Category: ARTS & CULTURE

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS (IDN | SWAN) – The “musically vibrant and culturally rich city” of Havana, Cuba, will host the main concert of this year’s International Jazz Day, to be celebrated worldwide on April 30, according to the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

In a joint announcement, the agency’s director-general Irina Bokova and American jazz musician Herbie Hancock (a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador) said that the day will culminate with an All-Star Global Concert presented at the Gran Teatro de La Habana Alicia Alonso.

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS (IDN | SWAN) – Many people know of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, which include structures such as China’s Great Wall and Tanzania’s Stone Town of Zanzibar – “places on earth that are of outstanding universal value to humanity” – but fewer perhaps know of the UN agency’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

This is an international register of cultural practices that are important for communities, in both traditional and modern ways, and 171 UNESCO member states have ratified a convention to safeguard these types of customs.

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS (IDN | SWAN) – It is being billed as the largest exhibition devoted to Mexican art in at least half a century, and the impressive show now on at Paris’ Grand Palais does feel like a landmark event.

Titled Mexique 1900 – 1950: Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Orozco and the avant-garde, it features Mexico’s most famous artists, as well as those less known, and gives a historical perspective of the Latin American country through its art.

By A.D. McKenzie

LOS ANGELES | PARIS – When Cuban artist Belkis Ayón died in 1999, she was only 32 years old, but she left behind a body of work that belied her age, comprising huge and striking prints that had already received international critical acclaim.

Now, for the first time, a museum in the United States is hosting a solo retrospective of her work, with a view to making the public more aware of this singular artist who reflected Afro-Cuban traditions, the history of contemporary printmaking and the challenges that her country faced in the 1990s.

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS – While many literature festivals have become predictable in their line-up of bestselling authors, some innovative events have added a social-issues factor to their sessions, raising awareness about everything from climate change to the need for more diversity in publishing.

The Manchester Literature Festival (MLF), taking place October 7-23 in northern England and celebrating its 11th anniversary, is one such event. This regional gathering of authors and book-lovers has increased its focus on global concerns since 2006, and its programme this year includes topics such as immigration, mental health and the urban experience.

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS – He wrote fiery novels and essays that decried injustice and racism, and now nearly 30 years after his death, Paris is hosting a conference dedicated to the “expatriate” African-American writer James Baldwin.

The May 26-28 event, titled “A Language to Dwell In”: James Baldwin, Paris, and International Visions, has attracted some 230 scholars and artists, who will examine Baldwin’s legacy and global impact.

“The most important thing for us is that this is about James Baldwin – about his life, his work and his impact on readers around the world,” says Alice Mikal Craven, a professor at the American University of Paris (AUP) and co-organiser of the conference with her colleague William Dow.

NEW YORK (IDN | GIN) – To some, he was the King of Congolese rumba – a sound that layered luscious Cuban rumba with African instruments and beats.

Papa Wemba, or Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba, was rebellious, prolific, a style icon, at times notorious and always innovative.

“The world of popular music has lost a giant—a consummate musician, a shape-shifter who challenged norms and rewrote the rules of his nation’s music repeatedly over four decades, who spearheaded a fashion movement, and now has left us suddenly and far too young,” wrote ethnomusicologist Banning Eyre on the website Afropop.

NEW YORK (IDN | GIN) – Beyonce’s pick for lyrics setting off her latest production, LEMONADE, was Warsan Shire, a poet of Somali-British parentage.

A 27-year-old born in Kenya to Somali parents, who published her first pamphlet Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth in 2011, Shire went on to win the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize in 2013.

“I tried to change/Closed my mouth more/Tried to be softer, prettier – less awake” – uttered as Beyoncé spins under water, her eyes open as if in a trance – is adapted from “For Women Who Are Difficult To Love.”

NEW YORK (IDN | GIN) – The vast archives of two remarkable photographers from West Africa who passed this year will ensure that authentic images of African life will be their legacy to future generations. The images radically depart from the clichés of colonialism.

Malick Sidibé, whose pictures of Mali’s youth conveyed the high-spirited feeling of a country that has just gained its independence, passed away at 80 years of age. His black-and-white pictures influenced many of his contemporaries in Africa and beyond. Sidibé died of complications of diabetes, according to Associated Press reports.

Mali’s culture minister N’Diaye Ramatoulaye Diallo, expressed the nation’s grief. “It’s a great loss for Mali. He was part of our cultural heritage,” he told The Guardian. “The whole of Mali is in mourning.”

NEW YORK (IDN | GIN) – Traditional Somali culture has found a home away from home. Scattered to the four winds during years of war and unrest, traditional handmade items have found their way to a safe place in the Somali Museum of Minnesota, amidst one of the world’s largest Somali diaspora population.

It may be the only museum in the world dedicated to preserving Somali culture. “Immigrant populations in Minnesota must explore and craft the ways they will carry their culture forward as they build their community in the United States,” the museum organizers wrote on the Museum’s website.