We are Africans Remix- JJC

And one more bit of fabulosity!! We are Africans, aaa-ooo!!

Jesse Jagz - Pump It Up

My current music video obsession--love the rhythm and flow of this... Up, up, J-town...

Interview with Helon Habila at Pambazuka News

Last week I had the privilege to finally meet Helon Habila in person (at George Mason University), after many years of reading his work and communicating by email. He was a gracious host, and it was delightful to hear about his most recent projects.

Tonight I came across this interview Mildred Kiconco Barya did with him back in May for Pambazuka News. Enjoy.

Hawayena

One of my favourite Hausa songs sung by Abdurrahmane Ayuba (Golden Goose) and used here in the film Hawayena directed by Mansoor Saddiq and produced by Tijjani Asase.

A besotted Adam A. Zango gives the oblivious Kubra Dako his song of love to read...

paradoxes

October 5

My sun is gone and I am cold and gray

October 6

And after the sun leaves, there are the long dark walks. The sharp wind carries away all thought, and I am cold and clean and empty.

October 13

I walk again in the dark--skin pricked with cold, yet I am warm. What is lost feels nearer than before, what is given up lingers in my smile, what I possess no more fills the cold night. Longing hushed, presence overwhelms me. In the dark, light glows beneath my eyelids. In the cold, warmth radiates out of me.

Those old Sufi poets knew this--when they sang of their beloved, Spirit beyond flesh. Those theologians of the early church with their allegories, who saw Deity between the lines of the lover. Solomon's Shulamite made God.

He is gone, yet He is here. No longer mine, he is Everywhere.

Love fills the night, so that the darkness is yet another aspect of light, the cold so that frozen air is yet another side of warmth.

I leave behind the whispering of the sky and the wind and the trees, yet the wonder stays with me.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī says:

All through eternity
Beauty unveils His exquisite form
in the solitude of nothingness;
He holds a mirror to His Face
and beholds His own beauty.

He is the knower and the known,
the seer and the seen;
No eye but His own
has ever looked upon this Universe.

His every quality finds an expression:
Eternity becomes the verdant field of Time and Space;
Love, the life-giving garden of this world.

Every branch and leaf and fruit
Reveals an aspect of His perfection.
The cypress give hint of His majesty,
The rose gives tidings of His beauty.

Whenever Beauty looks,
Love is also there;
Whenever beauty shows a rosy cheek
Love lights Her fire from that flame.

When beauty dwells in the dark folds of night
Love comes and finds a heart
entangled in tresses.

Beauty and Love are as body and soul.
Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.

They have together since the beginning of time-
Side by side, step by step.

--



This is love:
to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.

From:
The Divani Shamsi Tabriz, XII

from http://www.mikeshane.org/rumi/rumi_lovepoems.htm#This_is_love

Auto-Tune the News #6: Michael Jackson. drugs. Palin.

The best thing I've found on You Tube in a long time.

Nigeria filmmakers labour under Sharia law

From AFP News...

Helen Keller moments in language learning OR your mother's admonition ("Don't swear...")

Today while reading a brand new and brilliant (though I'm sure it will be very controversial and hotly contested) book by Rudolf Pell Gaudio, Allah Made Us: Sexual Outlaws in an Islamic African City about 'yan daudu culture in Kano, I realized something about my language-use that I had never quite noticed before. So, I'm sure the following confession will make all of you Hausa-speakers snigger at me... But... I LOVE the zesty gusto of the expression "Zan ci ubanka..." or "uwarka" and have been using it here and there in a joking manner for the past few months. Now, I knew this was coarse and improper language about other people's parents, but I had never sat down and literally translated the expression--though I should have.  I have mostly heard it in playful contexts in which people are teasing each other or abusing someone they are angry at. 

I realized while reading Gaudio's linguistic explanations of certain language used among the 'yan daudu community (and elsewhere), that I had been going about saying literally, "I will fuck your father...." 

Yes, laugh, laugh.

I knew it wasn't proper, but when I realized this afternoon actually linguistically what I had been saying... ai... I think I will try not to say it anymore... (lol) 

I remember the first time I used it in the presence of a filmmaker who has probably used the expression plenty of times himself, he flinched. I should have known then that this Hausa is too "deep for me..." Ku yi hakuri....

Adam Zango addresses his fans and responds to critics--from Wazobiya album (Hausa)

Thought this might be of interest to those Hausa-speakers that follow this blog...