Tributes

Fela Anikulapo Kuti (1938-1997) - Iconoclastic King of AfroBeat

Written by Sam Mathe
Wednesday, 06 July 2011 18:44

“Fela Anikulapo Kuti was James Brown, Huey Newton, Rick James, Bob Marley, Duke Ellington ... all rolled into one black African fist – the protest artist as a real, live, awake and hungry human being. Africa’s original rock superstar. The importance, vitality and power of his work cannot be overestimated. He was a pure blend of ancestry and modern marvel.” – Hip-hop star Mos Def

Almost 14 years since his passing, Afro-beat superstar Fela Kuti’s life and music continue to fascinate and inspire a new generation of musicians from both sides of the Atlantic. Fela Kuti was to African music what Bob Marley was to reggae – an enigmatic character with a larger-than-life persona. SAM MATHE remembers the Black President.

It is very rare for musicians or artists in general to express a desire for political office – let alone do so openly. That is probably because artists tend to view their role in society as that of voicing the concerns of the everyday person against injustices normally perpetrated by the powers that be. To use a popular phrase coined by Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, like writers, musicians regard their purpose in society as that of “speaking truth to power”.

The Unsung Hero

Written by Sam Mathe
Tuesday, 05 July 2011 14:14

Andrew Mlangeni is a golf enthusiast with an impressive collection of silverware in his cabinet. In his Dube, Soweto home, he is well loved for his philanthropic causes – including donating blankets to the needy during the annual Christmas lunch he hosts. In parliament Mlangeni, 85, is a guiding light to the country’s younger leadership. Sam Mathe gets up close and personal with the sagely octogenarian who did time with Mandela on South Africa’s own Alcatraz.

Few revolutionaries or freedom fighters were born with silver spoons in their mouths. Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and Indian nationalist Mohandas Gandhi were notable exceptions. Lenin was born into a family of Russian nobles with a schoolteacher mother and a father who was a senior government functionary in the affairs of school education. Indeed he never made any attempt to hide his aristocratic upbringing and in fact argued in his revolutionary writings that intellectuals with bourgeois backgrounds had a duty to spread revolutionary ideas amongst the working class.

Gandhi was also of aristocratic background, both parents being members of India’s upper caste. His father was a highly ranked official in one of India’s princely states during the British colonial rule.

Name
E-mail
Receive	TextHTML