Monthly Archives: January 2010

Nneka Week: Who is Nneka?

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“My main message is to make people love, to make them feel themselves, feel their spirits, to be in touch with their innermost self.”

Nneka Egbuna, well known as NNEKA, is a mixed-heritage musician who writes and performs forthright lyrics and song. Some call her soul, hip hop, reggae, afrobeat: I call her amazing. Amazing because she’s prolific – I’ve been aware of her for over a year and listening to her exclusively for nearly two months and yet I seem to find a new song of hers on a weekly basis. She’s also unapologetic in her bold political statements, those against the human rights issues of the Niger Delta in particular. If you listen closely, she challenges you by challenging herself to be honest and human.

She’s in America with a mission: “I’m trying to Africanize America with my music.” Enjoy.

Kojo Baffoe has written a comprehensive overview of Nneka’s music. I can’t wait for the video interview to go up. Follow him on twitter to stay up.

Here’s MySpace’s video interview of Nneka talking about the upcoming release of her United States release called “Concrete Jungle”.


MySpace Music Presents “Who New” Nneka

MySpace Hip Hop | MySpace Video


Nneka Week: “Death”, Love and Haiti

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I’ve watched the events in Haiti before and now after the earthquake to a soundtrack of Nneka and Asa songs. Since this is Nneka Week on Afrolicious, I’d like to share one of the songs that, for me, captured my feelings regarding Haiti.

The song is titled “Death” and I’ve only highlighted a portion of the lyrics:

“Sometimes you say we need to turn our backs and go away
Shot doors, close eyes, take a ride, walk and go asteax
But I’m pushed to speak about aloud this crowd and make this cry
We gotta face this, you and I

…

In front of us, we see the bus of tragedy of mystery but love the divine,
Love divine we ignore thee
The fight for life, the struggle for success, it deprives us from seeing
It’s our own blood that we oppress
Man slaughter, brain manipulation, children crying, people dying,
Souls are flying, pastors are lying in the name of love you say
This is love? It’s not!

…

I am one of them and so are you, we feel real love if we want to
Love has chosen you, yes it’s you
I know you need true love, too”

If you aren’t already, pray for Haiti. As individuals there’s not much we can do, but when we realize we are part of each other, no matter how spread apart we are, it’s easy to see what Nneka is talking about. Seek the truths about Haiti by educating yourself. If you are reading this, chances are you have access to other non-mainstream news sites.

And once you are educated and you know what you know, you have no choice but to act. @aja_monet and others put together a concert in Chicago to raise money for water. Children raised their own money. If it’s writing you show love, then write. If it’s in singing, then sing. If it’s in keeping your twitter timeline aware of Haiti long after the reporters have left the ground, then tweet. We can’t let ourselves forget. Love has chosen us.


New Format for #naturalhair Questions

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Sometime in the second half of 2009, a couple of us decided to create a #naturalhair hour on twitter to ask and answer questions regarding… uh, natural hair!  Since then, the chat has grown and become a bit difficult to follow for many people.  Often, people’s questions would go unnoticed or answered multiple times, making it frustrating to navigate altogether, even for me.

I suggested we try compiling questions in advance so that we could roll them out through the hour.  This requires a moderator, and the moderator’s job is just to: a) make sure the questions are compiled before the chat time, b) tweet the questions throughout out the hour at an appropriate pace and c) tweet and retweet answers to the questions.  

That’s it.  Everyone else (including the moderator) is free to chat it up and answer questions in whichever format they are most comfortable.  Only the questions will be streamlined.

I’ll moderate this first go around, just to show and see how it goes.  As I tweet the questions, I’ll format them like so:

#Q1 #naturalhair @afrolicious asks, what kind of protective hairstlyes are y’all using this winter?

#Q2 #naturalhair @afrolicious asks, what’s your favorite hair product evar?

And the answers will be directed to each question like so:

#Q1 #naturalhair my hair is always in braids for January and March. Helps to stop breakage and retain length

#Q2 #naturalhair SHEA BUTTER BABY!

This way, I can retweet the answers. Questions will be asked in the order they are recieved and grouped if there are multiples. It’s really much easier than it sounds. I’ve seen this and used this during DCTH. Let me know if you have any concerns or if you would like to moderate future #naturalhair twitter chats.

Here are some tools to help you follow the #naturalhair chats: TweetChat, Tweetgrid and Twubs.


Fela Friday: African Woman Edition

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One of the reasons my parents disapproved of Fela was his morals.  At one point, he was married to 27 women. Yeah. He was a rascal.  The New York Times offers a write up on what role the women played in Fela’s legacy.  The article is accompanied by beautiful images of the women who represent Fela’s wives.

I’m intrigued because apparently the women have no lines in the production; what does that say of what we are allowed to know about women during that period?

There was a lot going on in Nigeria in the 60s and 70s, and a lot of women making powerful moves.  Fela’s own mother was a catalyst to his radicalization.  Mix in Yoruba mythology and worldviews surrounding women and you have a very powerful set of ingredients for an intriguing look at the radical African woman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMJzL0yiRuQ