Do you remember Baloji, the hard-to-label Congolese musician fascinated by witchcraft? His brilliant Tout ceci ne vous rendra pas le Congo that I mentioned around here a while back, is still one of my favorite songs. Well, it turns out he's back: his second album is coming out next week - on January 27th. It's titled Kinshasa Succursale and watching the first video from it (or short film, as Baloji calls it), I'm already really looking forward to it.
The album includes some titles with popular Congolese bands Konono N°1 , Kasaï All Star, Zaico Langa Langa, as well as several local artists gathered during one week of recordings in Kinshasa. This 2010 the DRC is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its independence from Belgium, so Kinshasa's boulevard 30 juin (the date of independence) is naturally featured prominently on the video of this first single. Other popular sights of Congo's capital make an appearance (a bit like Youssoupha's The butterfly effect), so only for that it's worth watching.
The title of the song is Karibu Ya Bintou ("Welcome to Life in Limbo"), and in it Konono N°1 play the likembé (finger piano) which offers an interesting contrast with Baloji's hip-hop beats.
Here are a few links that I liked during the last days. Enjoy!
People who want to give me money, a great blog collecting emails of advance-fee scams. While not only African, this type of fraud is typically known as Nigerian scams or 419 fraud and a great deal in the blog are Africa-related.
Speaking of Nigerian scammers, apparently there are a few websites that like to take revenge on them by getting them to perform all sorts of tasks in order to get those bank details and ridiculing them. Such as 419 Eater, which recently saw one poster known as Nurse Nasty persuading all manner of scammers to dress up as superheroes of her design. Brilliant. (via A Bombastic Element & Bleeding Cool)
'In Africa they won’t feel lonesome tonight', an article about Africa's communalism that ensures that no one is left alone (I can assure you of that).
A video portrait of Raki, a Michael Jackson impersonator from Goma in Eastern DRC (by the way, the bit where he sings Billy Jean making up the words because he doesn't speak English reminded me of this old Italian video).
Speaking of the DRC, the trial of former Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga resumed today in The Hague. Lubanga is accused of enlisting and conscripting child soldiers and using them to fight for the Congolese militia group Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) during 2002 and 2003, and if you're interested in his trial you should follow this blog by the Open Society Justice Initiative.
'Desert Flower', the autobiographical fairy tale-esque book by Somali super model Waris Dirie was one of the first African books I read as a teenager, if not the first one. So I'm really looking forward to watching the German movie adaptation (although shot in English) that came out in October. Here's the trailer (via Africa.Visual_Media)
Everybody's wondering if Nigeria's president is still alive, since he hasn't been seen in over 6 weeks.
Extremely useful fire mosquito catcher by Johannes Vogl (via Ryan Briggs), the perfect weapon to fight malaria in Africa.
Awesome new photoblog by Andrew Jones focused on Chantal Biya's, Cameroon's First Lady, crazy hairdos. Oh, and if you have any pictures of that work of art of a woman, email them to chantalbiyahair[at]gmail[dot]com
Happy 2010. Say no to evil like this grocery store in Bukavu proudly proclaims.
It's been a while since the last Friday Evening music session, and I've missed it. So here's a great discovery: Youssoupha. He's French but of a Senegalese mother and a Congolese father - Tabu Ley Rochereau. The song is titled "L'effet papillon" (The butterfly effect) and it makes Kinshasa look like you've never seen it before. Enjoy!
I have several photography blogs in my rss reader, but one of the best ones is surprisingly by MSF Canada who also has a bunch of really interesting field blogs. And I say surprisingly not only because it's the Canada section, but because I'm typically not a big fan of humanitarian organisations' promotional photos. This photo blog, though, doesn't fall into the expected clichés (or not too much, at least), and shows much more than poor people receiving medical assistance. Every day they publish a picture from a different country where they work, every day by a different photographer. And they have worked with some of the best news photographers in the world
The reason why they're one of the few NGOs with a photo blog is:
Words can tell a story, describe emotions, and explain the facts, but they can never replace a powerful moment captured in a photograph. Compelling images offer a window into people’s lives, often depicting their reality with a unique perspective.
Although the blog is not only focused on Africa, it features pictures from African countries quite often - and, of course, those are my favorites. Especially the ones that show unexpected beauty, like this one below of a muddy road in Northern Uganda taken by Chris de Bode.
Since this is after all an MSF blog it does have many pictures of people in conflict zones, of refugees, of hospitals, and of aid recipients in general. But these pictures are often beautiful, intimate portraits showing a thoughtful person, or focus on an interesting detail or angle of the scene. Some of them even show people laughing, or playing, trying to carry on with their lives in spite of their surrounding. Or wearing funky sunglasses in a completely destroyed town in Somalia, as shown in this photograph by Petterick Wiggers:
And last but not least, I also enjoy the pictures they post every so often from the DRC - which is still my main country of interest in Africa for good or for worse. Like this one taken by Carl De Keyzer in Boende, in the Equateur province:
Check out the whole MSF Canada Photo Blog here.
Thanks to a tweet from Madatsara, I discovered the Ulysse database of the Centre des Archives d’outre-mer of the French National Archive in Aix-en-Provence. This database is an online treasure of scanned old photographs (as well as a few posters and maps) of French colonies, including over 4,500 of black and white images from Africa. Although I only browsed through a small portion of the collection after spending two hours enthralled with the website, it seems that the majority of them are from the first half of the 20th century. Some of them are of buildings, landscapes or of groups of people posing for the camera, but there are also a great many of them capturing scenes of daily life, such as shopping in the market, a class at school, handcraft production, hunting, rural activies, ritual dances or ceremonies, chiefs meetings, etc. etc.
Even when no white people are pictured, and there are many of those, in amusing dignified poses, light-colored shorts, tall socks and the inevitable pith helmets or long missionary robes and beards, they all seem to have a certain colonial quality to them. In spite of the diversity and the often seemingly casual local scenes, it's as if the bewilderment in the eyes of the photographers reflected on the images, showing their fascination with things that they were unable to understand and which appeared so incredibly foreign and exotic to them.
I recommend anyone interested in the history of Africa to spend some time digging into the database, which contains some truly unexpected gems. As a sample, here's a small selection of the images of the French posing with the natives that I found amusing, but there are many other types of pictures in the Ulysse, and believe it or not most of them don't even include ungraceful Indiana Jones look-alikes wearing pith helmest or suspicious moustaches in them. You'll see if you look for yourself.
The explorer Binger buying karité butter at the market in a village in the Haute Volta region (nowadays Burkina Faso) between 1900 and 1936.
Soldiers of the Forces Françaises Libres near Bangui in the Oubangui-Chari region (nowadays the Central African Republic) in 1940
Missionaries and their students in front of a school in Fada Tikondi in the Haute Volta region (nowadays Burkina Faso) in 1957.
[Poster above of "Visitez le Congo Belge", meaning "Visit Belgian Congo", displaying the Niragongo volcano and an okapi, from 1930]
The first time I went to Congo, I remember noticing a couple of gentlemen wearing extremely elegant and expensive-looking suits on the flight from Paris to Kinshasa. Both the colors and the cut were old-fashioned, and they were wearing long-sleeve shirts, vests, jackets, hats and all despite the sticky heat awaiting us as soon as we landed. Back then I had no idea they were probably sapeurs, or members of the famous society of well-dressed people called Sape.
Although the origin of the word and of the movement is somewhat unclear, it seems that it originated in Congo Brazzaville quite a long time ago as a result of French colonisation.
This is how Héctor Mediavilla Sabaté, a Spanish photographer that has been photographing sapeurs in both Congos since 2003, explains these origins:
The arrival of the French to the Congo, at the beginning of the 20th Century, brought along the myth of Parisian elegance among the Congolese youth working for the colonialists. Many considered the white man to be superior because of their technology, sophistication and elegance. In 1922, G.A. Matsoua was the first–ever Congolese to return from Paris fully clad as an authentic French gentleman, which caused great uproar and much admiration amongst his fellow countrymen. He was the first Grand Sapeur.Respected and admired in their communities, today’s sapeurs see themselves as artists. Their refined manners and impeccable style in their attire bring a little glamour to their humble surroundings.
The famous musician Papa Wemba, who often visited Brazzaville, became fascinated by the sapeurs and their ways. It was him who made popular and gave an international dimension to the Sape phenomenon in the 60’s with his songs. This was probably a reaction to Mobutu's authenticité efforts, which culminated in the Zairianisation between 1972 and the 1990's which involved imposing more traditional outfits and therefore banning the Western suit (instead men were expected to wear the abacost).
Although I didn't see very many sapeurs on the streets of Kinshasa, I have to concede that like many articles on the sapeurs point out, Congolese are proud to be among the most elegant people in Africa (and abroad, I might add). I suspect the sapeurs are really a dying breed, at least in the way described in this article that started Western media's fascination with the sape, or on Mediavilla's photo statement. I guess that's why there's now a whole book to enjoy more pictures of sapeurs titled Gentlemen of Bacongo by Italian photographer Daniele Tamagni [H/T Mister Crew]. And also an exhibition on the book at the London Newcastle Project Space, London, as part of Photomonth from 19-29th November 2009.
One of Papa Wemba's musicians, King Kester Emeneya, is quoted as saying "The white man may have invented clothes, but we turned it into an art" and looking at sapeurs we can only agree with him.
All photos by Daniele Tagni, from the book Gentlemen of Bacongo
A few days ago, browsing AfricaNews, I came accross this video describing the difficulties of getting a taxi in Kinshasa. Since the city doesn't have a formal public transportation system, people have to rely on taxi-vans or regular taxis to get around. And in big city of about 8 million people where a lot of people have to commute great distances to go to work, this means a huge traffic chaos on a daily basis. To get a better idea about what I'm talking about, watch this video:
And if the lack of proper public transportation wasn't enough of a problem for people who can't walk to work, the lack of road maintenance adds up to the daily hurdles of commuters as shown by this other video (it's in French, but the images speak for themselves):
Like Thomas Rid, the author of the blog Kings of War, says:
The permanent stream of gloomy news from the Democratic Republic of Congo is hard to stomach. So here’s something on the bright side: Kinshasa has a space program, “Troposphère”. The report is in French, naturally. But not to miss.
The full name of the rocket is actually Troposhère 5, since it's the fifth one that the DRC has launched. As the reporter says, it was built with "meager means but big ambitions" by a team of 5 researchers who were "encouraged" by the authorities (vice-president Emile Bongeli is shown saying that great things can be achieved from small dreams). Their objective: to send a rat to an altitude of 36km at a speed three times bigger than the speed of sound. Did they succeed? You'll have to watch the whole video...
This afternoon I watched the documentary film On the rumba river and, not surprisingly, I liked it. Congolese rumba music, interesting characters who have seen a lot and have a lot to say, amazing photography and a bit of Kinshasa history. What is there not to like? Here's the trailer:
The film focuses on a musician named Wendo Kolosoy, or Papa Wendo, who is considered the father of Congolese rumba (soukous). It opens with his wife cooking lunch for in the backyard complaining about him not having a job while he sits, eyes closed, under a tree. Where would I find work? he responds. These days there are no concerts to be hired for, he says. The film was shot in 2005, shortly after the Second Congo War with the country still recovering.
However, we see Papa Wendo gathering some of his old musicians to play and rehearse, probably for a comeback. He even invites another famous musician from the old days who comes from Brazzaville, across the river and they all have a jam session. He says that now Papa Wendo is all wise like a father, but when he was younger he was a bit of a thug, and often got into fights since he used to be a boxer. Later we learn that he also worked as a river boat mechanic but as soon as he became successful with his music he abandoned all other jobs.
The best thing about the film is not the story, as it's almost non-existent. It's the music scenes, shot with closeups filled with beauty and with a great sense for detail. Those scenes capture a true love for music, and a palpable nostalgic feeling for a past that won't come back. For a golden Congo that doesn't exist anymore.
However, as truly beautiful as those scenes are, I found the film lacking a bit of depth. Perhaps I would have liked to dig a bit more into the history of Papa Wendo and his musicians, of the golden years of the Congolese rumba. And to know more about the role of the river in all that. Instead of those couple of interviewees in the entourage who basically said "life is tough in Congo", I would have liked to hear more from the musicians since the music is what makes the film so enjoyable. Not every documentary about the Congo needs to be a commentary on the war or the hardships that it has suffered.
All things must pass, and so Papa Wendo passed away a bit over a year ago, which adds another layer of nostalgy to the film which now looks like a tribute. With him disappears an era.
