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'Fela!' - Afrobeat’s King, Recrowned
The big-talking title character of “Fela!,” the pulse-racing new show about the Nigerian musician and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, is not someone you rely on for literal truth. For this self-defined “black president” of his own republic of rebellion, to speak is to magnify, to exaggerate, to mythologize.
But the grandiose claims that Fela, played with inexhaustible swagger by the remarkable Sahr Ngaujah, makes for his music wind up feeling dead accurate. In the percussion section in his band, he says early in the show, you feel “the pulse of the world, the impulse of life.” And darned if 10 minutes into this production, which opened Thursday night at 37 Arts, you don’t find yourself believing this as gospel truth. The big-talking title character of “Fela!,” the pulse-racing new show about the Nigerian musician and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, is... more -
Sky Nelson - Yu-Ku-Ntsaing
"Yu-Ku-Ntasing" explains a situation where in 1992, during the birth of multipartism in Cameroon, so many people were killed and in Ndu, where Sky Nelson hails and lives, may people were beaten and killed, military men beat up women severely and many women raped, and beer bottles were inserted into their vaginas. This was a very deplorable situation and has remained a scar on the minds of the people of Ndu. It is very difficult for the Party in power to win elections in this village because the act of killing was perpetrated by the ruling elites of the time and to kill a human being in the Ndu culture is something that is not pardonable.
Tags: Cameroon Ndu Africa multipartism African music violence against women abuse rape riot Yaounde hip-hop "Yu-Ku-Ntasing" explains a situation where in 1992, during the birth of multipartism in Cameroon, so many people were killed... more
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