Tag Archives: African diaspora

Interview

Art, activism and the de-centering of self: An interview with Kardinal Bloo

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Hailing from Texas, US, Kardinal Bloo is a young, versatile artist who brings a lot of colour to the current world of hip-hop, especially the colour blue. The album shines with a love for life as well as an understanding of the current state of affairs. As Bloo so eloquently puts it, his new album, Birds Rap Too, is “an eclectic collection of black expression that merges revolutionary pragmatism, scintillating lyricism, and earnest joie de vivre to create what I call class-conscious rap nonsense from a bird’s eye view.”

This hip-hop album stays interesting throughout, and it’s not only because it’s heavily, and uniquely, centered on birds. In the style of some of the greats out there, like Kendrick and Childish Gambino, Bloo is not afraid to up switch the flow in his songs, keeping the listener on his toes at all times. Add some dope beats and exhilarating lyricism and you’ve got an extremely vibrant rap album whose existence is greatly magnified by Bloo’s live shows. Check out his Instagram for video proof, or better yet, catch him live in Los Angeles on November 9th at Den Music Fest.

HK: At times, your voice reminds me of Andre 3000, is that just me or has someone told you that before?

KB: Hahaha yea I’ve been told that before. I’ve been compared to a lot of people, but that’s my favorite one.

HK: Why that name, Kardinal Bloo? Where does that come from?

KB:  I love blue, and I love birds!  During quarantine in 2020, I started bird watching a lot. The first bird that I could recognize by call alone was the Northern Cardinal, so they have a special place in my heart. Blue’s one of my favorite colors. It can represent so many different things. Cold, tranquility, sadness, the ocean, the sky, etc. I was tossing around these sentiments to my girlfriend & she came up with Kardinal Bloo. I was like, that’s dope as fuck!

HK: You mention lesser of two evils in the last song of your new album. This problem, the tradition of only two options, is common in many parts of the world, due to long-standing, systematic corruption. (It sure exists here in México, where I am, but not as much in my native Iceland). Do you think this will ever change in your native US? Do you see people around you who try to change that narrative, who vote outside the two-party system?

KB: I don’t think it will change in the US, so long as the US is the US, if you catch my drift. All empires collapse and that’s really the horse I’m bettin’ my chips on. Building something new in the aftermath. I think the illusion of democracy is a cornerstone of the US. Once you realize that the two major parties are two wings on the same bird, everything starts to make more sense. They work in tandem and need each other. Other party options that could  possibly be better can’t actually exist in earnest, because a bird can’t have 3 wings. And the bird is a bad, bad bird that can’t be rehabilitated hahahaha. It’s a silly metaphor, but pretty apt methinks. The idea that electoral politics, in a country that was designed to keep us down from its inception, will somehow save us, is the narrative I think needs to be changed. I see people around that have the capacity to imagine a world outside the false binary of electoral politics. That are focused on creating new infrastructures centered around community, taking care of the people in our direct vicinity, and building outwards in solidarity with others that share our aims. Those are the people I try to surround myself with. I ain’t tryna wait around til we “lesser of two evils” ourselves into extinction.

HK: You mention freedom for Haiti, Palestine, Sudan, Congo and all your „homies“ around the world who are oppressed. Hip-hop has always had its activist, anti-authority side, although historically perhaps more focused on the systematic oppression black people have had to endure in the US. Now that rap has gone more global, do you see many of your peers looking outside the US through their rap and their music? What does it mean to you to see the state of global hip-hop community?

KB: Hiiiiip Hoooooop!!!! I love that this thing which has given me life is also beloved on a world stage!!! The duo that I started out rapping with was called Global Octopus, and one of my favorite songs we ever made is called Neo Griot Anthem, meant to be a song for the francophone African diaspora, but also for Black people, period. The people I associate with, I think have always had a sort of worldly orientation towards, not completely US-centric. All struggles for freedom against fascism, white supremacy, imperialism, etc. are interconnected. I think a music and culture born from the struggle of an oppressed people was bound to catch on globally. The coolest & most creative stuff generally comes from oppressed people.  ‘Cause we be lackin’ shit, and necessity leads to innovation. And Hip-Hop’s gotta be the coolest thing on the planet. How could you not like it? Any marginalized person (this includes kids in general) in the world could find something within the vast domain of Hip-Hop that resonates with them. I love seeing people embrace Hip-Hop in the proper context. The commercialized global stuff that doesn’t respect Hip-Hop as a culture though, not so much. *Glares at K-Pop* It’s inevitable under capitalism, but annoying nonetheless. I will say though, that I’m not plugged into cool rap shit happening outside of the US. But I’d like to be! I’d like to visit different countries and see the scenes firsthand. Eventually, definitely.

HK: Some people draw a line between music and activism and say the two should be separated. What is your take on that and how and if the two should mix?

KB: The two are separated, and they aren’t. EMBRACE THE CONTRADICTION!!! Ultimately, the context is everything. There’s an ecosystem of change that requires many different roles to create a better world. Planning, building, teaching, healing, telling stories, making art, etc. Everybody’s got to play their part(s). ‘Cause there can be overlap. Music can be activism when it’s made with that intention and coupled with action on the part of the artist. I think the part people get twisted up is that a lot of artists just make music. That’s it. Then people make the mistake of thinking, “That artist is an activist!” because their music speaks on social issues. Making a song that says “the system’s fucked up!!” is not inherently activism, you feel me. I think some artists make that mistake too. Artists being activists can be a slippery slope ‘cause a lot of artists are driven by ego, which has no place in activism. People often look to artists to tell them what to think and how to be, so an activist artist can turn into someone with a savior complex real quick. There needs to be a certain level of discernment and a de-centering of self for it to work. But it can work!

HK: Who are among your inspirations (artists and non-artists alike)?

KB: The natural word always inspires me. Shout out all my birds! Whatever artists I’m rockin’ with at a certain time inspire me, and right now that’s mostly the Austin homies. CENSORED dialogue, Free Hamze, YoursTruuly/Locuust, Chucky Blk, Jaize, seina sleep, just to name a few. Also Quelle Chris, Cavalier, Denmark Vessey, Open Mike Eagle, and Koreatown Oddity.  When I first started though, it was Lupe Fiasco, Noname, Outkast, Busta Rhymes, Radiohead. To be honest, there’s a million more artists I could name but for the sake of brevity I’mma stop here.

HK: What do you hope to achieve with your music?

KB: Happiness! For myself and others. To expand at least a few people’s horizons. A sustainable career built on community. A music co-op(?). A life of exploration and collaboration.

HK: Anything else you‘d like to shout from the rooftops?

KB: COVID IS STILL HERE, KILL THE COP IN YOUR HEAD, PARTICIPATE IN MUTUAL AID, TALK TO YOUR NEIGHBOR, DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE WRONG, KAMALA AIN’T GONE SAVE YOU NEITHER, BIRDS RAP TOO!

News, Review

Refugee: K’naan and the call to humanise the struggle of millions

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For many, home is a word merely describing your country or region of origin. A place you are expected to live in peace, enjoy familial ties and build communal relationships. A place that allows you to lead a dignified life and accords you the opportunity to earn a decent livelihood. A place you are free to leave and return as you wish…

Somali-Canadian artist K’naan. Photo: Twitter

This article was written by Peter Choge and originally published on the Music in Africa webpage, on 27th of June 2023, under a creative commons license.

Yet this isn’t always the case. According to statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), at the end of 2022, 108.4 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced from their homes. Reasons for displacement vary from persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations to events seriously disturbing public order.

UNHCR says that out of this number, nearly 35.3 million are refugees who have sought safety in other countries. But as any refugee will tell you, reaching new shores away from violence doesn’t always guarantee peace of mind.

Living in a foreign country presents a new set of problems for asylum seekers, key among them the issue of identity. This is something that Canada-based Somali musician K’naan is all too familiar with and explores it on his new single ‘Refugee’.

The song, whose video was released during World Refugee Day on 20 June, wants to help restore humanity and reinstate a sense of pride among this group of people, who are often weighed down by feelings of hopelessness, grief, longing – and worse, the inability to tell who they are any more.

Commenting about the song, K’naan says: “Growing up, every time someone called me a refugee, I recoiled. [This is why] I wanted to flip the meaning of the word, and make it something that people will wear proudly.”

Forced to flee Somalia at a young age as the civil war raged on, K’naan temporarily found refuge in Kenya before ending up in Canada. A refugee may find the comfort and security his homeland could not offer but the feeling of alienation lingers on, creeping up and depriving the chance to find true inner peace. This is not helped by hostilities, implicit or explicit, sometimes directed at people in the face of rising ultranationalism.

It’s this conflict that K’naan has sought to address on the single, pointing out why refugees need not cower in shame because of their situation. Sparse in instrumentation, it’s the vocals that carry the message-laden song with K’naan’s singing elevated by a choral-like background accompaniment that gives the song a haunting, cinematic feel. The video itself is a central device delivering the song’s message.

As it cuts to clips of refugees around the world – some in camps, others on the move: on foot, on rickety, overcrowded sea vessels, on trains, K’naan sings:

If I was gonna be free, I’d have to change my name
Mama don’t feel shame. My old name was all wrong
I have waited for so long to decide my destiny
Somebody call me refugee and I will wear it proudly.

Praised for incorporating Somali folk traditions in his work, K’naan is at his socially conscious best, as he continues to call for an end to conflict, especially in his home country. ‘Refugee’ heralds K’naan’s first full album in nearly 10 years, expected to come out this summer.

Song: Refugee
Artist: K’naan
Year: 2023
Distribution: [Merlin] Symphonic Distribution

History, News

The Kuti Clan Protesting Through Music, And Other Nigerians Who Sang Against Apartheid

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Femi and Seun Kuti, have kept Fẹlá’s protest music alive.

Orlando Julias’ band (Nigeria). Image by Steve Terrell, September 26, 2015 (CC BY 2.0)

This article was written by Nwachukwu Egbunike and originally published by Global Voices on 31st of March 2022.

Nigerian musicians have been very vocal about social injustice in the country. The term protest music as a genre, which gained popular cultural validity in the 1970s, has continued to date. These songs fought military dictatorship, apartheid in South Africa, and police brutality, as part of the youth-led #EndSARS protests.

The father of Nigerian protest music

An artistic representation of Fẹlá Aníkúlápò Kútì. Image by Danny PiG uploaded to Flickr on September 11, 2012. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Fẹlá Aníkúlápò Kútì (1938–1997), the father of protest music in Nigeria, employed his distinctive Afrobeat genre with lyrics that were replete with “sarcastic humor, rebellion against authority, and political consciousness” as a means of fighting social injustice, notes Titilayo Remilekun Osuagwu, a culture scholar in Nigeria’s University of Port Harcourt.

Fẹlá’s genius lied in his conceptualization of the root causes of oppression. That’s why his music has remained — to date — a powerful tool in the “sustenance of ongoing protests,” asserts Olukayode ‘Segun Eesuola, a political science scholar in Nigeria’s University of Lagos. In the course of his over three decades-long musical career, he heightened the political consciousness of generations of Nigerian citizens. However, this attracted brutal visitations from security agents of successive Nigerian governments.

Understandably, most of Fẹlá‘s music was directed against the excesses of successive military governments in the country. Nigeria was under military dictatorship for 29 years (from 1966 to 1979 and 1983 to 1999).

At the time of his death in 1997, Fẹlá fiery musical body of work had earned him a place “in global consciousness as a quintessential ‘political musician,’” asserts Tejumola Olaniyan, professor of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in his seminal book “Arrest the Music! Fela & His rebel art and politics.”

Femi and Seun Kuti, like father like sons

Fẹlá’s two sons, Femi and Seun, have inherited and “carried forward” their father’s passion for social justice through music.

Femi Kuti, performing at Warszawa Cross Culture Festival. Image by Henryk Kotowski via Wikimedia Commons, 25 September 2011 (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Femi Kuti, Fẹlá’s eldest son, is an accomplished Afrobeat musician and saxophonist in his own right. Femi’s songs like “Sorry Sorry“, “What Will Tomorrow Bring” and “’97” — do not spare Nigeria’s corrupt and incompetent rulers. For instance, in “Sorry Sorry”, Femi laments the hypocritical attempt by the ruling elites, who in secret destroy the nation but pretend at finding solutions in public:

“Politicians and soldiers hold meetings/they want to repair our country/ they behave as though/ they don’t know/ that they are the ones who spoilt our country.”

Femi, a multiple Grammy nominee, is as brash and impatient as his late father. In an interview with Vanguard, a Nigeria newspaper, in February 2011, he decimated Nigeria’s corrupt class: “It is very evident that things are very bad in our country; politicians keep stealing money, we don’t have good roads, proper education, and potable water and so on. I can’t accept that. The majority of Nigerians are suffering. I don’t accept this and my father showed us a way to complain through music and that is what I am doing.”

Seun Kuti at the 2008 Marsatac Festival in Marseille, France. Image by Benoît Derrier via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Fẹlá’s youngest son, Seun Kuti is a musician and social justice advocate. Seun was an active participant in the 2012 #OccupyNigeria protests against the gas price hikes. He was also involved in the 2020 #EndSARS protests.

Seun has been described as the “Prince of Afrobeats,” in the footsteps of his father, the king of Afrobeat. Toyin Falola, Nigerian historian and professor of African Studies further asserts that: “Seun’s alignment did not start recently. He showed an early interest in music, especially the type of music his father sings, and he started to perform alongside Fela and the Egypt 80 band when he was just nine years old. It would not be out of place to call that a prodigious act.”

Nigerian voices against Apartheid in South Africa

Cover of Sonny Okosun’s Vinyl record

Critical music against political leadership was not limited to military dictatorship alone.

Nigerian musicians like Sonny Okosun, Majek Fashek, Onyeka Onwenu — and many others — also protested against apartheid in South Africa, calling for the release of Nelson Mandela.

Sonny Okosun (1947—2008), Nigeria’s highlife and reggae star, in “Papa’s Land” (1977) and “Fire in Soweto” (1978) condemned the suppression of black South Africans by their apartheid governments.

Following in Okosun’s footsteps was Nigeria’s guitarist and reggae star, Majek (Majekodunmi) Fashek (1963-2020) dedicated his song “Free Africa, Free Mandela” to South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, whom he described as a prisoner of conscience.

Onyeka Onwenu (Image credit from Onyeka Onwenu Facebook Fan Club)

However, one of the most endearing and emotional protest renditions against apartheid came from Nigeria’s singer, actress, and journalist Onyeka Onwenu in her song, “Winnie Mandela.” Onwenu described Winnie Mandela as the “soul of a nation, fighting to be free!”

Onwenu explained that she wrote the song after watching a documentary about the Mandelas, which moved her to tears. She “identified” with Winnie’s “loneliness and some of her pain.” During the sleepless night that followed, the Nigerian musician put her “pain to a song” to “give something back to Winnie for the sacrifice of her life to the Apartheid struggle,” Onwenu wrote in April 2018.

Other Nigerians who sang against the social injustice of apartheid were Victor Essiet and the Mandators in the song “Apartheid.”