Mweso (called Bao in Zanzibar, or Hawalis in Oman)

Mweso, a Buganda variant of Bao

Click links for bao and hawalis

Each player has 32 men. The object of the game is to capture all the opponent’s men or so to reduce them that he cannot move. The centre horizontal line of the board divides it so that each player has two rows each of eight squares. He may play only his own men on his own side of the board and may not interfere with those of his opponent except to count them or take them. When he takes any men from his opponent, a player adds them to his own men and thereafter plays them exactly the same as his original 32.

Each player moves in turn. A move consists in taking up as many men as are in any one square on a player’s own side of the board (provided there are two or more) and dropping them one by one in each succeeding square, travelling in a counter-clockwise direction and starting from the square next to the one which the men were taken. If the last man drops into an empy square the move is finished but if it drops into an occupied square then that square is emptied and the move continued from the next succeeding square. This process is repeated until the last man in the hand falls into an unoccupied square. It should be noted that a move cannot be started from a square containing only one man. This means that when a player is reduced to sixteen men or less, should then happen to be situated only one to a square, the game is lost. Of course, he may be reduced to only ten men, but provided that one square at least contains two or more men he can still move and possibly win the game.

The way in which an opponent’s men are taken is easy to demonstrate on a board but hard to describe. No men are ever taken from the board and the whole 64 remain in play from start to finish; they are merely transferred from one side of the board to the other. When, during a move, the last man from a player’s hand drops into a square in the row nearest the centre line containing one or more men, and it so happens that the two squares on his opponent’s side of the board immediately opposite are occupied, instead of continuing his move in the ordinary way the player takes whatever number of men are in those two opponent’s squares and continues his move with them on his own side of the board. But, and this is important, he does not start from where he left off but from the square next to the one last left empty on his own side of the board.

 
When this has been done, the player’s move may or may not be finished. If the last of these captured men falls into an occupied square the player continues his move in the ordinary way, unless it should so happen that this occupied square is in the row of squares nearest the center line and that the two squares of his opponent’s half of the board opposite are occupied: in which case he again takes what men are there and proceeds to play them on his own side of the board starting from the square next to the one last empty. It is thus possible for a player by a combination of relayed moves and moves made with men taken from his opponent to travel round his side of the board several times before falling out of play through his last man falling into an empty square. The skill of the game consists in working out the moves well ahead so that the opponent’s men are taken whilst as few openings as possible are left to him.

There is one complication to mention: “going back.” In certain circumstances it is permissible to move back, in a clockwise direction. Notice the diagram highlighting the four squares on the left hand of each player. If a player sees that the number of men (being two or more of course) contained in one of these squares will land him when travelling clockwise into one of the squares in his second row (the row closest to his opponent), which is occupied and has two occupied squares of his opponent immediately opposite, he many move in clockwise direction and take the men. The men which he takes he then proceeds to distribute one to each square in the usual way, starting from the square on the counter-clockwise side of the square last left empty (one of the four left hand squares), unless he finds that the number of men which he has taken, will, if started from the square on the clockwise side of the square left empty land him in an occupied square in his second row which faces two squares of his opponent both occupied. In this last event he takes the men and goes back to the square left empty and continues his move in an anti-clockwise direction unless the requisite conditions for moving backward again prevail. In moving in a clockwise direction a player may not move beyond the right hand end of his second row of squares even though he may be able to relay until he comes round again to a square in the second row which is conditioned to permit him to take some opponent’s men.

There is one move which counts as a win. If a player, in one move (including a relayed move), succeeds in taking his opponent’s men ins squares 1, 16, 8 and 9, he wins.

The board is divided into four rows of 8 squares, for a total of 32 squares. Each player begins the game with 32 men.

Before the game proper starts each player distributes his men four to each square in his first row. The object of this is to ensure that each player has the correct number of men Having checked this each player allots his men between his sixteen squares as best pleases him. There is no rule as to the number which may be placed in any square and any square may receive any number of men or none at all. One common arrangement is the “seventeen game” (photo). In his own interest he will not place men in squares in rows one and two which are opposite to each other, as this is the position in which his opponent can take them.

A player moves by taking all the men which are in any one square (provided there are two or more) and distributing them one at a time to each successive square starting at the square next to the one vacated and moving in a counterclockwise direction. It does not matter whether a square traversed by the hand is occupied or vacant, each square receives one man and no more. If the move falls into a square already occupied, then the move is relayed and the men in that square together with the one which has just arrived are taken up and distributed one at a time, still moving in a counterclockwise direction, and starting from the square on the counterclockwise side of the square just vacated. (Left hand side in second row, Right hand side in first row). If men are taken from the left hand end square of the second row, the first man is dropped into the left hand end square of the first row. If taken from the right hand end square of the first row, the first man is dropped into the right hand end square of the second row. Movement continues with taking until it is no longer possible, at which point he may relay his men until his last man falls into an empty square.

It is only permissible to move backwards under the following circumstances:

a. Starting from the two squares at the left hand end of the first row or the two squares at the left hand end of the second row.

b. The move must immediately result in the taking of some opponent’s men.

c. The distribution of men taken may be started from either side of the square last left empty, but in the case of a start from the square on the clockwise side of the empty square the move must immediately result in the taking of some more opponent’s men. Having taken all the men possible by moving clockwise, the player continues his move in a counterclockwise direction by starting to distribute the last lot of captured men, relaying where possible and finishing on an empty square.

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The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World

At the Schomburg Center for Black Culture in New York City there is a great exhibit currently running on Africans in the Indian Ocean World. If you can't check out the exhibit, the accompanying website is a beautiful introduction, with stories, images, maps and multimedia. Over forty years after the publication of Joseph Harris's The African Presence in Asia, the study of Africans in the Indian Ocean world has grown in important ways. It has expanded beyond simple vindicationist studies, it has increasingly been driven by its own theoretical concerns, it is more and more grounded in knowledge of local languages and cultures. The African presence in the Indian Ocean can tell us a lot about cultural change and social hierarchy in societies of the Indian Ocean littoral, and has the potential to influence how we conceptualize and perpetuate the study of diaspora itself. If anyone has a bibliography they would like to contribute on the subject, I would love for you to post a link in the comments section. I am currently working on compiling a comprehensive bibliography. Thanks to Ishraq Ali for the link!

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Book Review: Muntu by Jaheinz Jahn

I can’t say enough about this book. Over 50 years old, it is still worth revisiting for the force for which it makes its defense of African thought, philosophy and religion. Janheinz Jahn, a German scholar, originally wrote Muntu in 1958, around the time of intellectual ferment of luminaries like Fanon, Cesaire, and Senghor. The American edition first appeared in 1961 and was named book of the year by at least one major publishing organization. Jahn lays out the characteristics of African thought as illuminated through New World African religions like Santeria and Voudoun.

Unlike so much of today’s timid postmodernist theorization. Jahn is unafraid of the broad comparison and the book is infused with both an urgency born of passion for the subject matter, in addition to Jahn’s considerable erudition. He is equally at home discussing the implications of nommo, or the magic of the spoken word, as he is the function and symbols within Voudoun, or the difference between New World African religion and its parent in Africa. He also devotes a section to tracing the strands of African thought in the works of the so-called Negritude poets.

I will let William J. Austin, who has reviewed Jahn's work here, have the word on explaining the basic philosophical principles of African thought and aesthetics, according to Jahn:

The text is neatly divided into the major categories of African culture and religion, two forces which, as Jahn points out, flow in and out of one another like a river and its tributaries. Although Jahn makes mention of the cultures formed in northern Africa via the commingling of African and Arabic/Islamic impulses, his focus here is on “Black Africa,” or that larger portion of the continent below the Sahara. This section of Africa, however various in its individual cultural expressions, was surprisingly united in an overall religious structure that informed the ritual of worship, as well as the more pedestrian day to day activities. This over-arching structure contains four major forces: Muntu, Kintu, Hantu, and Kuntu. Muntu, or “human being,” finds its earliest known expression in the culture of the Bantu tribe. As a “force” it is plural, reflecting the myriad variations of humanity. Muntu, however, is not a self-activating force, but rather ‘sleeps,” dormant, while awaiting its activation via a more active sub-force known as Nommo. Nommo, quite simply, is language. The priests and elders of a tribe are most invested with Nommo, and maintain the power to enliven natural objects, and even man-made ones, through a ritualistic process of naming. But all human beings participate in Nommo to some degree. In fact, it is not until a parent names a child, that the child may be considered human, may be said to participate in Muntu. What we have, then, in the concepts of Muntu and Nommo, is not unlike the structuralist/post-structuralist emphasis on language as the begetter of personhood, of humanity. The linkage is certainly there, but it also obtains between Nommo and the Biblical declaration that “In the beginning was the word.”

In any event, Jahn’s detailed analysis makes clear the amazing similarities that reach across seemingly isolated cultures. Like Muntu, Kintu is plural, and represents the force or “spirit” in all non-human objects, animate and inanimate, including animals. Hantu is place and time, and Kuntu, perhaps the most complex concept of the four, represents modality, i.e., quality, style, rhythm and beauty. All four forces are united linguistically by the suffix and concept of NTU, or the essential compatibility and coherence of all things, human and non-human. The many in the one, the one in the many — this is familiar philosophical ground, and more evidence that Nommo does indeed unite all cultures, races, creeds, in their differences.

The one fault with the book is its almost complete lack of discussion about the impact of Islam and the Arabs on African culture and religion. No doubt there are other books that do this admirably, but it would have been quite interesting for Jahn to extend his thesis to some of the cultures of East Africa such as Somalia, the Swahili Coast or Zanzibar. Or even Ethiopia…the point being that these cultures have a much more ancient tradition of contact with Abrahamic religions, ergo we might expect to see a different kind of integration within an overall philosophy of Muntu then that which occured in the Americas under Jahn's rubric of neo-African culture.

How does Neo-African culture apply to African Islamic cultures of the East Coast, where extensive cultural mixing also took place? No doubt a variety of practices exist today which reincarnate the ancient beliefs in new forms, for example the practice of praying to Sufi saints and venerating their burial sites as holy places.

What is perhaps most interesting about Jahn’s thesis, as Austin pointed out, is that he brings out the true monotheism at the core of most African religion, explaining that this ONE God who is RULER OVER ALL is so distant from humanity that humans needs a variety of intermediaries in order to tap into the power of GOD's Being.

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African artists poor unlike their cousins

Interesting article...Doesn't this confirm that the bourgeoisie class is the class that begins to 'collect' art? And that the African bourgeoisie is not numerous enough to support African art? Or could it be that African art fetches a better price outside the continent where it is snapped up by 'exotic seekers' and amateur anthropologists? There is an abundance of creativity in the continent; shouldn't African artists be able to cash in in the same way? What do you think?

African artists poor unlike their cousins
BY OSEI G. KOFI

The failure of African artists to cash in on the current international windfall cannot be blamed on machinations by ‘blood sucking western capitalists’ but on Africans’ own failure to cotton on to a good thing – even when it stares us in the face, writes Osei G. Kofi.

Among the many godchildren of Globalization is the art business. It has grown from several hundred million dollars a year into a multi-billion dollar industry in a little over a decade. Bad news is that Africa is missing out on this bonanza.

Today art, especially contemporary art, brings together a vast, growing community of savvy artists, dealers, curators, galleries, museums, auction houses, publishers, film makers and internet designers in an exciting new marketplace where everyone seems to gain enormously. Unfortunately Africa and Africans are sadly locked out of this burgeoning business.
And this time it is not due to any machination by “blood sucking western capitalists” of the post-colonial order but by Africans’ own failure to cotton on to a good thing — even when it stares us in the face.

The just-ended Art Basel, the world’s biggest art fair, held every June in the Swiss industrial city of Basel, is a case in point. For five action-packed days last month the three hanger-size exhibition halls at Messeplatz on the banks of the sleepy Rhine, throbbed with feverish activity as the who-and-who of global art cut deals over an array of eye popping, heart thumping goodies.

A piece by Yinka Shonibare. PHOTO BY OSEI KOFI

There were fine samples from the usual suspects — Klimt, Picasso, Modigliani, Giacometti, Warhol, Kandinsky, Dali, Picabia, Pollock, Jasper Johns, Chagall, Calder, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Bacon and many more.

There were fresh offerings from the latter-day gang – Jeff Koons, Hockney, Niki Saint Phalle, Lucian Freud, Anish Kapoor, William Kentridge and the tragic Haitian prodigy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died of a drug overdose just after hitting the big time. There were mirthful splashes from post-Mao Chinese warriors, including the irrepressible Yue Minjun. There were modern-day Samurais, such as Takashi Murakami.

Art Basel 2009 hosted 300 tightly vetted art galleries showcasing some 2,500 artists. It drew 61,000 visitors and attracted 50 state museum groups on the hunt for additions to their collections. It was covered by 280 media representatives from Rio de Janeiro to Wellington; from Reykjavik to Johannesburg.

Showbiz personalities, fashion icons or moneyed folks who came to the annual feast in the plush carpeted booths included Brad Pitt, Naomi Campbell, Pharrell Williams, Roman Abramovich, Larry Gagosian, Christian Boros and super collector, Eli Broad of California — the man who moves the global art market like no one does. The last three personalities, for instance, plus London’s Charles Saatchi and Hong Kong’s David Tang are the Warren Buffetts of the art world.

Towering over the throngs of rich and perfumed glitterati in his signature faded slacks and polo shirt was Michel Pigozzi, the Swiss entrepreneur who, with curator Andre Magnin, are the forecourt of the enterprise to bring African contemporary art to western palates via their Africa Remix project. Pigozzi owns one of the largest collections of African contemporary art and has loaned several pieces to the UNAIDS to enliven the corridors of the Geneva headquarters.

Despite the global credit crunch, business was brisk in Basel. Martin Kippenberger’s I Am Too Political sold for $1.4 million (Sh106 million). Two of Paul McCarthy’s stainless steel sculptures, Piggies, sold for $1.5 million (Sh117 million) each. The bargains included Kirchner’s Two Reclining Female Nudes which bagged a buyer at $200,000 (Sh15.2 million).

Mickalene Thomas’s canvas, Kerry On, a gravity-defying bosomy woman in a yellow blouse, went for $65,000 (Sh4.9 million).
The Chinese, Japanese and Latinos are all said to have done well. The thing with art fairs is that many moneyed buyers insist on anonymity and only a fraction of the sales are released to the press by the galleries.

Now, where is Africa in all this? Nowhere. So much of western contemporary art, as showcased in Art Basel, Venice Biennale, Berlin Forum, Frieze London and New York or on the walls of many an American or European gallery today bear the DNA of African classicism. That Picasso, Chagall, Matisse, Calder and the other cubists, surrealists or post modernists owe a huge debt to Mother Africa is now a cliché.

At the risk of sounding a tad chauvinist, I dare say African artists beavering away in their modest studios or lean-to shanty homes in Kampala, Ile Ife, Kinshasa, Nairobi, Maputo, Dakar or Khartoum are the most innovative, accessible, refreshing and prodigious among their generation worldwide. And yet hardly any African artist was found in an important market such as Art Basel. Artists like Uganda’s Jak Katarikawe, dubbed “Africa’s Chagall”, South African Charles Sekano, Rwandan Sekajugo or Kenyans Kivuthu Mbuno, Sebastian Kiare and Tabitha Mburu all eke out a living on the margins of poverty after decades of dedication to their craft. Why?

Putting money on the wall?
The reasons are quite banal. Africa has been slow, too slow, in professionalising art. Our colleges offer art degrees but how many of the graduates can make a living as professional curators, gallerists, dealers or even understand the concept of an auction house? The entire East and Central African region has two commercial galleries of international standards, the venerable Gallery Watatu and its comely upstart, Ramoma, both in Nairobi.

A crucial factor is that Africans, rich Africans, refuse to buy art. The concept of “putting money on the wall” is alien to them. A while ago a major US business magazine did a cover spread on one of the newly minted billionaires of the Black Economic Empowerment class of post Apartheid South Africa. The paintings on the walls of the sumptuously appointed homes were distinctly run of the mill. There were no Jak Katarikawes, Marlene Dumas, William Kentridges, E. Saidi Tingatingas, Lilangas, Malangatanas, or Cheri Sambas. And yet these are some of the African artists slated to join the Rothkos, Modiglianis and Picassos of posterity.

Anyone who thinks that only frivolous people fork out thousands of dollars to acquire an art piece to adorn the home or litter the garden should think again. More than at any time since our ancestors drew fanciful images on cave walls and the Medicis were patrons of Florentine or greater European artistic creations, art, today, is gilt-edged investment, in fact the ultimate redoubt of a global financial system gone haywire.

Gallery Watatu’s hard times
Take for instance the Lauders, of the American cosmetics industry fame. Three years ago scion of the family plunked down $135 million (Sh10.3 billion)for Gustaf Klimt’s 1907 portrait Adele Bloch-Bauer at auction at Christie’s, New York. That painting today has a market value of at least $150 million (Sh11.4 billion). Seriously.

Just imagine if the Lauders had put the cash into Bernard L Madoff Investment (In)Securities, Lehman Brothers, or in AIG.
Take the case of Adama Diawara, owner of Gallery Watatu. The self-taught wily art supremo from Cote d’Ivoire is a veteran among the handful promoters of art in Africa. His Nairobi gallery, the oldest private gallery in sub-Sahara Africa, with impeccable pedigree, has fallen on hard times, largely due to the drop in the art buying expatriates visiting Kenya, failure of local patrons to make up the gap and, above all, the crippling rent charged by Lonrho House, downtown Nairobi.

However, Diawara is the proud owner of the largest single collection of the works of Tanzanians Lilanga and E. Saidi Tingatinga, the latter being the only African to have found an international art movement that now bears his name. If Diawara’s gallery was located in London, New York or Tokyo, banks and financial houses would not only pay him a monthly fee to hire some of his paintings to display in their premise.

They would also accept his Tingatingas and Lilangas as collateral for loans that would allow Diawara to construct his own gallery and buy advertising space in the Daily Nation and specialised art magazines abroad – all being the window to international art sales.

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Learning Swahili and other African Languages in America

From: Peter Alegi
Subject: WEB: Africa Past and Present Podcast - episode 29 now available

Episode 29 of Africa Past and Present -- the podcast about African
history, culture, and politics -- is now AVAILABLE
In this episode, Dr. Ibro Chekaraou, Dr. Waithera
Karim-Sesay, and Mamarame Seck on challenges and possibilities for African
language study in America. The focus is on pedagogy and the language
politics in Africa with specific reference to Hausa, Swahili, and Wolof.

****** Africa Past and Present is hosted by Michigan State University
historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb. It is produced by Matrix -- the
Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online
http://matrix.msu.edu

Peter Alegi
Michigan State University

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Kiswahili Must Be Protected By All (Zanzibar)

ZANZIBARIS should honour Kiswahili, and take full responsibility of preserving the Isles culture instead of blaming the government or foreigners for any distortions, the Zanzibar Minister of Information, Culture, and Sports, Mr Ali Juma Shamuhuna, has said.

Responding to concerns raised by legislators during the two days debate on the ministry’s 4.4bn/- budget proposals for 2009/2010, the minister said there was no way Zanzibar could detach itself from the rest of the world to prevent global impact on their language and culture.

“The world is now a global village, and Zanzibar cannot isolate itself. Let us accept changes by taking what we think is acceptable in our society and leave out the rest,” Mr Shamuhuna said before legislators voted to approve his ministry’s budget.

He dismissed as baseless claims that his ministry had not done enough to protect the Isles’ Kiswahili dialect, culture, traditional dances, and norms.

Mr Shamuhuna argued that Zanzibaris, including legislators, should not expect the government to do everything for them. “If a son or daughter returns home very late in the night, how do you blame the government? Such behaviour needs parental commitments.”

The minister also said it was difficult for his ministry to protect Kiswahili without the commitment of people and leaders who, occasionally preferred to speak English, not Kiswahili, at official functions.

The Speaker of the Zanzibar House, Mr Pandu Ameir Kificho, interrupted during the debate by asking the legislators to stick to Kiswahili (without mixing it with English). Most of them however, could not.

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R.I.P. Ivan Van Sertima

In honor of the passing of this scholarly giant, an interview from 1995 on African origins, race, and science. Peace.

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Bibi Kidude

I can say I have had the tremendous privilege of seeing Bibi Kidude perform live. It was an experience I will NEVER forget!

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Taratibu ya 'Chai'

Waiting in Addis Abbaba airport for my flight in DC, and there is much to reflect on these past few days. However, my mind is very cloudy--I feel angry and worried for no reason at all, and I think my mind is trying to digest something which I can't get my head around yet. This afternoon Dotto and his cousin Elyya took me to the airport where I expected some delay because of the change in my flight plan. (I was originally scheduled to leave from Zanzibar) However, I was treated very rudely by the woman at the counter, who then started talking to her colleague about me, not realizing I understood Swahili. She was frusturated because at first my ticket would not issue. Then after she had checked in with all the passengers, she, along with her supervisor, issued me the ticket with much grumbling. Then they asked me for the 'airport tax', which I thought was odd, since no one else in front of me in line had been asked to pay such a 'tax'. After they threatened to take my name off the flight register I finally relented and went outside to withdraw money. Everyone was very suspicious (including Dotto and his cousin) of this 'airport tax' but when I asked for a receipt that's when the 'shit hit the fan'. They brought me a hand-printed markup on a blank Ethiopian Airlines boarding pass. I lost my temper, which in retrospect was a bad idea. More threats were exchanged, but finally I went my way.

Other than this minor argument, I had a very good trip. I got to see Dotto and Mama Rose again, and I finally got beneath the surface of the tourist industry to see another side of life in Zanzibar. It started with a conversation with Musa and his friend Nasr at Marine Restaraunt where I had stopped to eat. Musa found out I had converted to Islam and he invited me to his house where I met his wife, father-in-law, brothers-in-law, and one-year-old daughter. We walked around past huts of concrete block and corrugated tin, a maulidi performance group singing for a village wedding, small garden plots, and then an open field where goats grazed along with boys playing soccer. Musa talked of how he could come to the USA, and his young-brother-in-law, 16 year old Hussein, talked with me in his flawless Classical Arabic. These scenes of village life could have been many places in Africa, and I had seen them before, in various permutations. Something visceral struck me about the material poverty around me, as I remembered a visit a few days earlier to the palatial beach resorts at Nungwi. Here I was among the solid and silent backbone of Zanzibar's history, the sons and daughters of ivory porters and copra farmers, recipients of a revolution whose idealism--still proclaimed in government office posters emblazoned with 'serikali ya mapinduzi'--was flickering.

My letter from the Ministry never arrived to the archives. Instead, on my last day there, the secretary sent her colleagues out to pray (it was Friday), and we sat alone in the study room. After a few minutes, she began to say she would probably close up earlier than usual. She hoped I had found everything to my liking, after all it was she who had allowed me access to the archives. "How will you help us, now that we have helped you?" she asked. I inquired as to what she thought was appropriate. "Mimi mwenyewe sijui," she answered. (Me myself I don't know)

I looked in my wallet, pulled out $20, and gave it to her. She was very grateful, and then instructed me, "not to tell the others." She had nothing to worry about. I considered myself fortunate given that 1) I was able to get into the archives and 2) The regular research fee is $70-$100. My Swahili teacher calls this 'chai.'

Inasemakana kwa Watanzania maisha ni mgumu, kweli. (It is said by Tanzanians, "Truly, life is difficult.") Some reading this might take affront to this obvious example of official corruption. All I can do is relate a conversation Dotto and I had driving through the streets of Dar. We were talking about albino murders in Tanzania and the shadowy deals of a certain international entrepeneur who was arranging exclusive deals to sell used power plants to TANESCO, the Tanzanian public utility. Somehow we started talking about the economy and the challenges of boarding a dalla dalla. Dotto said, quoting his father, "When you wait four hours for one bus to come and when it comes its full, then you wait another four hours, and the next one gets filled before you can board, no matter how polite you are, you ARE gonna push and shove to get on that next bus."

I thought about this alot in relation to my experiences in Zanzibar. Any annoyance I had at the petty corruption of the official bureaucracy, paled before the visceral nature of poverty, especially if and when you KNOW you are poor; the country's best real estate gets built on for tourists and you depend on these people to survive. Uhuru? Bado. (Not yet)

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K'naan Live at Millenium Stage

Excerpts from an interview by Clayton Perry on BlogCritic Magazine.

Pictures from the Kennedy Center Performance, February 26, 2009

Having traveled the world, you have an international view of hip-hop that a lot of people don't have, for better or worse. Is there a common thread of themes that transcends all continents that you have seen as you travel?

Yeah, there is. There are differences, too. I look at hip hop or any other kind of thing whatever it is — music or otherwise — and I just think you can exhaust that theme no matter what it is. As good as hip hop is, if there is no perspective shift, if there is no feeling of freshness or something new about it, it can kind of just become exhausting. When you go abroad and you see something fresh, it's eye-opening and it's beautiful. The one American perspective that we are all exposed to and the only one that exists is kind of exhausting. However, to the credit of the American form of hip hop, it's great that it is the one-track-minded element that it is, as well, because sometimes in the foreign world you find a corny element, too, that I can't listen to either. You find it rarely — the thread — but you find it. Sometimes it's great and fresh and not corny.

Do you think there will ever be a day when the lines between the labels of mainstream and conscious hip hop would be blurred?

Well, I don't know. I think that's dependent on what success the albums have. For example, my latest album is exactly what that is, but its success will be viewed on how it reaches people. Troubadour has incredible hook-based, melodic music. And lyrically, it's relevant. It has potential to be on the radio, so I don't understand why you can't do both. I think that is the answer to that question – not the only answer, but I certainly think that's one of the answers. It just depends on success.

At what point did you realize that your music had really made an impression upon people?

In 2008, I was playing a string of festivals in the US and I did a show in Honolulu. The turnout was so amazing! The organizers said they had to open up the back of the tent, which is something they never had to do before. At some point in one of my songs, I was singing to this crowd of thousands and I remember about 70% of the crowd singing along. It was amazing, because I haven't had any albums released in the US, at least not widely. I had no radio support, nothing like that. So I didn't understand how they knew the lyrics. It was a real pleasant and incredibly exciting and surprising moment. So much so, I stopped singing in the middle of the show and just started laughing. My band mates were laughing. The crowd didn't know what was going on. I said, "Excuse me, but I just want to ask how you guys know the song." People started cheering and whatever. It was a genuine moment for me, to actually take that moment and realize it and respond to it.

Over the years, you have mentioned three artists as major influences in your career: Bob Marley, Tracy Chapman, and Nina Simone. Of these, tell me how one has impacted your life and shaped your career.

I'll take Bob Marley. I think the amount of impact Bob Marley has had on humanity – just what he's sown and how many generations it has changed and how many people it has raised and how many kinds of causes it has fulfilled – I think that is, like, way more than any musician has ever been in the history of music I think. For me, that is one of the great things about life – we have the privilege to live under the banner in which he's created this music and this ideology and his relentless kind of spirit of justice and so on. I see myself as someone who is a humble student of that world. To have a connection to his world, in a way, for me is incredibly humbling. To have recorded my album in his house and work with his family, his friends and so on is a big thing for me.

When did you first fall in love with hip hop?

I had a crush on it from the early stages when I was much younger and listening to Eric B. and Rakim. That world – it was just a crush, infatuation. But when I really fell in love with it and became inextricable from my life was 1993 when the album Illmatic by Nas came out.

What did you admire the most about Illmatic?

I am a poet by nature, and I saw poetry in what Nas was doing. And I saw that a young black man can express and share the incredible intricacies of his own life and out of all the things that surround him. He painted the American black experience and the ghetto experience in such a vivid manner that I thought if that was possible in the English language, then it is possible for me to do that with the English language and paint the African experience.

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The Black Sidis of Gujarat

full article here

The Black Sidis of Gujarat are a tribal Sufi community of East African origin which came to India eight centuries ago and made Gujarat their home. They carried with them their exceptionally rich musical tradition and kept it alive and flourishing through the generations, unknown to the rest of the world. Their history is rooted in the slave trade of the 13th century and beyond, when Arab and later European slave traders systematically captured thousands of African men, women and children and took them across the seas for sale to the highest bidders. Many Sidi arrived in India as slaves to the Maharajas and Nawabs of the day, whilst others came as merchants, navigators, sailors and slave kings, settling in Gujarat. Their Nubian features attracted the Arab slave traders because of their huge demand in many Indian households as trusted servants and status symbols. That remains true in the Parsi community and several Sidi royal family lineages also continue to thrive to this day in India.

A traditional occupation of African-Indian Sufis in Gujarat has been to perform sacred music and dance as wandering faqirs, singing songs to their black Sufi saint, Bava Gor. Sidi men and women perform sacred music and dance during rituals in the shrines to Bava Gor, and have lived on accepting alms for touring these devotional genres from villages to shrines for centuries. The Sidis are the most musically inclined, who recognise music as a tool for becoming closer to God. Many Sidis also perform as muezzins as they feel closely related to Hazrat Bilal, a black African man who was the first person chosen by Prophet Mohammed to recite adhan (call to prayer). Over time, the Sidis' native African music styles, melodic and rhythmic structures, lyrics and musical instruments mingled with local influences in Gujarat to form this unique and symbolic representation of African-Indian ness.

Sidi Goma perform in a group of twelve: four lead musicians (drummers/singers) and eight dancers. The program presents an overview of Sidi ritual performance, from the traditional muezzin call to prayer to a staged ritual performance. It centres around a danced zikr (remembrance), consisting of joyful, satirical praise dances to their Saint, who is attributed with giving them the joy they express in their dances. Intoxicating drum patterns that "speak" the zikr prayers in rhythm support the dancers who perform virtuosic feats of agility and strength, gradually reaching an ecstatic climax. While the music gradually gets more rapid and excited, the dances unfold with constantly evolving individual and small-group acts of animal imitations, climaxing in a coconut-breaking feat. The programme features solos on the malunga, an instrument resembling the Brazilian berimbau, as well as prayer calls and seated ritual songs (baithi, dhamal andqawwali). Included in the show is a certain type of circle dance, with people coming into the centre to perform more exhibitionistic dancing, indicative of the slave dances of Zanzibar.

The Sidi speak word perfect Hindi and Gujarati, but have remained an oppressed class in India. Because they are black, from Africa, and Muslim, this has kept them at a lower socio-economic and educational level, but recently their situation is finally beginning to change for the better. Yunus Babu Sidi, one of the group's leaders speaking in a recent interview with ethnomusicology professor Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy in UK's fROOTS magazine, says:

"The general population in India think of us as Africans, although we are Indians, pure and proper and Swahili is the language of our forefathers and we should not forget it. I am the only one learning Swahili in the group, so I can teach my fellow brothers and sisters in the future. We use the Swahili language in some of the songs during our performances, but we don't know the true meanings behind these words. If someone asks me what have you sung, I don't have an answer for them and that becomes a problem for me, because this issue is not just about the performance but it lies in the roots of our culture… All I know is I come from Africa, and I would like nothing better than to sit around with my Sidi brothers and sisters one day and have a conversation with them in Kiswahili....

More information can be found at http://www.everyculture.com/South-Asia/Sidi.html

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Milango mbalimbali ipo Zanzibar

This is a series of shots I took of (and with!) the beautiful, famous, ornate carved wooden doors of Zanzibar. The doors themselves reflected (and to some extent still do reflect) the relative wealth of the inhabitants. The doors are carved with flowers, trees, Arabic, Gujarati, and Swahili sayings, and often feature large iron spikes (an import from India; apparently originally used to keep out elephants). There is even a Swahili saying reflecting the importance of doors:
Nyumba njema si mlango. (a good house isn't judged by its door.)

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