Monday, September 1, 2014
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Rhythm Nations?
The CHI of Music is Linked to The Chi of Liberation
Thoughtless Dancers or Dancing Thinkers? In his book Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions; Kofi Agawu writes "Inventing African Rhythm: That the distinctive quality of African music lies in its rhythmic structure is a notion so persistently thematized that it has by now assumed the status of a commonplace, a topos.
And so it is with related ideas that African rhythms are complex, that Africans possess a unique rhythmic sensibility, and that this rhythmic disposition marks them as ultimately different from others. Consider a few of these characterizations. The eleventh-century Christian physician and theologian, Ibn Butlan, in a tract entitled "On how to buy slaves and how to detect bodily defects," claimed that Ïf a black were to fall from the sky to the earth, he would fall in rhythm." In other words, even while facing certain death - speaking as metaphorically as Butlan did-blacks (especially black women) continued to exhibit an essential and irreducible rhythmic disposition.
The association of dancing with death, the racialist referral of particular sensibilities on particular groups of people, and the construction of African rhythm as complex, superior, yet ultimately incomprehensible: these and other implications of Ibn Butlan's casual remark are found reproduced in diverse ways and with diverse accents throughout the history of discourse about African music. In many twentieth century accounts, the emphasis on dance and the constancy of music-making are retained while rhythm as a separate dimension is singled out for special mention.
Erich von Hornbostel describes a piece of African xylophone music in which he found one of the parts "syncopated past our comprehension." And A.M. Jones, writing with charecteristic enthusiasm and confidence in 1949, declares that - "the African is far more skilled at drumming rhythms than we are - in fact our banal pom, pom, pom, pom on the drums is mere childs-play compared with the complicated and delicate interplay of rhythms in African drumming." All the above clearly shows the various stereotypes and convinient generalization with which the Euro-Americans and also some lazy minded Afrikans have continued to view Afrika. This single story narrative has been analysed and rubbished by the likes of Franz Fanon and even Aime Cesaire in his Return To My Native Land and other essays, poems and songs from the Negritude and Black Power era's.
Recently the celebrated Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie did an TED Talk on this very notion of a single story, although she was speaking out against the expectations that weigh African writers down to the extent that they no longer have individual/personal or unique stories to tell since the world expects some types of narratives. The rhythmic African narrative has even been thrust comically onto the public sphere by neo-liberals caricturering the South African president Jacob G. Zuma as a dancing buffoon with no other redeeming qualities. They even go so far as contrasting him with the more Western palatable 'rhythmless' former President Thabo Mbeki.
The problem with all these Eurocentric constructions and deconstructions of Africa is that many Africans follow suit unquestionably. But fortunately for the thinking Afrikan, the Afrikologist, there are still many Black folks such as V.Y. Mudimbe who provides a sustained interrogation of the very idea of 'Africa', showing it to be a construction of European fantasy and discourse. Mudimbe argues that beyond its relative stability as a geographical pointer,"Africa"is not readilly ontologized from within an imagined Afrikan worldview; nor is it easily graspable either as a unified cultural phenomenon or as a fruitful epistemological referent. Kwame Appiah similarly argues that "the very invention of Africa ( as something more than a geographical entity) must be understood, ultimately, as an outgrowth of European racialism."
Yes we have rhythm, yes we gravitate towards the polyphonic and syncopated sounds of our cultural environment but that does not make "us" any more humane, or special as a species. We are just as fallible and as beautiful as any other people. But more than anything, Afrika's people are diverse and as multifaceted as the peoples of any other continent. That Africa is a continent rather than a country, that crossing national borders is not - in terms of restrictions - like going from one American state to the next, that a greater portion of it is French - rather than English-speaking, that its numerous languages are not mutually comprehensible dialects of a few languages: knowledge of these and other "facts"cannot yet be taken for granted. "Indeed, it is possible to discern an ongoing resistance to knowing Africa.
Why should we bother to learn the strange and often unpronounceable names of people in remote places practicing weired customs when we can simply use the all purpose term Äfrica"?" Allied to the retreat from comparison is a retreat from critical evaluation of African musical practice. The pious dignifying of all performances as if they were equally good, of all instruments as if they were tuned in an "interesting" way. All of this reminds me of how Europe and America systemically underdeveloped Afrika and how this underdevelopment continues until this day and that popular music largely contributes to this colonization at least on a psychologically. Our purported sense uncanny rhythmic ability may be a natural impulse but it may very well be our undoing as "a people". The saga continues ....
Thoughtless Dancers or Dancing Thinkers? In his book Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions; Kofi Agawu writes "Inventing African Rhythm: That the distinctive quality of African music lies in its rhythmic structure is a notion so persistently thematized that it has by now assumed the status of a commonplace, a topos.
And so it is with related ideas that African rhythms are complex, that Africans possess a unique rhythmic sensibility, and that this rhythmic disposition marks them as ultimately different from others. Consider a few of these characterizations. The eleventh-century Christian physician and theologian, Ibn Butlan, in a tract entitled "On how to buy slaves and how to detect bodily defects," claimed that Ïf a black were to fall from the sky to the earth, he would fall in rhythm." In other words, even while facing certain death - speaking as metaphorically as Butlan did-blacks (especially black women) continued to exhibit an essential and irreducible rhythmic disposition.
The association of dancing with death, the racialist referral of particular sensibilities on particular groups of people, and the construction of African rhythm as complex, superior, yet ultimately incomprehensible: these and other implications of Ibn Butlan's casual remark are found reproduced in diverse ways and with diverse accents throughout the history of discourse about African music. In many twentieth century accounts, the emphasis on dance and the constancy of music-making are retained while rhythm as a separate dimension is singled out for special mention.
Erich von Hornbostel describes a piece of African xylophone music in which he found one of the parts "syncopated past our comprehension." And A.M. Jones, writing with charecteristic enthusiasm and confidence in 1949, declares that - "the African is far more skilled at drumming rhythms than we are - in fact our banal pom, pom, pom, pom on the drums is mere childs-play compared with the complicated and delicate interplay of rhythms in African drumming." All the above clearly shows the various stereotypes and convinient generalization with which the Euro-Americans and also some lazy minded Afrikans have continued to view Afrika. This single story narrative has been analysed and rubbished by the likes of Franz Fanon and even Aime Cesaire in his Return To My Native Land and other essays, poems and songs from the Negritude and Black Power era's.
Recently the celebrated Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie did an TED Talk on this very notion of a single story, although she was speaking out against the expectations that weigh African writers down to the extent that they no longer have individual/personal or unique stories to tell since the world expects some types of narratives. The rhythmic African narrative has even been thrust comically onto the public sphere by neo-liberals caricturering the South African president Jacob G. Zuma as a dancing buffoon with no other redeeming qualities. They even go so far as contrasting him with the more Western palatable 'rhythmless' former President Thabo Mbeki.
The problem with all these Eurocentric constructions and deconstructions of Africa is that many Africans follow suit unquestionably. But fortunately for the thinking Afrikan, the Afrikologist, there are still many Black folks such as V.Y. Mudimbe who provides a sustained interrogation of the very idea of 'Africa', showing it to be a construction of European fantasy and discourse. Mudimbe argues that beyond its relative stability as a geographical pointer,"Africa"is not readilly ontologized from within an imagined Afrikan worldview; nor is it easily graspable either as a unified cultural phenomenon or as a fruitful epistemological referent. Kwame Appiah similarly argues that "the very invention of Africa ( as something more than a geographical entity) must be understood, ultimately, as an outgrowth of European racialism."
Yes we have rhythm, yes we gravitate towards the polyphonic and syncopated sounds of our cultural environment but that does not make "us" any more humane, or special as a species. We are just as fallible and as beautiful as any other people. But more than anything, Afrika's people are diverse and as multifaceted as the peoples of any other continent. That Africa is a continent rather than a country, that crossing national borders is not - in terms of restrictions - like going from one American state to the next, that a greater portion of it is French - rather than English-speaking, that its numerous languages are not mutually comprehensible dialects of a few languages: knowledge of these and other "facts"cannot yet be taken for granted. "Indeed, it is possible to discern an ongoing resistance to knowing Africa.
Why should we bother to learn the strange and often unpronounceable names of people in remote places practicing weired customs when we can simply use the all purpose term Äfrica"?" Allied to the retreat from comparison is a retreat from critical evaluation of African musical practice. The pious dignifying of all performances as if they were equally good, of all instruments as if they were tuned in an "interesting" way. All of this reminds me of how Europe and America systemically underdeveloped Afrika and how this underdevelopment continues until this day and that popular music largely contributes to this colonization at least on a psychologically. Our purported sense uncanny rhythmic ability may be a natural impulse but it may very well be our undoing as "a people". The saga continues ....
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Users and Choosers
"What is a machine? Marx showed that" all fully developed
machinery consists of three essentially different parts, the motor
mechanism, the transmitting mechanism, and finally the tool or
working machine ".1 The machine is a man-made assemblage of
parts, such that if a motive force is applied and they are set
in motion, the operation of the machine produces certain results.
I Marx, Capital, Vol. I, ch. xv, section 1.
10
machinery consists of three essentially different parts, the motor
mechanism, the transmitting mechanism, and finally the tool or
working machine ".1 The machine is a man-made assemblage of
parts, such that if a motive force is applied and they are set
in motion, the operation of the machine produces certain results.
I Marx, Capital, Vol. I, ch. xv, section 1.
10
Friday, June 20, 2014
Friday, June 13, 2014
Dark MATTER Paradigm: SOLUTIONS: The Kemetic Science Of Prosperity - Bro...
Dark MATTER Paradigm: SOLUTIONS: The Kemetic Science Of Prosperity - Bro...: "The Genie Is Your Subconscous Mind Or The "Amenta" As Our People Of Ancient Kemet Would Call It, And You Must Know How It W...
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
city breathing
Architecture of Durban Poetry Project
1.
Makhosazana comes to Durban and instantly forgets her name
Her thoughts scrape the sky and she ends up against the wall
Somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep
The promising city of dreams drank her deep
Now she is
Wailing to the tune of Yakhalínkomo
While the wind carries her home
Drifting in and out of dirt and hurt
And the ocean soothes the pain
No life is ever in vain
And that tall building reminds her of Miles Davis and Sketches of Spain
Of Sipho Gumede’s Chickens Today Feather-Dusters Tomorrow
2.
Her thoughts scrape the sky
Since 2010 the buildings cornerstones have grown grimier
Conferences in Geneva rhyming through the centuries
And the elders still whisper through her woven hair
And anthem of the decades...
Yet she remains breathless, hapless and blue.
The city breathes easier with the morning’s sunrise
And her chapped lips seek the greener grass, the garden routes and the water fountains
Where are all the water fountains?
Morning market colours come alive with the boys in tattered skirts and sleeveless shirts
Running through the streets delivering the first fruits
Delivering the mielies, ubhatata and the sweet potato shoots
And the girls in the boys in their school uniforms early birds chasing the freshest worm
And the labour-force hailing taxi’s, hopping off busses rushing off to work
And while the city comes alive clean as the good doctor’s glove
Hope floats towards the high windows of office suites for job-seekers
All in line for a piece of that devils pie ...
1.
Makhosazana comes to Durban and instantly forgets her name
Her thoughts scrape the sky and she ends up against the wall
Somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep
The promising city of dreams drank her deep
Now she is
Wailing to the tune of Yakhalínkomo
While the wind carries her home
Drifting in and out of dirt and hurt
And the ocean soothes the pain
No life is ever in vain
And that tall building reminds her of Miles Davis and Sketches of Spain
Of Sipho Gumede’s Chickens Today Feather-Dusters Tomorrow
2.
Her thoughts scrape the sky
Since 2010 the buildings cornerstones have grown grimier
Conferences in Geneva rhyming through the centuries
And the elders still whisper through her woven hair
And anthem of the decades...
Yet she remains breathless, hapless and blue.
The city breathes easier with the morning’s sunrise
And her chapped lips seek the greener grass, the garden routes and the water fountains
Where are all the water fountains?
Morning market colours come alive with the boys in tattered skirts and sleeveless shirts
Running through the streets delivering the first fruits
Delivering the mielies, ubhatata and the sweet potato shoots
And the girls in the boys in their school uniforms early birds chasing the freshest worm
And the labour-force hailing taxi’s, hopping off busses rushing off to work
And while the city comes alive clean as the good doctor’s glove
Hope floats towards the high windows of office suites for job-seekers
All in line for a piece of that devils pie ...
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