In search of Kenyan food in New Jersey

Robert Sietsema on the Village Voice food blog, Fork in the Road (one of the only decent writers in the fast-aging free weekly) took one of the tunnels to New Jersey to find Kenyan food. Talk of ugali, managu and mandazi abounds.

The food reads good.

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No medal for the Village Voice

New York financier Bernie Madoff stole $50 billion from investors, in a Ponzi scheme while the Feds either played footsie with him or looked the other way, the city has housing, health care and schooling crises, and the Village Voice (freely available in your neighborhood pizza house; btw when last was it relevant?) runs a cover “expose” on Ethiopian and Kenyan athletes brought to New York City and other American cities, at the request of track clubs, “looking to score a few extra points and get the modest purses handed out to winners.” The Africans get a small cut. Oh, and they’re writing this to protect the “weekend warrior” runners. Serious.

If you still care.

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African Music Blogs

Western-based DJ’s/amateur music lovers who travel to African cities, do the hard lifting–finding obscured or neglected music–then posting that music on their blogs (where I can access it) and in the process often resurrecting dormant careers (that’s some of the musicians) as well as building their own cred (and careers) in the process (that’s the blogs), got recently profiled in the Village Voice.

Some of the blogs are my favorites like Likembe and Awesome Tapes from Africa.

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Art: Another review of ‘Flow’ at Studio Museum in Harlem

New York Times critic Holland Cotter was more emphatic about ‘Flow,’ a group show of artwork by a loosely defined group of artists under the age of 40 who were either born in Africa or whose parents emigrated from there (with few exceptions, most of the artists live in Europe or North America), on show at the Studio Museum. See Cotter’s review here). Cotter identified the group of artists by the fashionable appellation ‘Afropolitans’ (some of the artists include Mustafa Maluka, Lolo Veleko, Michèle Magema, Latifa Echakhch, and Trokon Nagbe among others). In a separate review, that I just came across, Alan Gilbert, a Village Voice art critic, is less sure about the show’s coherence, whether for the art, artists, curators or critics. See Gilbert’s review here. Flow ends June 29.

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Western media and war children’

The Village Voice, following the lead of two Australian journalists, subjecting the memories of Ismael Beah, the former teenage child soldier, who was forcefully conscripted into a violent civil war in Sierra Leone and then wrote about (excerpted here), to the kind of scrutiny reserved for James Frey, war mongers and war criminals. I am still trying to figure out what the point of all that “investigation” was. Now the Village Voice, probably trying to make up for its rudeness, treats another former child soldier — this time the Sudanese rapper Emmanuel Jal — with some courtesy. See an interview by a reporter for the weekly with Jal, who has a new record, here.

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Things did not fall apart

At least not for Chinau Achebe on the 50th anniversary of his novel — the focus of a celebration in New York City coming up on Wednesday night — as an interview with the Village Voice proves.

Excerpt:

After teaching undergrads at a liberal-arts college like Bard for almost two decades, what have you concluded about using multicultural literature to eradicate racism and xenophobia?

The number of children who are reading Things Fall Apart in high school has increased enormously, especially among the students who take my classes. For me, that’s a very good sign. Because this generation has a lot of responsibility waiting for it. And how they link up with others their age in distant places may well determine how our civilization survives in this century.

Here.

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Kenyan Big Men in New Jersey

The Village Voice headline writers have some ‘fun’ at the expense of expatriate Kenyans in the Garden State.

The reporter who clearly has no idea about African politics, goes on about ‘tribes,’ informs the reader that ‘… The preferred weapons have been machetes, bows and poisoned arrows, stones, and clubs, and the scenes have been ugly,’ and repeats the propaganda of US officials and the Kenyan government. He also turns these ‘modest’ immigrants into superdelegates back home:

If a New Jersey resident decides to support a candidate, a whole village in Kenya might follow his lead.

Serious. At least he did not use that phrase invented by foreign correspondents. Big Men.

Here.

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Vampire Weekend

With the release of their first album, Vampire Weekend, the preppy, self-conscious pop group made up of Columbia University graduates are coming in for a bit of stick (that is to say it mildly) from hipster music critics.

Over the last year Vampire Weekend built its hype all through the band’s Myspace page and concerts around the New York City area (full disclosure: I went to see them at Music Hall in Williamsburg … and enjoyed it).

Mike Powell in the Village Voice reminds us that the band’s pre-album hype was built on a catalog ‘… that was 14 minutes long‘ and that its all a schtick.

In the same edition, however, it is Julianne Sheppard who really goes after Vampire Weekend. Sheppeard accuses the band of consciously working to ‘… Westernize or “whitewash” an indigenous music …’ (the band borrows a lot from African music, while often deliberately downplaying that influence in public) and that their creative process involves: ‘… run[ning] their influences through a steam-cleaner—in sound, in texture, in language, in execution—until there’s nothing left but space and simplicity and precious little conflict …’ The result: ‘… I can’t down with [them] no matter how many times homeboys drop a Lil Jon reference.’

Ouch.

Of course I can see through the conceit and the odd aesthetic and old school politics. But does it make me a bad person if I like the music?

To hear more, listen here.

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Anything Greg Tate wants to talk about

‘In my experience, there are two kinds of coloured folk: Black Rockers and Blackies Who Rock. The distinction is between those who’d gladly join the Black Rock Coalition or openly claim Afro-Punk affiliation, and malcontents who’re such badass renegade punk-rock futhermuckers that they’d never join the only club that would have them, and would rather badmouth your mama in print.’

Full article here.

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