Cultural
Wole Soyinka: Nigeria’s Nobel Laureate
(CNN) — Poet, dramatist and novelist, Wole Soyinka’s work has left a large imprint on the literary landscape of Africa.
His work has been performed internationally and in 1986 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Regardless of the global profile and recognition, writing for Soyinka has always been, and always will be, a part of...
Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter: The Family Tragedy of Female Genital Cutting in Mali
(rhrealitycheck.org) – A scene in Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter,a powerful new documentary produced and directed by Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater, where a group of African women are gathered in a Philadelphia beauty parlor giving voice to opinions that they might be persecuted for holding in their home countries.
“We were circumcised, but...
“The Fathers of Benin” at Elegba Folklore Society
The Elegba Folklore Society is showing “The Fathers of Benin,” featuring 18 bronze sculptures from West Africa’s Republic of Benin (formerly Dahomey). Founder and artistic director Janine Bell says the works from The Pilgrim Collection of the Royal Art of Benin are considered among the finest in the region.
The pieces, which range...
Ivory Coast – A beauty Competition with a difference
“African women, don’t lighten your skin. It’s a gift from God.” These lyrics are a line from a song specially commissioned for a beauty competition with a difference in Ivory Coast.
Only women with natural, untreated skin – confirmed by skin experts – can enter the competition which goes by the name, Miss Authentica....
Nigeria: How Yoruba and Igbo became different languages
A review of Bolaji Aremo’s book, How Yoruba and Igbo Became Different Languages, by Adewale Oshodi.
No one who has read Bolaji Aremo’s new book, How Yoruba and Igbo Became Different Languages, would be left in any doubt that Igbo and Yoruba were at some time in the past the same language and that the Yoruba and the Igbo were members of one and the...
Music: The allure of Lura
The native music of Cape Verde is as elusive and disparate as one might expect from an archipelago of 10 islands whose numerous ports are part of the international trade route off Africa’s west coast. So it’s fitting that Lura, the 36-year-old singer who perhaps best captures the myriad elements of the Cape Verdean hybrid, hails from Lisbon,...
African music is making another comeback in the U.S. and Europe
Every decade or so, it happens. African music, usually exiled by the pop mainstream into the land of world-music exotica, threatens to make a broader incursion into American consciousness.
The ’60s: South Africans Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba scored breakthroughs while the New York group the Tokens went to No. 1 with “The Lion Sleeps...
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