This one I once worked with…

This one I grew up with…

Also, this Swedish SVDarticle on the African music scene in Paris is a good read for those interested. It´s in Swedish, so I took the liberty of pasting a Google translated version of Lars Lovén´s article below:

African tones spread from Paris

Published: May 22, 2009, 10.14, Lars Lovén

Music. Amadou et Mariam, Tony Allen and Manu Dibango – all are African världsstjärnor, and they all live in Paris. SvD is traveling to the French capital and finds a thriving music scene.

33 Rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine. An anonymous but busy office near the Bastille.

-This is where all will. As the African artist, you need to succeed here, then you can be great in other places, “says Robert Brazz, program leader of the radio station Africa no.1.

With me think Robert Brazz not the office where we currently find ourselves. That would in itself not have been entirely misleading. The first time I am visiting makes Mali greatest singer, Oumou Beds, majestic entrance into the studio, a week later, the Congolese soukousstjärnan Koffi Olomide turn. With up to 30 one million listeners every day, and coverage in most African countries, the channel does not completely irrelevant from a marketing perspective. But he says Paris. To Africa no.1 has its headquarters here is neither surprising nor any chance, on the contrary. It is here, at least as much as in the Malian capital of Bamako, which you can find it malin’s musical miracle, this surreptitious introduces Tony Allen afrobeat through collaborations with artists like Sebastien Tellier, and here comes a steady stream of musicians from the French-speaking countries to come in Europe.

In Africa no.1 has also one of African music biggest stars, Manu Dibango, its own program where every Sunday he plays discs and talking memories from his long career.

-When I came to Paris, there were in general no African scene here, there was Latin music and jazz, but not African, “says Manu Dibango.

It was 60 and Dibango, who previously played jazz, came to be groundbreaking with its mix of Western and African music.

- But everything was so different then. We came here to study and when we studied clearly returning home Monday. I stayed true to go, but all my friends went home. Later, after independence, people began to emigrate here and when you emigrate takes with him his family and his children and left. Voilà, that’s how it started, it’s actually very simple.

Rue Joseph Gaillard. A few kilometers east, in a sparsely decorated apartment. Recent largest African stars, the blind couple Amadou et Mariam, of course, the living in Paris, specifically in the suburbs Montreuil, where many other immigrants from Mali have chosen to live.

-That there was so many compatriots and friends this was a major reason, but it focused on the better recording possibilities here and more to work with, “says Amadou Bagayoko, where he sits closely with Mariam on a sofa in black leather .

Career-wise the move was extremely successful. Dimanche à Bamako, which came in 2005, should have sold nearly one million copies.

-Paris has meant a lot for our music, especially because it is such a cosmopolitan city. Here is played such that you never hear in Mali, American music and music from other places in Africa, I heard gnawa for the first time here.

Are people in Paris to hear African music has been both grateful and difficult task, simply because the abundance is so large. Missed Monday Amadou et Mariam at Olympia, it is sufficient with a quick glance at any concert calendar (Lylo and Radio Nova Bon plan is recommended.) Saturday ensuing play Mulatu Astatke at the Nouveau Casino, Tuesday, Balaké Sissoko Café de la Danse, Friday Youssou N’dour at Salle Pleyel and Saturday Salif Keita at the same place. At the same time an Algerian festival at Theater 13 in Montparnasse. It is an authentic weeks, not even an exceptional one. Neither La Cigalle, Le couch du Monde or La Bellevilloise have any African band on the program, one of the exceptions.

11 Rue la Reynie. The upper floor of a cheap bar near Châtelet.

The young Apkass from the Congo has not taken up in earnest yet, although his so far only album, A Marchant vers la soleil, been well received by critics. He did not come to Paris to deal with the music but to go to school.

-It was not my choice to come here, but it has been crucial to my music. Paradoxically, I meet more people from different parts of Africa here than I would have done in Kinshasa. By living here, I have also been another way of looking at Africa, I see the light, as a unit, and it allows me to sing about things I never would have been able to see if I had lived remain in Congo, says Apkass.

2 Rue Versigny. A small restaurant in the temporary calm between lunch and dinner.

Emigration from Africa to Europe, often colonial and linguistic borders. Immigrants from former British colonies ports in the UK, French in France. So should the Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, who after two and a half decade in Paris still does not speak fluent French, actually live in London. It was also where he first came after leaving Nigeria in the early 80’s.

-But all the time while I was in London came the African band from Paris and played and I felt that it was there that I should have been, really, “says Tony Allen.

Moving to Paris, were initially due fuss UK immigration authorities, but came to be permanent.

-The musicians I wanted to work with here, African as well as French. Fixed now, many African artists lived here so long that they started to let the French, they play not African anymore. That is why I have started playing more and more with musicians from Nigeria.

Back in Africa no.1. It is Wednesday and Manu Dibango prepares weekly schedule. While a disc with something for me unknown Caribbean band spins he says that he had seen the same trend as Tony Allen.

-It is a western and an African approach to the music. In Africa, the music to be experienced physically, concerts begin only at midnight and goes on until four, five.

-In the western system begins to 20.30 and the music is in the first place to to listen to. Many African artists have adapted to it. Man dancing sometimes but it is not the main objective. My music? It is both. I grew up in Europe and in Africa so I have both systems within me, “said Manu Dibango, just before the red light starts to shine and he is turning against the microphone.

On arriving at the flat, and without knowing why, I found myself watching these videos over and over:

In all three videos graceful, smiling men and women. And yet they gave rise to some other association. Something beautiful and earie and silent and loud all at the same time. Something beyond classifaction, a residual memory from another time and life, someone else´s life… It was after coming across film-maker Ousmane Sembene´s “Black Girl” weeks after the show that I realised it has someting to do with the frame of reference…
.

…in the artistry of  master craftswoman and social activist Oumou Sy .

They´re performing at the African Festiva event on May 16-17 in Yokohama. I know Id go if I were anywhere near Japan.

Don´t get me started on the outfits and accessories…

“In the year 1840, a young girl named Amiran is kidnapped from her family by their neighbour, Dilawar Khan  and sold to Madam Khanum Jaan who owns a brothel where she trains courtesans. Amiran, renamed Umrao Jaan, learns to read, write, dance, sing, and charm wealthy men. She is no common prostitute, but a cultured woman trained to captivate men of wealth and taste.

A grown-up Umrao Jaan, , catches the eye of Nawab Sultan, and the two fall in love…

But the Nawab must marry to please his family, and Umrao’s heart is broken…

Later she meets a dashing bandit chieftain, Faiz Ali , who wooes and wins her. She flees with her dacoit, hoping to marry him and leave the world of the courtesan far behind. But her lover is killed by local police and she is left alone, with no choice but to return to her old life.

Soon, the British attack the city of Lucknow and the residents, including Umrao Jaan, are forced to flee. Umrao’s party of refugees stop in a small village near Lucknow. The residents ask the courtesan to sing and dance. Umrao, looking about her, realizes that this is her village, Faizabad, her family, the place from which she was kidnapped. She had been so young when kidnapped that she had forgotten it all, but now it all returns to her.

She sings the song, Yeh kya jagah hai doston? — What kind of place is this, friends? — a veiled reference to her feelings of dismay at being treated like a pariah entertainer by her very own people...

Afterwards, she meets her mother and younger brother, who had thought that she was dead. Her mother would be happy to welcome her back into the family, but her brother forbids it — she is tainted by her profession and must not return to embarrass them.

At the end of the film, Umrao returns to the now-deserted and looted brothel in Lucknow and finds she is left alone, with nothing but her profession and her poetry.

Ok. So I went a little overboard. I just can´t help myself sometimes…have to justify spending all that time online by sharing my finds with my dear lovelies

Pss if you´re interested in craft Nick Currie at the NYT blog is a good read

 Remember the post where I lamented the lack of fun in fashion ? Apparently, it´s still around….you just have to look a little harder. At the work of designers like Joao Pimenta, based in Sao Paolo:

Apparently the inspiration for this collection were football, baseball and figure-skating. More photos of a collection that” makes me think of a Belgian Beer garden on acid.” Lol.

we´re currently optimising the site and improving the overall design. There is so much interesting material to share with you, and we felt it necessary to make it more accessible and better organised. We will be posting new material from Monday onwards. Have a lovely week and welcome back soon.

xxx,

Choco and Fredrik