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508 Articles by:
Sean Henry Jacobs
Sean Henry Jacobs is the founder of Africa is a Country and Professor of International Affairs at The New School.
The Decade of Film
I participated in Sight & Sound’s once-a-decade poll of the greatest films of all time. I included at least two African films: “Borom Sarrett” and “Mapantsula.” Hopefully, they make the cut.
The United States of Africa
Yannick Létourneau talks about the genesis of his film about the Senegelese rapper, Awadi. Also, why so many political musicians come from West Africa.
Struggles over memory in South Africa
Revisionism pervades popular culture in South Africa now, coloring our perception of the past.
Nando’s Grilled Chicken Politics
We asked the Africa Is a Country “office” to comment on Nando’s new ad that is supposedly a comment on the widespread antiblack xenophobia in South Africa.
This is not about art
Between the relentless media coverage, the twitter deluge, the pronouncement by a South African judge (“This
Akin Omotoso’s Country
A recurring theme in director Akin Omotoso’s films is the fraught postapartheid relationship between Nigerian migrants and their South African hosts.
Friday Music Break, N°10
http://youtu.be/2tig5g9jV5Y British based Nigerian rapper Modenine starts off our weekly Friday Music Break. Here's four more.
Radio Freedom’s Afrikaans Service
Learning that Radio Freedom, the exiled ANC’s radio service, broadcast in Afrikaans, further undermines the idea of the language as belonging to the oppressor.
The elephant in the room
The DJ’s, Venus X and Boima, talk about their approach to music, but also about their run-ins with tastemaker Diplo, who has shaped popular music tastes globally.
Acoustic Guitar Break
We thought it would be nice to compile a Bonus Music Break centered on acoustic guitar
The Passing of Ernest Cole
We don’t know why the South African photographer decided to apply to become “coloured” under Apartheid’s racial classification laws.
Photographer Gregory Chris: Shooting Nneka, Meta and Just a Band
Photographer Gregory Chris shot African music stars Nneka, Meta (of Meta and the Cornerstones) and Just a Band in and around New York City. Here he talks about how he came to chose these artists and what he tried to convey. "I wanted to shoot the artists in the streets of the city, in the neighborhoods where they live, their favorite places, inside their homes, in a place they feel comfortable. Basically, I wanted to shoot them as they are."
Mahesh Shantaram’s Addis Ababa Diary
Images of Ethiopia by Indian photographer Mahesh Shantaram
In Praise of Jeffrey Gettleman’s Pulitzer
Pulitzer awarded Gettleman $10,000 for “his vivid reports, often at personal peril, on famine and conflict in East Africa.”
Film Review: “The Education of Auma Obama”
Republican party propaganda wants to paint President Barack Obama's Kenyan family as alien to America. In this propaganda, Barack Hussein Obama Snr and the old man's supposed "anti-colonial" and left-wing biases. In this propaganda Kenyans are reduced to anti-American zealots. Yet the strongest impression one gets from the Obama family in Branwen Okpako's beautiful, and substantive documentary of Obama's half sister, Auma Obama, is how familiar and American (i.e. the values Republicans proffer of hard work and guile) the Obamas are.