***Nigerian female rapper – Sola Idowu comes out
Years ago I featured Sola Idowu as a Leader/Legend here on FemmeNoir. She later wrote me asking I remove her because she was not “out.” I believe women should have power over their own identities and as a result, though I found her on a site for LGBT artists, I felt it best to allow her to tell her own story when she was ready to do so.
Today, five years later, Idowu has exercised that power and has publicly come out. The Nigerian-born Sola Idowu, known as Weird MC, has publicly identified herself as a lesbian in print and broadcast interviews in Britain. The Black Gay Center had contacted her when Channel 5 was looking for subjects for a show entitled, Black, Bent and Beautiful.
*** WOZA (Women of Zimbabwe Arise) were once again attacked by Mugabe’s brute forces when they marched through Bulawayo last Wednesday.
The marchers were determined to insert their grassroots voices into the current SADC efforts to mediate in Zimbabwe’s crisis.
Some of their questions of the SADC process include “we would like to know exactly what South African President Thabo Mbeki, Tanzanian President Kikwete and our SADC brothers and sisters want to achieve by their mediation. Is their role to bring about a new government without any political, economic and social reform? Or is their objective something more meaningful?”
Spreading out the Diaspora – Books from the Caribbean ***Caribbean Free Radio on the Calabash Literary Festival
From Brixton, London via Nigeria ***My Random Thoughts on “Christ of Coldharbour Lane” Great Video – thanks from bringing London to my desk in Granada! GO FORTH and …..?
Continuing a tradition of Nigerian Writers who choose to use the vibrant and colourful happenings of Brixton as a backdrop to their plays, Oladipo Agboluaje’s play is a comedy that follows a former mental patient who declares himself the Messiah to a Brixton audience that are more interested in KFC and recharging their ‘Pay as you Go’ mobile phones.
***Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep
Master scribe Charles Burnett, who ushered in a “Black New Wave”, post-Blaxploitation….. The film was chosen by the National Society of Film Critics as one of the 100 Essential Films of all time and has been named a national treasure and selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.
Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse.
More nonsense from this stupid arrogant self-righteous white man and his friends…..
***Via RaceWire: Bono’s new adventure with Africa “Passionate about Africa” or if you want to know how to sexualise Africa, commodify a whole continent and change the world at the same time.
“Concert goers arrive by camel in the desert” and “bush pilots who keep the commerce of Africa and people of Africa moving from place to place”
.
A couple of new sites this week from African bloggers – me to start
***The new aggregator site from African Women Blogs (Africa as in Africa and the Diaspora) is up and running. Most of the previously listed blogs have been imported directly but please check for yours and if not register and submit your blog and pass the word around – please email me if you find any bugs!
First there was African Path and now there is *** African Loft – with the tag “where people and friends of Africa mingle. A lot going on here with articles, reports, social groups, forums, community photos etc
