6th International Conference of Caribbean Women's Writing: Comparative Critical Conversations

Comparative Critical Conversations

Friday 24 and Saturday 25 June 2011

Goldsmiths, University of London

‘Comparative Critical Conversations’ is an international 2-day conference that aims to reconfigure methodologies through comparative responses to the literature in a bid to further understand the deep and complex relations between texts that derive from a culture variously described as mimetic, hybrid, fragmented, syncretic and so on.Caribbean Women’s Literature as a body of work has become rooted in the region and across the diaspora. As a result, critics and teachers engaged in discovering, interpreting and disseminating the study of the texts have sought and found various discursive spaces from which to explore its distinctive aesthetics and particular complexities. The resulting transition from silence and absence to differentiated presence has opened a range of questions which this conference wishes to address. Centrally, we ask: how might the readings of Caribbean Women’s literature, alongside other ‘minority’ and ‘canonical’ texts within given national literatures produce perspectives that might re-invigorate as well as re-address contemporary critical processes?

Guest Speakers include Marlene Nourbese Philip

Conference Programme: Here

Blogging the Caine Prize

As from this Friday a group of bloggers are going to be reading, blogging and cross-posting the stories nominated for the Caine Prize for African Writing. 

The shortlisted stories are:

NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) ‘Hitting Budapest’

Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda) ‘Butterfly dreams’ 

Tim Keegan (South Africa) ‘What Molly Knew’

Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana) ‘In the spirit of McPhineas Lata’ 

David Medalie (South Africa) ‘The Mistress’s Dog’ 

If you're interested in participating, holla - whether its reading one story or all of them. Even if you don't have a blog you're welcome. Also, please checkout ZunguZungu's blog for more info.

Sunday Music

fisttap AfricasACountry

Michael Kiwanuka is a 23 year old singer from London of Ugandan origins and this is he has mastered the art of representing vintage sound in contemporary times. Longing for days gone by when when R n B was still rhythm n blues, Kiwanuka channels a 60s / 70s sound comparable to Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding etc. Likewise, the video manages recreate the past  - save for the hoodies and pay-phone - this could pass for an old school video. Kiwanuka has opened for Adele, but he's still very much an underground artist the whole world needs to hear (and Liam Bailey too). He's due to release his debut EP on the 7th of June.

Liberate Tate Shames BP

From Liberal Conspiracy: 

Yesterday at the Tate Britain [gallery in London], Liberate Tate (website) staged another of its headline-grabbing performative protests in the Duveens Hall of Tate Britain. A naked man lay down in the foetal position while several veiled figures covered him in an oil-like substance. The performance lasted for 87 minutes to commemorate the 87 days over which oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, beginning exactly one year ago today.

According to the Telegraph: BP spends over £1m per year sponsoring the Tate Britain, the British Museum, the Royal Opera House and the National Portrait Gallery.

*** 

If the London School of Economics could be shamed into cutting ties with the Gaddaffi regime, then the same should apply to the Tate and BP- not just for environmental reasons but for political reasons too. Unsurprisingly it has big stakes in Libya. Up to $900m (£545m) worth of initial investment deals was facilitated by Tony Blair when he renewed British relations with the Brotherly Leader of the Arab Jamaharihya. BP also promised to invest up to £20 billion over the next 20 years, in 2009, at a time when 200 Nigerians were on death row in Libya for immigration offences (and later released after diplomatic intervention by the Nigerian government) while Libyan citizens faced persecution or repression for various acts of civil disobedience.


Following the Brotherly Leader's threat to nationalize all the oil fields, its in Britain and BP's interests to ensure the Libyan revolutionaries topple Gaddaffi. But can the Tate, as a site that hosts creative expressions of cultural and political resistance in Britain and the world (like Ai WeiWei), really be associated with a corporation that operates on a profits before all else policy?


(As for the British Museum, well its a place that harbors stolen items so more than just cutting ties with BP, it needs to return the stolen goods, like the Rosetta Stone, on which the museum markets itself as a repository of 'world history'.)

copyright Immo Klink

see more pics here.

The King Had A Dream

 Things I've Done by NattyMusic

Like country music meets reggae meets indie, this is Natty. (a guy most Londoners on the underground scene will know bec of the song ColdTown) Born Alexander Alekio Modiano to a mother from Lesotho and an English dad in San Francisco. Aged one he moved to (north) London where he grew up around African and British musical and cultural influences. According to the bio on his website (nattymusic.com), he had the privilege of working with Mos Def, Queen and Razorlight - before releasing his own mixtape for sale. In 2007 he got signed by Atlantic records and performed at the iTunes Festival. Since then Natty's achieved chart success in the UK, Japan and Jamaica as well and has collaborated with the likes of Roots Manuva and Baaba Mal, among many others. If you're in London this summer look out for him at gigs and festivals, or follow him on twitter @nattymusic.


Anyway the song,The King Had a Dream above was produced a few days before Barack Obama's inauguration, but regardless of Obama's failings, the greater message of the song, a people's legacy of triumph against adversity, still hits home - at least with me.

Pieces Of Paper

Am feeling this song by Tinashé, right now...in an African so far from home, always gotta hustle to live kinda way.

Kilimanjaro Studio Sessions

The Noisettes deliver a brilliant cover Miriam Makeba's Kilimanjaro for Levi’s Shape Of What’s To Come campaign. The studio-session video above is of lead singer, Shingai Shoniwa covering the Miriam Makeba classic. I love that she gets the Zulu pronunciation and clicks right and she even worked in a li'l accent there, but still gives the song a modern twist. Props to the bad and backing vocals too! Very nice blend into Never Forget You and switch back to Kilimanjaro.


You can download this session from Goodies | Shape What's To Come

In DOPE Music We Trust

The Jody McIntyre Interview

 much thanks to latentexistence (Twitter) for putting this on youchoob
Had it been anyone else who's not anti-establishment this interview would have gone smoothly, but the reporter was grilling Jody and appeared to insinuate he'd been responsible in some small way for the police's actions, but I'm glad he stood his ground. Great interview!
#demo2010
#solidarity
#dayx3

Riot Another Day

Although I'm an international student close to the end of my education in the UK, today [last Thursday] I went to the march in solidarity with the home students and also to protest against the fees rise for international students, that is a less-spoken about but very real consequence of the government's yes vote tonight as this new fees structures follow. If international students are paying between £9000 - £15 000 tuition fees in cash per year, what will those of the future pay? And with university funding cuts looming, there will be serious cutbacks in grants to international researchers and fellows who contribute immensely to global academic development and research.

Anyway, I got to Trafalgar Square at about 3 p.m and there wasn't much happening there so I walked down through St James's Park to try and get to Parliament Square, but the police had formed a human barrier so there was no way I or any of the other students milling about, could get in there. One officer suggested going round the other end to see if it was open. A disparate group of about thirty of us went and happened to meet up with a larger group of protesters (maybe 300), so we marched with them to Westminster Abbey. Upon arrival the police were already shouting 'get back get back' while those on mounted horses looked on. As we got closer there were scuffles between officers and protesters, admittedly some protesters did incite the police by shoving them and shouting abuses, but the police response was disproportionate, heavy handed and aimed at everyone. There were several times I could have been struck, despite the fact that I wasn't standing on the frontlines or mouthing off. It was a tense scene but we continued chanting and dancing to music for about half an hour then decided to find another way into Parliament Square as the police weren't letting us through. 

This part of the march was kinda fun, it was like a cat n mouse game - every time the police appeared to be on the approach those at the back would blow a whistle and we ran through the streets shouting 'Whose Streets, Our Streets', Twitter was also quite good because people would post messages of where not to go or where to go. In the end we got kettled though but this came out of the blue because at that time people were chanting and some dancing to music. Like cowards, they snuck up from the back all suited up in riot gear and some on horses - all this to control an at the time, non-violent crowd. As if on cue, people fought back and threw punches that landed on the police's shields and protective headgear. Police on foot would repeatedly charge into the unarmed crowd with baton sticks in hand and force people to move backward. The more they did this is, the more irate protesters got and retaliated with some picking up the kettling fences and throwing them at the police which wasn't a wise move, because it only made the cops respond with even more violence. (Looking back at some of the pictures, I wonder if some people had been hired to stir-up trouble. It's just my feeling, but I think some people were there for the trouble not the protest. I have no proof at all, but I'm writing this here in case it can be proven, somebody post a comment below.)

I didn't want to caught up in anything so I moved to the outskirts of the crowd that was marshalled by mounted officers, but I got scared by one of the horses when I was backed up by a wall and in that moment there's absolutely nothing one can do, but pray that horse doesn't go beserk. The last thing on my mind was moving but a mounted police woman saw me by the wall and instead of telling her colleague to move, she kept shouting at me 'keep moving keep moving!' I didn't respond and I didn't move. She came towards me, still shouting at the top of her voice until I finally said, 'I can't move' and pointed to the horse in front of me. But she was insistent saying 'you can, you can, move!', this went on for about 3 minutes till the male officer on the blocking horse moved on. It was scary being caught up in that. If I were a guy and wasn't such a pain-phobe, I might have swung a punch at one of the footed officers as revenge because I was scared but also very pissed off after that. 

 Inside the kettle people were lighting flares, chanting and the mood was good some of the youngest protesters I met in the kettle were about fifteen and this was the second time that some of them had been kettled, I felt sorry for these kids especially when overhearing one officer ask another of his colleagues if there were any young kids and if they would be let out, his colleague simply shrugged his shoulders and went about his business. Perhaps students and parents should petition the government to bring in a no under 16 rule for kettling - if kids as young as 15 were held on Westminster Bridge until midnight, what does that say about a supposedly progressive nation's opinion of children and respect for human rights .The younger kids are normally not the violent ones - check the videos on The Guardian and BBC websites of all the protests if you don't believe me, I challenge you to post a link of a video where you see mobs of 12-15 year olds smashing up anything. There's no reason why they should be kettled. I asked one officer why we were being kettled and he said 'I don't know we just got orders' and he suggested I write to the IPCC to make a complaint. I will be writing to them and so should anyone who feels the same way. There was one officer who was pretty decent, he explained why we were being kettled and the law to we'd violated, he said 'I don't wanna be here here just as much as you and I don't wanna do this but I have to. I'd rather be at home with my kids.' He then asked about the vote and I didn't know what the result was and he said he'd hoped we'd won. I guess he knows his own kids' future is at stake too. I managed to get out of the kettle after seven, the police were letting out only two people at a time and me and a journalist from Amnesty International (judging by his press pass) got out because the officer said we looked like 'reasonable people'. I consider myself very fortunate to have been let out, but as I walked down to Victoria station, I felt guilty having left others there, especially after hearing that people were kettled up until after midnight.

As for Camilla and Charles, they got caught up in the moment, and this is the first time in a very, very long time that Brits have attacked the royal family - and for these students it wasn't because they were anti-royalist but because Charles and Camilla represented the establishment and birthright of privilege and they appeared at a moment when news of the lost vote (voted for by millionaires and inheritors of trust funds) and police brutality had upset enough people. While Charles and Camilla have the right not to be attacked and it wasn't wise move to poke Camilla in the ribs, I don't understand why that and Charlie Gilmour's picture swinging from a flag on the Cenotaph has dominated the news so much. There were dozens of injured protesters and officers, but their stories didn't make it to the headlines.

On Twitter Gilmour and Cenotaph have trended for two days, yet not once did Alfie Meadows make it on the trendlist - both tell very different but related stories of the protests. For me, Charlie Gilmour's image is a great picture, not because he's Pink Floyd's son, but it's a money shot, it's better than the Charles and Cam one aesthetically speaking so, kudos to the photographer. Beyond the aesthetic, swinging on the Union Jack against a national monument is the ultimate symbol of defiance and disregard for enforced collective remembrance of soldiers who died at war. Of course I'm sorry that people had to lose their lives on the battle fields, but the constant hero worship of Britain's wars is lost on me sometimes. The Cenotaph swinger and the paintballed Winston Churchill images symbolize a disaffected and frustrated youth who are the alter-face to the millions of young people who've been drafted to fight in wars not of their own making. Did the youth who lived through all of Britain's wars not stand up to their government in protest to the war and 'vandalise public property'?  History looks back on these young people as heroes of their time and today when a young person does something albeit mischieveous, but anti-establishment, the Prime Minister and all his co-signers and war romanticists are frothing at the mouth calling for Gilmour's head and the other 'feral anarchists.' For what e.x.a.c.t.l.y? Having the guts to say f- the system? Pissing on a statue and swinging from a flag? How can symbols, slabs of concrete, be more staunchly defended than the future of higher education and research? Should the police have come down so hard on Gilmour, the pisser and the paintballers that they'd end up like Alfie Meadows in need of brain surgery after being bludgeoned, is that what people want to see? Or perhaps it's so they wouldn't have to hear of student 'hooliganism' and they can congratulate The Met on a fine job while the story of Alfie Meadows gets pushed away further and further from the headlines. Camilla got a poke, Alfie got truncheoned, but the Camilla and Charles story dominates the news because they are famous people and Alfie is not. That is all.

Alfie Meadows

Winston Churchill may be Britain's hero, but he is not my hero. As an African, I see Churchill as belonging to the imperialist establishment and he was a supremacist who made sure Africans from Sudan to South Africa would submit to British colonial rule in one way or other, so seeing protesters throwing paint balls or pissing on statues doesn't enrage me, in the slightest. It's a little amusing actually. But one person's amusement is another's vandalism worthy of an arrest - even the death penalty for some of the looney right. But I think the bigger vandals are those known as the Lib Dems who pretended to defend education, but changed their minds as soon as they'd made it into Westminster. The physical mess might be cleaned up within a few days, but who will clean the mess being made of higher education by the coalition government? 

Despite being contained and the news the coalition government had won the vote, the education fight isn't over, as someone said to me in the kettle that night, this is just one battle in a war. While Home Secretary, Theresa May, child of Thatcher might think water canons are a justified response to the violence, I say bring it on. One water canon truck costs £750 000 or the full tuition fees 83 students funded through uni at £9000 a pop!  (Mehdi Hassan) Or the Educational Maintenance Allowance of 580 of Britain's poorest 16-18 year olds per year, or the annual salary of 32 police constables. In this time of 'austerity' and ideological cuts, if the Brits want to pay almost a million pounds for one water canon truck to spray revolting students, I say game on, let's do this! Buy ten if you like!

UPDATE 1: Theresa May's backtracked and has ruled out the use of water cannons because it wouldn't be a popular choice. I'm a little disappointed the government came to it's senses so quickly, a few more giggles at the implausibility of this plan would have been nice. But still it's a good move, it really isn't the 1960s again.

UPDATE 2:

Ki Price said: Just wanted to say thank you to the person talking about Charlie Gilmour swinging from the Cenotaph, I'm the photographer who took it Ki Price and I thought that was a nice compliment.

Thank you

#demo2010

#solidarity

#saveEMA

Pictures jacked from The Guardian (1,6), Indy Manchester (2) The Telegraph (3, 5) Sky News (4)

FotoCred: see above

Please note this post was written over several days.

Scenes From Another Day

Whitehall Mounted Charging

Guardian Video

Well done to all the students who turned out for this! If school children in South Africa were willing to fight for their futures there is no reason why people are outraged that on Wednesday, school children and university students all over the UK, left their classrooms to march for their own futures. The protests in the UK in 2010 are nothing compared to what Black students in South Africa faced in 1976, there were no live rounds being fired, no country exile orders to be issued, but as the videos show, there were pigs on horseback blindly charging through the crowds one knocking over a pregnant woman, another grabbing  a protester's purse and many more pigs on horseback leaving hoof prints on the bodies of students. Personally have no problem with 13 years olds being involved in protest, what I do have a problem with is the disproportionate use of force by the police in response to the protests and that is what people should be talking about, not that children were 'coerced' into marching for their education. 
Up top is the footage that police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson wants to deny stating there was 'no record' of police charging and defended the police's actions saying:"I think our officiers did an extraordinarily good job yesterday... Our job is to facilitate peaceful protests But we have to get the message out that when it does beyond the peaceful that it is criminal. It is quite clear that criminal acts took place." 
Note that 'facilitate peaceful protests' actually means kettle (containment of groups of people using iron barriers) young people for nine and a half hours in the freezing cold without food or water. Also note that the police policy of kettling is meant to be under review after the G20 protests of April 2009 in which Ian Tomlinson was killed by the police.
It couldn't have been more ironic, yet fitting that this march took place the day after Deputy PM, Nick Clegg gave the Hugo Young Lecture in which he said:
"Hugo was a passionate believer that open politics, a politics based on faith in people, rather than institutions, was the generator of real social progress. I agree, and I think that among the many extraordinary changes of 2010, one of the most important will prove to be a watershed in the development of progressive politics."
Progressive politics to Mr Clegg means being deceitful, like in April this year when he signed a pledge not to raise student fees yet in his heart he knew, he and the Lib Dems had long abandoned that promise and it had become a campaign strategy to garner the student vote. Nothing more.
 Thus it comes as no surprise that those who voted for Clegg, turned out in their thousands on Wednesday to express their discontent, burning effigies of the man and chanting against Clegg, Osbourne and Cameron's ideas of cuts for a Fairer Britain. 
The truth is, the UK has a government bent on creating an unFairer Britain. In my view, ConDem have a skewed approach to fairness and a twisted sense of priorities: they are making cuts to education, but they can find £2 million to fund a happiness index, they can find £4.2 million per year to send young people to the killing fields of Afghanistan, they will find £20 billion+ to keep Trident, but they can cut university funding, free school meals and educational allowances, they can do away with the Foods Standards Agency, but they invite Pepsi and McDonalds to sit on the health policy panel - the same companies that sell profit from an unhealthy nation are now the architects of healthy eating. ??? None of these things make sense and the students and trade unions can at least be commended for having the moral and political courage to show people will not sit back any longer. 

Welcome to the Winter of Discontent people of Britain, it's about to get heated up. 
#demo2010

Lowkey: The Most Relevant Grime/Hip Hop Artist in the UK Today

‎"The real enemy is not the man to your front your facing with a rifle, it's the man directly above you telling you to pull the trigger" former British soldier Joe Glenton.

Chipmunk Flying High

I dug this track when I first heard it a few weeks back, but after seeing the video, scraaaatch! Whoever produced this, must have been drunk having just come out of a heavy seance with the spirit of Joseph Conrad. Post-World Cup South Africa fever someone thought it wise to cast Chipmunk on top of Lion's Head, Cape Town and have what looks like Zulu dancers all around him whilst dropping phrases in Swahili. 

I really hope you have a map of Africa while reading this: Zulu - KwaZulu Natal on the eastern side of South Africa, Swahili - Central and East Africa, Lion's Head - in the most southern city in Africa. Some people, Africans included, would just pass this over and wonder what's upsetting me: well for a start, the continued misrepresentation of Africa as a monolithic space where cultures, languages and peoples are all melded into one. This image is constantly being produced and being profited because Africa is still packaged and consumed in the Heart of Darkness format no matter how many Chinua Achebes, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies and Binyavanga Wainanas 'write back' and deconstruct the myth, the parasitic profiteers just won't stop.

 Also it's one thing to show the traditional and natural side of Africa in a hip hop video, but it's quite another to continue to produce images of Africa as a place of eternal natural exoticism that holds Whiteness as the most valued. What's that about?

Chipmunk is still okay with me, but this video just sucks. I dump it in the same pile as Shakira and Akon ft Keri Hilson's nonsense during the World Cup Africa Fever.

BTW when it cuts to the dark haired girl, does he say dykie or am I mishearing?
...On the grime scene, I bet Lowkey's laughing at 'the industry's very own Amy Winehouse.'

Chico and Rita

Chico and Rita is the latest animated film from Spanish director Fernando Trueba about a young Cuban couple who meet in Havana in 1948. Chico’s a talented jazz pianist and song writer, Rita’s a sultry singer. They both dream of making it big and the film traces their intense, sexy but turbulent love affair from Havana to New York to Las Vegas.

With an original soundtrack by legendary Cuban pianist, bandleader and composer Bebo Valdés, Chico & Rita captures a definitive moment in the evolution of jazz music. The film features music by jazz legends Thelonious Monk, Cole Porter,Dizzy Gillespie and Freddy Cole (brother of Nat King Cole).

Chico and Rita is out on 19 November and is showing all over London. Check www.chicoandrita.co.uk for more info.

info from Wikipedia and The Telegraph

3 rounds. 12 minutes.

Audley Harrison 32 punches thrown, 1 punch landed. Just. One. The Hayemaker TKO.

The Cool Ruler

Gregory Isaacs 

Son of Judah

Born 15 July 1959, passed 26 October 2010 and to be laid to rest 20 November 2010.

On the 10th of November was a tribute to Gregory Isaacs at a church in Harrow Weald, London after which his body was flown back home to Kingston, Jamaica. He is to be given a state funeral and deservedly so, for his contribution to reggae music and as a lifelong ambassador of Jamaica. In my country, state funerals are the privilege of political figures who fought on the side of the ruling party, cultural contribution matters nought. Still, fare thee well Cool Ruler thank you  for the music, skank sessions downtown and late nights ekasi. 

Night Nurse was legendary.

(UK massive check KissFM for a nice David Rodigan tribute from a few weeks ago, hope it's still there.)

Scenes From Yesterday

Fotos

1. Start of the March - Josh Towers

2. Burnin' Dave - Ahmed Peerbux

3. Bonfire at Millbank - Josh Towers

4. Grandad in Protest - Richard Jones

Background from The Graun: An estimated 52,000 people, according to the National Union of Students [NUS], marched through central London to display their anger over government plans to increase tuition fees while cutting state funding for university teaching.

A wing of the protest turned violent as around 200 people stormed 30 Millbank, the central London building that is home to Tory HQ, where police wielding batons clashed with a crowd hurling placard sticks, eggs and some bottles. Demonstrators shattered windows and waved anarchist flags from the roof of the building, while masked activists traded punches with police to chants of "Tory scum".

Extracts from an opinion piece by Arthur Baker:
As much as the Tory press (and for that matter Aaron Porter [NUS President], the BBC, and The Guardian) are keen to give the impression that a tiny minority of nutters who “probably weren’t even students” were ruining the march for everyone else, this is simply not true. There were thousands of students in front of the Millbank Building, cheering as windows were smashed, adding their placards to the bonfire.
Perhaps the press simply do not want to believe that any significant proportion of students are angry enough to engage in more than a bit of banner-waving, but unfortunately this is no longer the case. The only moment when the crowd in the square was unhappy with the actions of protesters was when they loudly booed and jeered as a fire extinguisher was dropped (quite possibly accidentally) from the roof, and the crowd chanted “stop throwing shit”
.....As much as the press go on about ‘violence‘, the violence was very minimal. Like every protest I’ve ever been to, thousands of people pushing one way, police trying to stop them and inevitably a few people in the middle getting hurt. I saw people lobbing bits of placards and one or two throwing punches at police, and I saw police clobbering innocent teenagers with batons.
I talked to some students who told me that after smashing into another building they were trapped in by police and – despite not fighting back – battered with battons.
All of them should face justice, but for the record, putting a placard or an effigy of David Cameron on a bonfire is not violence, writing on walls is not violence, smashing windows is not violence and dancing on roves is not violence. Even throwing bits of cardboard placard at police clad in bullet proof jackets and helmets, armed with sheilds and battons hardly seems “thugish”.
The ‘occupation’ may not be justifiable, that’s a matter of opinion, but it should have been expected, and circumvented: 20 police lining that part of the road would have been enough to dissuade protesters.
Finally the question of whether the incident at Milbank furthered our cause or damaged it. One thing missing from the news coverage was footage of the building being stormed by protesters in the first place, why? Surely protesters forcing the doors and surging in would make incredible footage? The answer is that the press simply weren’t there. In fact, the cameras only arrived half an hour after the protesters. On a march of 50,000, until the vandalism started, the only cameras I saw were from LSTV (Leeds student television).
In October thousands of students and trade unionists marched peacefully on downing street, and they did not make the news. Peaceful protests make boring news, without causing a bit of trouble we wouldn’t have been as big news, never mind having almost uninterrupted coverage on every TV news channel and dominating every front page.
What’s more, what cause did protesters ‘damage?’ protesters don’t want public sympathy, they want to create a feeling of unrest, and show that the Coalition are unpopular with the eventual aim of taking their votes, and this protest can only have furthered this aim.
Of course Aaron Porter and any elected representative has to denounce any vandalism, but yesterday students sent a clear message that they are furious with the government, that you can’t deprive people of an education or saddle them with life-long debts without some reprocussions, and people are listening. Who cares if it made them unpopular?


full article: http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/11/11/the-occupation-of-milbank-what-the-press-missed/

I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young.

 I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old.

With Love, Gideon Osborne xxx

plagiarised from Neill Kinnock

pic by Chris Ridell (copyright) jacked from The Guardian

Up in Flames

Been meaning to post my fav'rit choon of the minute, Up in Flames by Labrinth feat. Tinchy Stryder and Devlin. Please subscribe to Labrinth's YouChoob channel for a free download, but UK massive please be sure to buy the single when it comes out on the 24th of October, along with Devlin's Runaway (17 Oct) and Kano's Upside - artists don't make sick music for free all the time.

In DOPE Music We Trust!

Notting Hill Carnival

The annual Notting Hill Carnival takes place this Sunday and Monday in West London. Carnival was originally staged in 1959 as a response to the state of race relations in Britain at that time. A decade earlier immigrants from the Caribbean began to arrive in large numbers to fill post-war labour shortages, but this caused resentment amongst some white Britons. Throughout the 1950s white racists and West Indian immigrants clashed, with riots taking place in Notting Hill for four days and nights during the August Bank Holiday weekend in 1958.

In response, Claudia Jones, a Trindad-born, New York-raised black activist and political campaigner, decided to organise a festival through which white and black Britons could understand each other’s cultures. Originally called Mardi Gras and staged in St Pancras Town Hall, the event moved to the streets of Notting Hill in 1964.

Carnival showcases the music and performance culture of the Caribbean, and in particular that of Trinidad & Tobago. Local African-Caribbean groups form carnival bands and play mas (or masquerade) through the streets of Notting Hill, accompanied by music...Claudia Jones died in 1964 but her work in creating greater understanding between native and immigrant cultures in Britain was a resounding success. Carnival is now one of the biggest events held in Europe, attracting more than a million visitors each year.

Words from Postal Heritage

'A people's art is the genesis of their freedom.'

Claudia Jones

Bruxelles v Southall

Bruxelles, Pour Mes Gens


Souf'all, Fi DeMassive!

Migrants We Might Be, But We Belong Here.
(albeit temporarily for some of us)

                                                                                                                     fisttap AfricasACountry