Beninese food
africa
🎷🎶 « La fabrique de la sono mondiale. Des musiques africaines face à l’impérialisme culturel »
Le réseau thématique 14 « Sociologie de l’art et de la culture » organise prochainement un temps d’échanges avec Arielle Nganso, autour de son ouvrage :
Au cours des années 1970, la rumba, le soukous et le makossa forment une « sono mondiale » dont la circulation entre les continents est lourde d’enjeux politiques. Dans un contexte postcolonial fortement marqué par la persistance d’un impérialisme culturel français, leur renommée dépasse les frontières de l’Afrique centrale pour s’exporter en Europe et en Amérique, grâce à la popularité d’artistes comme Manu Dibango.
Cet ouvrage raconte la singulière histoire de ces musiques urbaines. De l’effervescence culturelle post-Mai 68 à la diffusion du jazz afro-américain, en passant par la promotion intéressée par l’État français d’une world music francophone, Arielle Nganso met en lumière les facteurs qui ont concouru à leur large diffusion et les logiques impériales qui l’ont structurée.
Elle souligne les grandes difficultés rencontrées par ces musiciens pour produire et diffuser leur art en France : se heurtant notamment à une conception exotisante de leur musique, ces derniers ont été contraints de la formater aux attentes des oreilles occidentales. Enfin, elle réinvestit la question de la restitution des œuvres d’art africaines, en y intégrant le champ musical.
🗓️ Mardi 16 décembre 2025, de 14h à 16h
📍 CNRS Site Pouchet, 59-61 rue Pouchet, Paris 17e - Salle 124
Éditions Amsterdam : https://www.editionsamsterdam.fr/la-fabrique-de-la-sono-mondiale/
RT14 : https://rt14.hypotheses.org/2358
@cnrs @cnrsshs @shs @mate_shs_cnrs @sociology
#AFS #sociology #africa #culture #music #rumba #soukous #makossa #imperialism #worldmusic
Thando Hopa, model from Johannesburg
People living with albinism still face tremendous stigmatization, persecution and even murder in many African countries, including South Africa, due to traditional beliefs.
From Tinariwen to al Qaeda
Whiskey-Drinking Rocker Transforms Into West Africa’s Most Dangerous al Qaeda Leader
"A militant leader from Mali championed a rock band and helped write a hit song before leading an Islamist army that killed tens of thousands."
WSJ - archived: https://archive.ph/aObrx
If you already watched "Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat", or want to, this is a #MustRead interview with Johan Gimonprez
Making films against amnesia
"The director of the Oscar-nominated film 'Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat' reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently."
https://africasacountry.com/2025/04/making-films-against-amnesia
When you're on the road, you can see so many babies like this, when mama travels via zemidjan (Zem aka taxi-moto)...
Photo: Riozda Pictures
A few tributes to Zems in songs: https://amf.didiermary.fr/taxi-moto-zemidjan-kekenon/
Senufo horse & rider
The name Senufo covers a cultural and linguistic area across 3 countries: Mali, Burkina Faso and mainly Cote d’Ivoire.
Edited 315d ago
A powerful storytelling tradition
The last great Fang bard, Eyí Moan Ndong fused myth, music, and sci-fi to create epic performances that defy Western categories—and demand global recognition.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/04/a-powerful-storytelling-tradition
Edited 308d ago
In a "previous" life, 15 years ago, I worked with African musicians... and produced a few albums.
Here's a video of Djeli Moussa Diawara rehearsing Yasimika in 2010. This is a song he first recorded in 1982 for his famous eponym album and that was revisited and rerecorded at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnhXjmsLabU&list=PLEC15F65D21EEBAB2&index=2
There are more videos in this playlist and on DMD's YouTube channel.
Benin coup attempt...
I live in Benin, in the suburbs far from Cotonou. All the churches around the house seem active as usual on Sundays, so I'd say no threatening activity is happening or visible right now... at least far from the political center.
Will tell you more if anything happens...
The trouble with “showing the real Africa”
iShowSpeed’s Africa tour is widely celebrated as respectful and refreshing, yet it operates within a long tradition of racialized spectacle that turns Africa into content and Blackness into performance.
https://africasacountry.com/2026/02/the-trouble-with-showing-the-real-africa
Tracing Africa’s Photographic History in Books
The curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo speaks about Africa’s political transformations and the role of publishing in shaping artistic knowledge.
https://aperture.org/editorial/tracing-africas-photographic-history-in-books/
#AfricanNews accounts to follow:
➡️ @thecontinent - Pan-African online newspaper run by non-profit based in South Africa
➡️ @TUKOcoke - Kenyan online news site
➡️ @ZekuZelalem - Award-winning investigative reporter covering Ethiopia and Horn of Africa
➡️ @beverly_ochieng - Security & media analyst focused on Africa
➡️ @teachersupdates - Education news in Kenya
➡️ @index - Business news in Mozambique
Without USAID funding to help buy food for refugees, the World Food Program rushed to prioritize families based on need, determining that only half the population would get food.
Refugees learned which half they were in from a number stamped on the back of their ration card.
https://www.propublica.org/article/kenya-trump-usaid-world-food-program-starvation-children-deaths?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post
#News #USAID #Hunger #USPolitics #Trump #MarcoRubio #Africa #Kenya
UN COUPLE PANAFRICAIN
Miriam Makeba et Stokely Carmichael en Guinée
Elara Bertho
"En 1968, Miriam Makeba et Stokely Carmichael quittent les États-Unis pour s’installer à Conakry, capitale de la Guinée socialiste. Réfugiés politiques en exil, la chanteuse sud-africaine mondialement connue et le militant révolutionnaire noir décident de se mettre au service du régime de Sékou Touré et de son ambitieux programme de décolonisation des esprits."
Edited 299d ago
From the magazine L’Illustrazione Italiana, 1936 (or 39).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Illustrazione_Italiana
What I Saw at a Maternity Ward in Kenya After the U.S. Cut Off Food and Foreign Aid
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Photographs tell a story of two mothers determined to help their babies gain enough weight to leave the hospital — only to face little to no food again.
https://www.propublica.org/article/kakuma-kenya-matenity-ward-foreign-aid-cuts?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post
#News #Photography #Journalism #Kenya #Africa #Trump #MarcoRubio #Hunger
When food becomes poison
In Nigeria, the drive to cut corners has turned food and drink into vectors of illness, sacrificing health and heritage at the altar of profit.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/09/when-food-becomes-poison
"[...] Fruits are forced to ripen with calcium carbide, a toxic substance that has no place near human consumption. Cooking oils are recycled endlessly, breaking down into harmful compounds long before they reach the plate."
Yesterday for Xmas Eve, water access was severely limited then cut. Came back later.
Today it's electricity's turn since about 6pm.
No comment but 
Soweto youth honour their heritage with music https://groundup.org.za/article/soweto-youth-honour-their-heritage-with-music-concert/
IR-Sankara Future Dub Resurgence
https://amf.didiermary.fr/ir-sankara-future-dub-resurgence/
Based in Uganda, East Africa, the musicians IR::Sankara Future Dub Resurgence like to describe their music as “Future Dub.”
They take elements of noise, non-metric riddims, experimental electronics, dub reggae and dub poetry, and djembe and nyabinghi drumming together to create the unexpected. [...]
Edited 141d ago
Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera.
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Behind closed doors in Washington, top advisers made a series of decisions that had devastating repercussions for the poorest country on earth. We went to South Sudan and found people who died as a result.
https://www.propublica.org/article/usaid-cholera-deaths-trump-humanitarian-aid-cuts-south-sudan?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post
#News #Trump #MarcoRubio #Africa #PublicHealth #USAID #SouthSudan
Special shoutout to journalist Zecharias Zelalem doing brilliant investigative work on a part of the world few are covering. This thread is amazing:
➡️ https://dair-community.social/@ZekuZelalem/115290520418428596 (Part 1)
➡️ https://dair-community.social/@ZekuZelalem/115290922706015620 (Part 2)
➡️ https://dair-community.social/@ZekuZelalem/115291272349035871 (Part 3)
You can follow Zelalem at:
➡️ @ZekuZelalem
You can follow the newspaper he was reporting for:
He also reports for Al Jazeera:
➡️ @AlJazeera
#Journalism #InvestigativeJournalism #Africa #Ethiopia #HornOfAfrica #Djibouti
Edited 140d ago
