AfricaIs aCountry

Hugh Masekela’s ‘Stimela’ gets a makeover

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Hugh Masekela’s ‘Stimela’ gets a makeover

By
Johan Palme

Wynter Gordon's remake of 'Stimela' suggests more challenging possibilities.

Hugh Masekela in 2012. Image credit Mário Pires via Flickr.

Wynter Gordon, theR&B singer-songwriter, is taking a considerable step outside her comfortable mid-commercial range with her new single, “Stimela,” and its self-directed video, but it’s hard to argue that it isn’t reeking of the worst type of structural World Music arrogance. It practically has it all: the cleverly metaphorical words from Hugh Masekela’s lament of migrant workers reduced to exotic vocal effect. (Or are they? “Running, running…”) The full gamut of stereotypes of Africa – wilderness, tribalism, “wisdom and truth” and the ignorant generalization of having a tiger to represent Africa. Watch:

But something in the blinking, refracting shadows of the video and the Weeknd-inspired cross-linking swirl of wavering sound suggests more challenging possibilities: borders dissolving between human, animal and machine, and between certainties and stereotypes. “I’m a hostage in this skin,” she sings, yet somehow the music and images make escape from the power structures sound eminently possible.

And here’s the original:

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.