News & Events, February '08

New Books

Distinctive Nigerian voices with a "murderous approach to the English language" in Burma Boy by Biyi Bandele just out from Farafina.

Ed Pavlic shapes "the ineffable (some call it Duende, some call it Soul)" into a language haunting the borders of the sayable and unsayable, the sung and unsung in Winners Have Yet to Be Announced: A Song for Donny Hathaway now out. Check out an excerpt in Chimurenga 11: Conversations With Poets Who Refuse To Speak (july '07).

Poetry, politics and play in Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football by Grant Farred. Read Farred's "Zinedine Zidane and the Event of the Secret" in Chimurenga Vol.10: Futbol, Politricks & Ostentatious Cripples (december '06). Also check: Africa Past & Present podcasts on football, cinema, and literature.

Wéréwéré Liking's 2005 Noma-winning The Amputated Memory: A Song-novel (La mémoire amputée) out in translation by Marjolijn de Jager with an afterword by Michelle Mielly. Liking's defiant lyrical poetics also appear in new anthology The Other Half of History featuring translated Francophone African women's poetry by 29 writers.

Fanon faction: John Edgar Wideman's first novel in a decade weaves fiction and biography to evoke the life and idea of the seminal essayist, psychoanalyst, and revolutionary.

Literary biography Art & Revolution charts the life of apartheid-era artist and activist Thami Mnyele.

Rustum Kozain scores the 2007 Olive Schreiner Prize for his collection of poems, This Carting Life.

Spoken Words

Kgafela oa Magogodi and Samatha 7 in collab with Dutch avant-garde jazz crew Mâäk's Spirit in Brussel throughout Feb. Details here.

Chris Abani and Elias Khoury read from their new books, Hands Washing Water and Yalo, respectively at 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave., New York on Feb 4. More Abani at the TED Conference Monterey, Feb 27 - Mar 1.

Watch journalist and poet Sandile Dikeni read "Love poem for my country" and "Manuella" from his recently published collection Planting Water on Youtube.

Things Fall Apart

Abani, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Edwidge Danticat, Suheir Hammad, Ha Jin, Colum McCann and Toni Morrison join Chinua Achebe to reflect on 50 years of Things Fall(ing) Apart, at PEN American Center, Stateside on Feb 26.

And Things Fall Apart at fifty in Nigeria this April: call for abstracts/proposals that revisit Achebe's novel and assess its significance to the world of letters. Email: waleokediran@yahoo.co.uk.

Then Kwani? is running a series of articles and opinion pieces based on the reactions of Kenyan writers to the post election crisis. Join the conversation.

Also, Mukoma Wa Ngugi on Kenya's democracy on trial and Petina Gappah on how "Kenya exploded on my heart" in Chimurenga Online.

"Choke. Cripple. Virus. Infested. Eliminate. Stamp Out... Perhaps they've been listening to the grasshoppers." Arundhati Roy in Istanbul one year after the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams

No sex, drugs or politricks at this year's Cairo Book Fair: Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri's autobiographical For Bread Alone, Love in Saudi Arabia by young novelist Ibrahim Badi, Women of Sand and Myrrh by Lebanon's Hanan al-Shaykh and Elias Khoury's As If She Were Sleeping were all seized by Egyptian authorities on route to the fair. More here.

Greg Tate also reboots the The Black-Rock Revolution: Because you need to know, "how stupendously, consistently genius MeShell Ndegeocello's The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams is..."

James Ngcobo does Baldwin at the Market Theatre in Joburg.

Festivals, Conferences & Calls

Salif Keita, Abdoulaye Diaba, Cheick Tidiane Seck , Espoirs de Coronthie and Mexico's Tribu on the bill at this year's Festival on the Niger.

This month GAC (Global Afrikan Congress) in South Africa host an Afrikan History Month seminar (Feb 9), a seminar in honour of Ntate K. Koka (Feb 23) and Afrika Liberation Day celebration (tbc). Watch this space.

Senghor's World Festival of Negro Art instead of the Dakar Biennale? Dak'Art 2008 puts out a call for submissions from artists, filmmakers and designers amid rumours of clashes between government officials and the show's curators.

Africamania : sixty films tracing the history of African cinema since decolonization featuring Sembene Ousmane, Désiré Ecaré, Djibril Diop Mambety, Souleymane Cisse, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Gaston Kabore and more in Paris throughout Feb.

Tuff Gong lives in Joburg on Feb 9: celebrate Marley's b-day at the Hit Me With Music bash at Carfax with Obita, Tidal Waves, 340ml, KenZhero and more. Or get to the Bob Marley Poetry Party @ Battery Centre, Soweto for open mike and performances by: A'Salma aka The Jamaican Poet, Ancients, Liberty, Malloney, Muziwakhe, Nandi aka VenusFly, Ras Tiro, Sistah Nonceba, Siza, Sello and Rebirth. Call +21 731662930 for more.

5th Sauti za Busara music festival at Stone Town, Zanzibar, Feb 7-10 featuring: Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba, Seckou Keita Quartet , Bantu & Afrobeat Academy, Bring the Noise, Afrodynamix, DJ Yusuf and more.

Paradoxes Of The Postcolonial Public Sphere: South African Democracy At The Crossroads just took place at Wits University, Joburg. Watch this space for podcasts of papers by Achille Mbembe, Xolela Mangcu, Joyce Nyairo, Rian Malan, Bongani Madondo, Aryan Kaganof, Lebo Mashile, Graeme Reid, Zackie Achmat and more.

Call for papers examining issues of secret as "the twilight zone" between memory loss/oblivion; secrecy & the ethics of responsibility; the strategies of political secrecy; secret & betrayal and cultural manifestations of secrecy for the Secrets Conference in Tunisia in April. Email mesc.conference@yahoo.com for details.

Saxophinist/flutist Ze Maria and his band Pazedi blend jazz influence with the traditional sounds of Mozambique at the Fong Kong Bantu Sound System (FKBSS) bash at Zula Sound Bar, Cape Town on February 9.