Cecil Taylor
Sun Ra
George Clinton
And the most out-there of you all (if there is such a thing in your feral bunch of Gypsies)
Mr Lee Scratch Perry and his “arkworks of inventions.”
“I’m a toaster, not a boaster” indeed
Come on, Scratch,
What the hell are you playin’ at?
It’s 2007, MAN!!!!!!!!!!!
Can you all make some fuckin’ sense – PLEASE!

Ronnie McGrath

mercredi 14 janvier 2009

Best Stage Outfit Nominee...


You have to give props where due!
Niggy Tardust aka Saul Williams on stage somewhere.
This picture speaks better than words!

When despair meets talent.: Dambudzo Marechera (Zimbabwe 1952 - 1987)


Just finished reading "House of Hunger" by Zimbabwean writer/poet Dambudzo Marechera.

Good lord, it actually felt like a punch in the stomach. The paradox of so much violence expressed so beautifully, makes it clear why he called himself the "dopelganger whom, until [he] appeared, African Literature had never met".

The book, written while Marechera had dropped out of university and living in Oxford, was actually awarded the Guardian Fiction prize in 1979 and followed by Black Sunlight, The Black Insider, Mindblast and a couple of unpublished works.

He also said of himself: "My whole life has been an attempt to make myself a skeleton in my own cupboard".

I think that is pretty self-explanatory.

He died practically homeless in the streets of Harare of an AIDS related pulmonary infection at 35. I wonder what he would say about the actual beyond-words situation in his country...

Shut up and Listen to... Anthony Joseph!

Although I've already said it... I love words: poets, writers, lyricists, painters (yes, painters!), grafitti artists, even -some- politicians.

So it is only normal that Anthony Joseph knocked me off my feet, on my previous post, I was talking about him being @ Son d'Hiver Festival on the 13th of Feb, and I had only listened to some excerpts of his pieces, but today I was able to listen over and over again to five or six full songs (Vero, Bermudez, River of Masks, Jo Sam meets Bo Nugg uptown and Gnawa poetry...) OhMiLord!

Although he is a newcomer on MY newborn musical universe, he's already accomplished lotsa things: he's written a couple of published essays, books ("The African Origins of U.F.O." -can you imagine?),poetry collections, etc. Looking forward to reading his stuff.

Some may disagree, but I think his poetry resembles Ben Okri's quite a lot: Super creative poetry full of magical/futuristic metaphors... sublime!

He's currently on tour internationally solo and with his Jazz quartet The Spasm Band. Beautiful sound they make together.

And of course... i had to make a very personal comment: VERO, featuring Mr African Music Maverick himself: Keziah "Rugged" Jones (on bass) is a masterpiece.

Maybe I've said it before, but Mr Jones is probably my favorite musician; Hey Keziah Jones, if by any chance you're reading this, you are my favorite musician!
Go Black Britain!
You can check Mr Anthony "Genius" Joseph's myspace up HERE...

And for you lazy friends who cannot google his official websilte, voilà!

Now that you've heard what he sounds/feels like, what are y'all doing on Feb 13?

*: Picture copyright of anthonyjoseph.co.uk

lundi 5 janvier 2009

And another one...

In the end, january does not feel any different from september. Two weeks of almost complete holiday have given us enough time to re-think certain aspects of our lives and some of us have come up with all kind of New Years resolutions, notices to quit and tightly scheduled plans for the upcoming year.
Well I have survived enough scandalous New Year's Eve parties to know that I am not the kind of person to stick to pre-planned agendas.
So this year I will just keep on doing me.
Keep  praying for discipline.
Keep giving thanks for the wonderful People around me.
Keep appreciating my wine and all the other pain numbing solutions I have steadily grown familiar with over the past years (and no, it is not THAT bad).
And above all, I will work hard, love harder and take even more risks.

In the end, 2009 will be a continuity of... 2008. Duh.

And this january i have some things that are stubbornly in my mind:

- Herman Deza:
The young "underground" photographer who has been missing for the past week and more. I don't know him and I had never heard of him before MISSING posters of him all around Paris. I am really praying for a happy ending to this story.

- Vegans... I've been a vegetarian for a while now and I'm thinking of taking it a step further ( hey, that reminds me of that wonderful movie/documentary with Woody Harrelson where him and his friends tour the US of A in a hemp fuelled bus to talk in universities about the impact that eanimal eating has on the environmental issue: GO FURTHER. If you have the opportunity you should definetely check it out). There is no reason why i should fail in doing so. I'll keep you posted.
- Where can I get a copy of that dope poster of the Sons d'Hiver festival? I was  grinning when I saw it.


Curently listening to:
Keziah Jones - Nigerian Funk