Just Wanna Know

Frankish Cannibalism and Victory!

2011-03-23T02:09:00.003-05:00

This blog is the No. 2 destination for the search term "frankish cannibalism." This sort of thing is significant generally, since instead of canceling this blog I leave my almost six years of posts up for the main reason that I appear to continue to be a resource for answers to certain obscure questions, mainly about Arab pop music but also about other things.

But I am celebrating today because the entry for Crusader Cannibalism, my fifth post from back in October 2005, is one of three that I re-edited later (I believe in 2006 or 2007) to reflect a bet from over a decade before.

As members of a group of around 25 fellow undergraduates in Olomouc, Czech Republic, on a semester abroad in 1995, we were learning a lot about obscure historical events. We learned about the Sorbs, a tiny Slavic-speaking minority in Germany with ancient roots. We learned about the large numbers of Vietnamese in Eastern Europe. And we learned about the Sudetenland, areas of German-speaking Czechoslovakia that were voluntarily absorbed by the Nazi state and then Czechified after the war.

We wondered what sorts of other alternative histories could have resulted in disappeared and forgotten communities. We came up with the Sudetenland Chinese. We made a pact to further the goal of creating a (pseudo) history of an imaginary immigration and its subsequent disappearance. It appears that I am the only one who carried out the dare; a search for "sudetenland chinese" yields 10 results, of which I am responsible for 4.

The Cairo Documentary Festival 2011

2011-03-15T07:35:00.000-05:00

The American University in Cairo will host the Cairo Documentary
Festival from March 20-26 at its Tahrir Square and New Cairo campuses.
The Tahrir campus will host two program themes – Egypt Rising,
featuring numerous Egyptian documentaries and critical discussions,
and Neighboring Nations, featuring films from Turkey, Palestine, Iran,
and further afield.

AUC TAHRIR CAMPUS, EWART HALL

CDF DAY 1: Sunday, March 20

Egypt Rising 1: Dawning Faces
5:00-6:30pm Stories of Al Fagallah (2011, 60m, Egypt) Mohamed Abdel Bary
6:30-8:30pm Garbage Dreams (2009, 79m, Egypt) Mai Eskander
Discussion with Zabaleen
8:30-10:00pm Beit Sha'ar - Nomads Home (2010, 61m, Egypt) Iman Kamel

CDF DAY 2: Monday, March 21

Neighboring Nations 1: Memories & Premonitions
5:00-6:30pm Walls (2000, 83m, Germany) Can Candan
6:30-7:30pm Coffee Futures (2009, 22m, Turkey) Zeynep Devrim Gürsel
Still (2009, 18m, Cyprus) Alana Kakoyiannis
8:30-10:00pm Imperial Outposts (2010, 67m, Turkey) Amy Holmes
Discussion with Amy Holmes

CDF DAY 3: Tuesday, March 22

Neighboring Nations 2: Unexpected Stories
5:00-7:00pm Next Year in Bombay (2010, 55m, India) J. Pariente & M. Mangin
Jerusalem, the Adulterous Wife (2010, 8m, Belgium) M. De Groof
Camelrama (2001, 4m, Tunisia) Carolyn Macartney
Fashioning Faith (2010, 22m, USA) Yasmin Moll
Discussion with Yasmine Moll

Neighboring Nations 3: State of Imprisonment
7:30-10:00pm Degrees of Incarceration (2010, 59m, Palestine) A.
Bishara & N. Al-Azraq
Ticket From Azrael (2010, 30m, Palestine) Abdallah Awad Al Ghoul
Of Flesh and Blood (2009, 27m, Palestine) Azza Shaaban
Discussion with Azza Shaaban

CDF DAY 4: Thursday, March 24

Neighboring Nations 4: Cultural Industry in Sudan
3:00-5:00pm Sifinja – The Iron Bride (2009, 70m) Valerie Haensch
Inscriptions on Rosewater (2010, 15m) Salah Elmur
Discussion with Salah Elmur

Egypt Rising 2: Documentary Rising
5:00-6:00pm Sura (2010, 5m) Yasser Alwan
Article 212 (2010, 9m) Karim Elshenawy
Sturm: Fayoum (2010, 5m) Philip Rizk
Sturm: Ahmonseto (2010, 6m) Philip Rizk
Living in the Nile (2010, 10m) Mohamad El Wassify
Q&A with Filmmakers

6:00-7:00pm
Tawasol (2010, 7m) Maged Nader
Young Arabs (2008, 18m) Michael Graziano and E. Joong-Eun Park
I am George (2010, 10m) Mohsen Abdelghany
The Wizard (2010, 13m) Ahmed Abd Elaziz
Q&A with Filmmakers

7:00-7:30pm Egypt Rising Reception

Egypt Rising 3: Remembering Tahrir Square
7:30-10:00pm AUC in the 70s (2010, 15m) Jasmin Bauomy
Neighbors (Giran) (2009, 105m) Tahani Rached
Q&A with Filmmaker

CDF DAY 5: Saturday, March 26

Egypt Rising 4: Documenting in Revolutionary Times Panel Discussion
10:30-11:00am Brunch with the Panelists
11:00-12:30pm Discussion among filmmakers, scholars, & activists about
the intersection of social justice, new technology, and the politics
of aesthetics. How can contemporary documentary efforts in Egypt and
across the region address the current state of social unrest?

Egypt Rising 5: Streaming the Revolution
1:00-3:00pm Streaming Short Internet Videos from January 25th Revolution

Neighboring Nations 5: Iranian Body Politic
3:00-6:00pm Keynote: Dr. Hamid Naficy, “Internet Cinema—Iran”
Plastic Flowers Never Die (2008, 34m) Roxanne Varzi
Iran: Voices of the Unheard (2009, 68m) Davoud Geramifard
Discussion with Dr. Naficy

6:00-7:00pm Closing Awards Ceremony

Egypt Rising 6: Expanding the Horizon
7:00-10:00pm Mafrouza: Oh Night! (2007, 138m) Emmanuelle Demoris
Discussion with filmmaker

AUC NEW CAMPUS, P007

Assembly Hour Program (1-2pm) Everyday March 20-24 (Sun-Thurs)
Nominees for Audience Award

20/MAR Sunday
Beit Sha'ar - Nomads Home (2010, 61m, Egypt) Iman Kamel
An Egyptian filmmaker encounters a Bedouin social entrepreneur in the
Sinai Peninsula.

21/MAR Monday
Iran: Voices of the Unheard (2009, 68m, Iran) D. Geramifard
Rural and urban Iranians struggle against an oppressive regime after
the 2009 election.

22/MAR Tuesday
Sifinja – The Iron Bride (2009, 70m, Sudan) Valerie Haensch
Modifications of the English Bedford-Lorry makes it as comfortable as
'Sifinja' slippers.

23/MAR Wednesday
Next Year in Bombay (2010, 55m, India) Jonas Pariente and Mathias Mangin
2000 years of Jewish history in India is nearing its demise as the
community emigrates.

24/MAR Thursday
Degrees of Incarceration (2010, 59m, Palestine) Amahl Bishara and Nidal Al-Azraq
Palestinians strive to support each other in the enduring shadow of
political prison.

Updates coming soon to:

http://www6.aucegypt.edu/huss/sape/docFest/Pages/home.aspx
http://aucdocfest.blogspot.com/

Note: Due to the planned Constitutional Referendum scheduled for next
Saturday, March 19, all activities on that day of the festival have
been rescheduled. This adjustment to the schedule meant that the
entire schedule had to be reworked.

A New Hope

2010-03-30T12:25:00.004-05:00

After a year without a post, I have decided to try something new. This blog is still here because of obscure posts that still turn up in searches and still send people my way. I was trying to keep it alive with topical, timely entries. See how that worked...

So my new idea: Even more obscurity! I am going to write about things nobody has thought of for decades. I embrace my obsolescence. Exhibit 1: Chaskilenkey.

Chaskalengey: A game for daring youth.

This game was invented by the juvenile residents of Upquarters, Agric Quarters, Zuarungu in the 1980s. It was played briefly, usually for a period of days or even hours, before being banned again. The name is onomatopoeic: Chas for the sound a can makes when it's been struck by a knobbed stick, and kelaynkay for the sound it makes as it rolls over the ground as it bounces away rapidly.

Equipment: One car tire; enough small cans (evaporated milk cans are best) and knobbed sticks (two to three feet long) that each player has one of each item.

Objective: Get your can in the tire.

Mode of play: Players begin by lining up a certain distance from the tire and attempt to throw their cans into the tire. The distance should be far enough that it's difficult to get the can into the tire. Anyone who gets his or her can to stay in the tire (not bounce out) becomes a "keeper" or defender of the tire.

If your can doesn't make it into the tire, you must go to where it landed, pick it up, and try to toss it into the tire from there. If it's very far, you can throw it, run and pick it up, and throw it a second time.

If a keeper gets to your can first, he or she can hit it with the stick, as hard as he or she can, in whichever direction it feels natural to hit it. The keeper is also permitted, nay encouraged, to stand guard over the tire and swing for the cans like a baseball player.

It's a good idea to yell "Tschas-kay-layn-gay!" when hitting a can.

Every player who manages to get his or her can past the keeper becomes a keeper too. At the beginning of the game, it's easy to slip a can past the one or two keepers. Toward the end of the game, when there are five or six keepers and only one or two throwers, it's nearly impossible to get in. At this point, it's a question of how much punishment those one or two throwers will take before quitting. The game is over when everybody still playing the game is a keeper.

At the height of the game, with two or three keepers and three or four throwers, it's important to keep an eye out for flying cans. They can come out of nowhere, at great speed. After they've been hit by the knobbed sticks a dozen times or so, the cans can get dented and develop sharp points. These points can gouge and cause cuts, scrapes, and scratches in the skin of the players. If you've got this far, you might understand why the game was banned, sometimes after a parent heard only the initial tossing of the cans. Sometimes it took long enough for the injured to start filtering in for treatment. Good times!

The President Bows to a Foreign Leader?

2009-04-12T19:17:00.003-05:00

Since there's so much kerfluffel over the supposed Obama bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, I thought I would post another picture of a sitting US president bowing to a foreign leader. The president is Richard M. Nixon, the foreign leader is Japan's emperor Hirohito, and the occasion is their meeting in Alaska in 1971.

J. Max Bond Jr., 1935-2009

2009-02-26T22:15:00.006-05:00

My earliest memories of books are in the cool, cavernous Bolgatanga library, J. Max Bond Jr.'s first major project and his favorite design. One of our family's friends was the librarian back in the late 1970s. It's a really special place--even on the hottest day it was cool and airy in there. I never knew that the library was engineered not to need air conditioning. In this time of energy crisis, I wonder if Bond's design could be duplicated in other buildings.

Bolgatanga and the Uppers

2009-01-06T13:20:00.005-05:00

Here's French actress Aissa Maiga mouthing the lyrics to the song "Naam" by Christy Azuma and Uppers International, a clip from the award-winning 2006 film Bamako, directed by Abderrahman Sissako. The song is traditionally based and has something to do with an appeal to the chief--I will have to get some more competent Farefare speaker to work it out for me.

When I was four and five we lived in Bolgatanga in a Presbyterian Mission house with high eaves in a shady neighborhood. Across an open valley behind our house was the Catering Rest House, a hotel complex built by Nkrumah in the 1960s. Before June 4, 1979, the Uppers would play there on the weekends, and the sound would waft across through our rooms at night as we slept. After the coup, the Uppers were replaced by the Police Band, who had a tendency to get more out of tune on their trumpets and trombones as the night wore on and the free drinks took their toll.

One of the guitarists for the Uppers was a friend of my parents before he hit the big-time. There's a great picture of me and my siblings with him as a teenager in the late 1970s with his creation of a guitar out of cardboard and papier-mache. I saw him again in the late 1990s on a visit, then retired from music and just living at home, farming. I wonder whether any of those people got any royalties from the excellent disk Ghana Soundz: Afro-Beat, Funk, and Fusion in 1970s Ghana Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. Christy Azuma's track is on Vol. 2.

2008

2008-11-05T08:27:00.002-05:00

Shipley's run

2008-10-13T08:16:00.002-05:00

Here's Jordan Shipley's 96-yard kickoff return against the Sooners. The Longhorns were down 14-3 at the time.

My Brokers Have Terrible Judgment

2008-09-17T09:49:00.004-05:00

Doh! I just learned that, after a boneheaded stock purchase a couple weeks ago of a couple of mortgage companies, my brokerage firm of Paulson Bernanke LLC went ahead and bought me controlling interest in a bankrupt insurance company.

Now, I'm no pro, but I would have thought maybe some shares in tech or healthcare or something like that might have been a better investment these days of my hard earned cash, instead of real estate and insurance. I'm only out a couple grand, since I have 300 million fellow shareholders, and it's bargain pricing... But still! These are not the soundest investments. And now they're talking about buying a failing S&L!

At least our contract is running out soon. I'll have the option to dump these guys in November. I figure it's a no-brainer.

Sarah!

2008-09-05T06:25:00.004-05:00

In a good posting, Steve Shaviro takes overly aggressive Democrats to task for their misogynistic attacks on Sarah Palin. I had noticed this too, and I'm glad other people are pointing it out. But Steve also makes the point there that Palin is a much stronger candidate than she's been given credit for being:

...at this point, Sarah Palin is more a Sarah Connor than she is a Harriet Miers or Tom Eagleton.

I knew about Harriet Myers and Tom Eagleton, both past failures at pre-nomination vetting. But it took me a while to place Sarah Connor. Of course! The gun-toting (future) mother from the Terminator movies.

I was looking for a picture of an armed Sarah Palin to make the point. This is the best I could find:

Fun with Covers 2: Yay!/Sina Hali

2008-08-15T15:11:00.003-05:00

Here's a nice version of Nancy Ajram's "Yay!" by Mask Girls. The track is renamed "Sina Hali," lyrics are translated into Kiswahili and the music is translated into Tanzanian bongo flava pop (and influenced by bhangra, sounds like). (Credit: The Elephant's Child via Hawgblawg)

First the original:

Second the cover:

I love this because it recycles Lebanese pop through South Asia for East African ears.

"The Only Good Excess is Wretched Excess"

2008-08-09T08:07:00.003-05:00

So that's what a $40-billion spectacle looks like! How about those drummers, though.

Belgium

2008-08-05T11:09:00.003-05:00

Interesting NYTimes article about Belgium, "the most successful failed state" in the world. Apparently the country is again close to breaking up. Here's the best quote:

Mr. Dannemark added: “Flemish culture is dynamic today, Flemish intellectuals are fluent in Dutch and French and English, and they aren’t part of the separatist movement. Many of them come to live in Brussels because we here are the last Belgians. Most people in Flanders now say, ‘I’m Flemish,’ not ‘I’m Belgian.’ It’s as if Flemish-speaking Belgium wanted to leave Europe. And if they weren’t poor, Walloons would probably want to secede too.”

I had heard this before, that Brussels is the only truly "Belgian" part of Belgium. Tribalism has led people in the other two parts to consider themselves either Walloon (French speaking) or Flemish (Dutch speaking). Now, the fact that only Brussels is truly Belgian is important, because it's a city of immigrants. According to Wikipedia (wiki no lie), more than one in every three Brusselians is an immigrant or relative of immigrants:

Population of the Brussels capital region: 954,040
Population born in Belgium and Belgian-born: 607,446
Population of others: 346,954

Many of these are Moroccans and Muslims. So it appears to me that the same group that most Europeans believe to be incapable of integrating into Europe also belongs to the main group responsible for keeping Europe's most European country integrated.

N UR just-springz

2008-04-26T10:18:00.003-05:00

IM n ur just-springz
Lusciousing all ur muddy-balloonmanz
I can haz whistles?

Eddieandbill pwned
Bettyandisbel pwned
Queer old balloownmanz pwned
I can haz teh puddlez-wonderfulz?

All your goat0footed baloonz R belong 2 us kittehz.

Little Supporter

2008-02-10T21:18:00.000-05:00

Elijah got into the spirit with a T-shirt from his grandparents. However, it wasn't enough for Ghana, who went down to Cameroun 1-0 in a hard-fought contest. Meanwhile, defending champions Egypt demolished Cote D'Ivoire and then went on to defeat Cameroun 1-0 in the final Sunday.

Ghana also beat Cote D'Ivoire 4-2 Saturday for a third-place showing.

Ghana through to semifinals...

2008-02-03T14:31:00.001-05:00

...after beating Nigeria 2-1 with a 10-man squad, after Captain John Mensah got sent off. What an effort! I wish I was in Accra right now. Highlights from the match are here.

Ghana now faces Cote d'Ivoire, which demolished Guinea 5-0 Sunday night. (Photo: Ghana star Michael Essien challenging John Obi Mikel of the Super Eagles.)

Goal!

2008-01-29T20:20:00.000-05:00

It's African Cup of Nations time, and this time Ghana is hosting, and this time Ghana is in the running to win. Click above to see highlights Ghana's most recent victory on Monday, winning 2-0 over a lackluster Morocco (apart from the excellent goalkeeping by Lamyaghri). Michael Essien and Sulley Muntari scored. Ghana face an embattled Nigeria on Sunday in the quarterfinal.

Pakistani Peasants Threatened

2007-11-06T12:48:00.000-05:00

Basim Usmani, member of Bostonstan's favorite taqwacore (Muslim punk) band The Kominas, has a story in the Manchester Guardian.

Apparently the military has been using dirty tricks to try to get peasants and farmers to vacate land the military wants.

Last weekend, military rangers encroached on 25 acres of land in a neighbouring stud farm in Pak Pattan, where a similar land dispute led to another light machinegun firing spree took the life of one protesting farmer eight months ago. On Saturday morning, rangers stormed the Bail Gunj Tehsil Sharif Stud Farms, emptying a canal nearby and effectively cutting off water to the village. This sparked a response from AMP party activists, who held a sit-down protest in the stud farm. I got an update on Friday from Labour Party chairman Farooq Tariq, who told me 16 of the party heads were arrested by police.

They have been arrested under anti-terrorism laws, even though they are political activists. Basim details his efforts to get military and security service statements on the arrests, which have been met with stonewalling.

With the help of those who are more experienced, I hope to crack this stone wall that has successfully kept every major local newspaper from reporting on the new developments in Pak Pattan. Under military rule, the bulk of disputes in Pakistan's provinces are over sovereignty. "Democracy" never lasts in a country that's spent more than half its life under military rule. What good are elections or new prime ministers if the impoverished are most likely to lose their homes when the country is pulled back under martial rule? Stability doesn't rely on Benazir or Sharif, it depends on the resolution of these land issues that will continue to worsen unless we crack this wall.

Unfortunately, in the 48 hours since this story was published, Musharraf has suspended the constitution and imposed martial law, amid widespread protests. It remains to be seen how it will end.

Israelites and Pan-African Apache Riddims

2007-09-20T14:06:00.000-05:00

As we were reading an anthropologist write about diasporas, it came up that many of the Pan-Africanists have drawn the comparison of the African diaspora to the Jewish diaspora. Here's a really nice clip from 1970 of the Jamaican ska artist Desmond Dekker at Wembley Stadium. This track "Israelites," which influenced the Beatles' "O-bla-di o-bla-da," charted in the UK and US Top Ten in 1969.

And because we're interested in global pop culture, the search to see how far this track went led straight to Apache Indian, the dancehall toaster from Birmingham whose roots are less Kingston than Mumbai. Still, because he grew up among Jamaicans, his patois when rapping is nearly as thick as Dekker's. In this tribute from 2005, he and Dekker team up to reprise the song for the present day. Sadly, Dekker died in 2006, so this was his last major single.

Gotta Have It

2007-08-28T14:46:00.000-05:00

Someone just forwarded me a review of this album. I don't think I'll be able to resist...

W, Show Us Your ... Pecs!

2007-08-23T18:04:00.000-05:00

There's a new Cold War, and it involves an Arms (and Chests, and Shoulders, and Pecs) Race. If George W. Bush really is the sitting US president in the best physical shape since Teddy Roosevelt, and if Putin looks like this, we need to fight back!

The gauntlet has been thrown. It's Sputnik all over again. We're being shamed.

Geezer cheat-sheet

2007-08-21T10:42:00.000-05:00

For those of us who will soon be spending a lot of time around people who were born in 1989, and who will further need to be able to convince them to trust our judgment and understanding, there are materials to help. Here's one: The Beloit Mindset List 2011, filled with reminders for those faculty members for whom 1997 (or 1987, or 1977) was just a couple years ago... I mean, what? A decade ago? Dude.

Favorites:

1. What Berlin wall?
11. Rap music has always been mainstream.
39. Fox has always been a major network.
46. Most phone calls have never been private.
(Alternate: Upon receiving a call, the typical first question has always been "Where are you?"
48. Microbreweries have always been ubiquitous.
51. China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation.
55. MTV has never featured music videos.

Gnawaton

2007-08-20T16:43:00.000-05:00

Here's a nice blending of Gnawa music with the Latin hip-hop of reggaeton. The rapper is E.lam Jay and the Gnawa singer is Muhammad Derhem.

("Gnawaton" is not mine. It was invented by Bisbal right here.)

Rollins for Prez

2007-08-20T15:28:00.001-05:00

Jamie at Farther Along... proposes Henry Rollins for president. I think it's a great idea. Here he is in the video Jamie remembers:

I am a resource thief

2007-08-17T13:34:00.000-05:00

As the handbasket hurries toward hell, one more normal activity (trying to ignore advertising) is in the process of becoming hyperbolically criminalized.

According to Slashdot, some sites--objecting to a powerful adblocking plug-in that FireFox users can install--have begun blocking all Firefox browsers. Ho-hum, for me, right now. I guess I might get more upset if I get blocked from some of my favorite sites. Right now it feels more likely that I'll just stop going there... Like I have time to surf the web anyway, right?

The twisted arguments of these folks deserve some attention, though:

Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads. Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing. Millions of hard working people are being robbed of their time and effort by this type of software.

It's always ultimately a question of rights, right? I guess the argument would make sense if kept to the realm of trade and commerce. But when rights are evoked and words like "stealing" used, I shudder.

It's people like these what cause unrest.

Black Uhuru

2007-08-14T14:03:00.000-05:00

Someone is getting tired of seeing the Komina with the toy gun... And I've been listening to Black Uhuru a lot recently, particularly the Positive Dub and Red albums... And I am blogged out at present.

So behold the picture, and then click here to listen online. Or click play below, if that works.

Kominas on Tour

2007-08-09T14:36:00.001-05:00

Click To Play

The original Muslim punk rockers the Kominas are going on tour with writer Mike Knight, the bands Vote Hezbollah and al-Thawra, and Omar Waqar (formerly of Diacritical). Keep checking their myspace page for tour dates.

Your Mustache or Your Life

2007-07-25T15:33:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you just gotta share... (thanks to the Beirut Daily Star)

Mustache war shakes southern Egypt
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Monday, July 23, 2007

CAIRO: When an elder was kidnapped in a clan dispute in conservative southern Egypt, the Al-Arab family's worst fears were soon realized - they received a package containing his moustache, local media reported on Sunday. The man himself was returned uninjured, but the use of the new shaving tactic sent shockwaves through the town of Mahrusa, near Luxor 650 kilometers south of Cairo, where a man's honor is measured by the size of his moustache, the Al-Gomhuriyya daily said. The conflict that started with a coffee shop brawl swiftly spiraled out of control, with the Al-Arab carrying out a humiliating reprisal shave on a leading member of the Fallaheen family, followed by all-out battles with sticks and clubs. Police and community leaders then intervened, restoring a relative calm to the town, the paper said, with those worst hit by the conflict set to remain indoors for the coming weeks pending the re-growth of their manliness. - AFP

Some Tragic Casual Corner

2007-07-24T15:54:00.000-05:00

I'm working out syllabi for fall. Here is an example of the limits of individual choice in a complex social system. Meryl Streep is fashion editor Miranda Priestly and Anne Hathaway playing Andy Sachs, her unfashionable new assistant.

Script:

Andy Sachs: [chuckles]

Miranda Priestly: Something funny?

Andy Sachs: No, no, nothing. Y'know, it's just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y'know, I'm still learning about all this stuff.

Miranda Priestly: This... 'stuff'? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.

Cleaning Up

2007-06-25T14:47:00.000-05:00

I made some long-overdue repairs to this blog over the weekend. I had some dead links that I've now fixed. Also, in the wake of the demise of Le Blogue Berube, I had to find some other English-y blogs to replace him. So I chose Crooked Timber; Long Sunday; The Valve, mainly in honor of Ignatius J. Reilly; and Scott Kauffman's Acephalous, in honor of Meyer Fortes.

Apostrophe

2007-06-13T08:16:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting to get this up for the past several years. If you're a punctuation nerd like me, you might also have noticed Sears leading the way in the campaign to eradicate the apostrophe. Not only does the apostrophe signify possession and contraction, but it also is used by some to mark plurals of single letters or numerals. This plurality of uses confuses many writers, who even now are plotting to get rid of the apostrophe.

Ah, but the ghost remains in the registered trademark. There are many questions to pursue here--a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous--but one of these is, does the trademark work to motivate any semantic content? If so, what?

Is the ghost aware of its own ironic presence/absence?

Fathia Nkrumah, 1931-2007

2007-06-07T09:19:00.000-05:00

Fathia Nkrumah, the First Lady of Ghana from 1960 to 1966, died May 31 in Cairo. Her son Gamal Nkrumah (pictured with his mother at left), an editor for the al-Ahram newspaper, has a really touching tribute to his mother here, written seven years ago. The piece details how a 27-year-old school teacher and bank teller, third daughter of a civil servant, came to marry the 49-year-old anti-colonial pioneer:

For a month before the wedding, the young bride could not sleep a wink. She had been summoned by President Nasser, who asked her if she was sure that she wanted to accept Nkrumah's proposal of marriage. Marrying a head of state -- of the first African country to achieve independence from British rule, in fact -- entailed duties and responsibilities, sacrifices and potential risks. Having heard the president's warning, Fathia replied promptly: "I would like to go and marry this anti-colonial leader. I read his autobiography -- I know of his trials and tribulations, of his struggles during his student days in America and Britain, and of his spearheading the anti-colonial struggle upon his return to his homeland. I am deeply impressed." Only her family stood in the way, she informed Nasser. She had little idea of the challenges that lay ahead.

Why I don't believe "TB Andy"

2007-06-06T14:35:00.000-05:00

I've heard him say four sketchy, lawyer-speak-type things:

1. I never heard them say, Don't travel, before I left. Conveniently leaving out that time in Italy, when they did say, "Don't travel."

2. They said I wasn't contagious, before I left. Ditto. Why did being in Italy affect his hearing? If he thought they wanted him to travel, why did he go via Prague and Montreal? Didn't the NO FLY ORDERS he was consciously subverting give him the hint that he wasn't supposed to fly?

3. I was scared for my life, I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE.

4. I thought I WOULDN'T HURT ANYONE.

The contradiction between the last two statements ought to be clear. Why no criminal charges?

Soviet Russia and the Bay of Trolls

2007-05-29T13:04:00.000-05:00

I love this Map of Online Communities, wherein We Can Find the Precise Co-Ordinates of the Google Juggernaut, not to Mention the Location of farthest Xanga.

Thanks to Savage Minds.

Stop the Clash

2007-05-25T07:24:00.000-05:00

I thought this bears wider dissemination. It's from the people who collected 52,000 signatures on a petition calling for Wolfie's resignation.

President Bloomberg?

2007-05-18T10:16:00.000-05:00

And will he spend up to $1 billion to get there as an independent?

As this is coming from both Tony Blankley and Mark Green, we can assume that it has some basis in fact.

My New Yorker friends say city residents of all political stripes like the guy a lot. But Blankley gets the last word here:

If it is Rudy and Hillary, and now Bloomberg, we could be looking at a three-way race between three moderately liberal to leftist New Yorkers running for president in a right-of-center country with no even moderately conservative candidate. And should Sen. Obama surprisingly get the Democratic nomination, then we would substitute for the secret leftist publicly centrist Hillary Milhous, a completely inexperienced African-American possibly former Muslim, partially Indonesian-raised, Harvard-trained Kennedyesque candidate.

Thanks to Metaphysically Fit!

Smackdown!

2007-05-16T11:08:00.000-05:00

It's nice to see Nir Rosen's take-down of L. Paul Bremer's pitiful attempt to defend himself after the fact in the Washington Post. Basically, Bremer is jumping on the bandwagon of finger-pointers who failed in this Iraq War debacle. Perhaps his most absurd claim is that his critics don't understand Iraq, the implication being that he does. Absurd, because this claim is prefaced by a fantastical extended analogy equating the Hussein regime with Nazi Germany, clear evidence that Bremer's in over his head. Rosen's choicest tidbit:

In Bremer's mind, the way to occupy Iraq was not to view it as a nation but as a group of minorities. So he pitted the minority that was not benefiting from the system against the minority that was, and then expected them both to be grateful to him. Bremer ruled Iraq as if it were already undergoing a civil war, helping the Shiites by punishing the Sunnis. He did not see his job as managing the country; he saw it as managing a civil war. So I accuse him of causing one.

Thanks to Alif Sikkiin!

Loopholes

2007-05-15T07:10:00.000-05:00

The New York Times is reporting Michael Chertoff's discovery that holders of British passports are not all tea-drinking, skittles-playing, fox-hunting white people. The story notes that some British people emigrated there from Pakistan, and these Britons travel to Pakistan as well as to the United States. I would have thought the New York Times editors would have already come to this conclusion, based on the many Britons of non-European ancestry it reports on each week.

But the headline as well as the tone of the story are telling. It's a "loophole" that British people who happen to have Pakistani heritage are able to enter the United States without a visa. Such a loophole needs to be closed. It has become something normal and obvious that all people of Pakistani ancestry should need a visa to enter the United States, be they citizens of Canada, the United Kingdom, or France.

So what about Americans of Pakistani heritage? Should they have to get a visa to go to England? To Pakistan? Should they even be allowed to travel at all? If the US requires visas for an ethnic class of British citizens, what's next? Poland requiring German-Americans to apply for visas? Sweden requiring visas for Italian Americans? The mind boggles.

Since the Second World War, it has been commonly accepted that citizenship conferred fundamental rights to all citizens, irrespective of ethnicity, religion, parentage, etc. Great advances in civil rights for the past half century have been founded on this principle. But as someone recently suggested, we're witnessing "a drastic transformation of the world order that we will probably have to live with for as long as we can foresee."

Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

2007-04-12T12:13:00.000-05:00

"But no matter how bad things may get for me, the music will still be wonderful. My epitaph, should I ever need one, God forbid: 'The only proof he ever needed of the existence of God was music.'"

Wikipedia entry.

It's Almost Just-Spring

2007-03-16T10:56:00.000-05:00

By E.E. Cummings

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

Ghana, 1957-2007

2007-03-06T09:08:00.000-05:00

Today is Ghana's 50th anniversary.

"We must change our attitudes, our minds! We must realize that from now that we are no long a colonial but a free and independent people!"
Kwame Nkrumah, Accra, 1957

See a very short clip of the speech here.

Learn more about Pan-Africanism here.

There's a nice article from the New African here. (Thanks to Emmanuel!)

And swing by Ghana Home Page for more stories.

Congratulations Ghana!

Joy, Dread, Sweet Songs

2007-03-03T11:59:00.000-05:00

I.

What’s the deal with joyfulness and fear, why are they so close to each other? Specifically and with regard to African and Black music, there appears to be a close relationship that is often misunderstood. I myself don’t understand it, but I’m finding the two emotions expressed jointly in more and more significant places.

For example, in The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy is writing about an early founder of Black Nationalism, Martin Robinson Delany (1812-1885). Delany was a “journalist, editor, doctor, scientist, judge, soldier, inventor, customs inspector, orator, politician, and novelist,” in addition to being one of the first black students ever admitted to Harvard and the first black commissioned officer in the US military to achieve the rank of major. Gilroy quotes the following:

“Princes shall come forth out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto God” Ps.lxvii.31. With faith in this blessed promise, thank God; in this our grand advent into Africa, we want “No kettle drums nor flageolets, Bag pipes, trombones, nor bayonets” but with an abiding trust in God our heavenly king, we shall boldly advance, singing sweet songs of redemption, in the regeneration of our race and restoration of our father-land from the gloom and darkness of our superstition and ignorance, to the glorious light of a more pristine brightness—the light of the highest godly civilization.

(Gilroy’s text tells us this is from the closing passage of Delany’s first book, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States Politically Considered [1852]. But the footnote directs us to Martin R. Delany, Principia of Ethnology: The Races and Color, with an Archeological Compendium of Ethiopian and Egyptian Civilisation from Years of Careful Examination and Enquiry [Philadelphia: Harper and Brother, 1879], p. 95.)

So here we see an almost dangerously cheery statement of progress, and if we don’t read too much into the nineteenth-century verbiage, we might find the “joy” of our title. The direct and appropriate quotation in pop culture is Bob Marley’s cheerful song “Two Little Birds”:

Rise up this morning
Smile with the rising sun
Three little birds
By my doorstep
Singing sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true
Saying, This is my message to you:

Don’t worry
About a thing
Cause every little thing
Is gonna be all right.

Although I’m now beginning to reconsider it, this song was never a favorite of mine. I always placed it alongside Marley’s other early popular songs like “Stir It Up” or “No Woman No Cry” and more or less dismissed it as merely the economic means to his end of resistance, his real love, that we could see in the later songs, like those from Survival and Uprising. But even on that last album we can still see similar songs, like the infectiously bouncy “Could You Be Loved?” In his own repertoire, Marxist country star Steve Earle calls these kinds of songs—deviations from what is otherwise a doggedly determined socialist realism—“chick songs.” As in, songs about relationships, love songs, beautiful songs that have no purpose other than being pretty and good and true.

Already, we’re delimiting, and delegitimating, stereotypically women’s concerns merely because we perceive them to have no practical instrumentality. They are expressive in the worst way. Which is something I hate to do. These songs have a place, and that curious place—the place of happy, “high-life” songs—is one of my projects. But I really do love Nesta’s social conscience.

The other significant place that I can think of Bob Marley speaking of Delany’s “sweet songs of redemption”—in what is perhaps the most wistful and exquisitely sad dread song ever—is “Redemption Song,” the closing track of Uprising:

Old pirates yes they robbed I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pits
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly

Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom
Cause all I ever had
Redemption songs
Redemption songs

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them can stop the times

How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look
Some say it’s just a part to fit
We’ve got to fulfill the book

Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom
Cause all I ever had
Redemption songs
Redemption songs
Redemption songs

This is a strange song, because it sounds so sad and nostalgic in my ear. Perhaps the instrumentation does it—just Bob and an acoustic guitar—or the fact that it was released posthumously, and we knew when we heard it that he was dead. Maybe it’s his voice, so frail and strong at the same time, with a great development through the song, nearly crack at the outset and really wailing by the climax. The lyrics, however, are not sad at all. They are positive and progressive and hopeful. They dismiss technological developments that might dishearten us, like nuclear radiation. They call us to action!

II.

I already knew the song in 1987, when Ghana’s socialist experiment came crashing down. It’s a point of pride for me that Uprising had been the first tape I bought with my own money, three or four years before. In 1987, however, J.J. Rawlings—chairman of the Provisional National Defense Council—banished Ghana’s socialists to Cuba and made nice with the International Monetary Fund. The same year, Captain Thomas Sankara was assassinated by unknown assailants, and the man who is still president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Campaore, came conveniently to power. From 1983 to 1987, Sankara and Rawlings had been so close, so young and hopeful and successful at really getting things done in terms of public education, health, and social development. In some ways, Sankara was more attractive than J.J., more of a visionary and a peacemaker, less violent and paranoid.

We were “comrades” with the Burkinabes, and working together to advance. The old regimen, under which Senegal alone among the former French colonies would stand against capitalism, was crumbling. There was even an idea that Ghana and Burkina could unite. But of course the capitalists were unhappy.

When Sankara was killed, I remember reading this line under the masthead in the Ghanaian government daily, the People’s Daily Graphic:

“How Long Shall They Kill Our Prophets, While We Stand Aside and Look?”

I was 12, and I didn’t realize at the time that Rawlings, too, was in the process of selling out to stay in power. Perhaps this gesture from a radical editor of the paper was one of the last radical things he did. In any case, “We”—the government of Ghana—did stand aside and look. A few years later People’s was dropped from the paper’s masthead. Sankara Circle in Accra, though, had to wait until after John Kuffuor was elected in 2000 before the name could be conveniently taken off. On this old map, "Captain Thomas Sankara Circle" can still be seen, north of "Ringway Estate." Sankara Circle is now “Ako Adjei Flyover,” and Thomas Sankara has officially been forgotten by Ghanaians.

(I don't have anything against Dr. Ebenezer Ako Adjei (1916-2002), the last surviving member of the "Big Six" leaders who oversaw Ghana's independence movement until being swept aside by Kwame Nkrumah. Some, like Adjei and J.B. Danquah, were later imprisoned, persecuted, and killed by Nkrumah, acts that earned the left the undying hatred of the right, the Danquah-Busia tradition currently incarnated in the ruling National Patriotic Party. Rawlings already paid tribute to Prof. Danquah with a statue at Danquah Circle, just to the south of the former Sankara Circle.)

What’s really sad is that, the only reason we went to Burkina Faso was because Ghana’s economy was in a severe recession. We went to buy canned food and basic staples. And cassettes. Yeah, I bought Uprising from a street vendor in Ouagadougou at some point when Sankara was in power. And there was a lot of guilty pleasure in Ghana after 1987.

That year, the factories started producing again, and we could buy consumer goods in the stores. The economy had been in such shambles by the late 1970s, it was a novelty for me to think of buying bread or ice cream or orange juice on the street in Bolgatanga, since I couldn't remember being able to do something like that. (I was 4 years old on June 4, 1979, when Rawlings took over the first time.)

And so began my guilt at reaping the benefits of an unjust system. And of course, the injection of cash that Rawlings used to start up the food factories again and rebuild the infrastructure eventually led to much bigger money once the right-wingers came to power in 2000 and brought the present chaos, crime, and corruption that free-market capitalism appears to be wreaking on Ghana. Along with liberal democracy, which gives us an outlet for political action. Along with economic development, which gives us jobs. And along with open markets, which gives us cheap trinkets on which we're free to waste our hard-earned money.

How long? I guess a little bit longer. At least we have some sweet songs to keep us going until that day of redemption.

iPod Shuffling

2007-02-26T08:38:00.000-05:00

As per AWG, here are the first 15 songs when I hit "shuffle" on my iPod.

1. U2, “City of Blinding Lights,” How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
2. John Michael Montgomery, “I Swear,” Kickin’ It Up
3. Cornershop, “When the Light Appears Boy,” When I Was Born for the Seventh Time
4. Kenny Loggins, “Playing with the Boys,” Top Gun: The Motion Picture Soundtrack
5. Midnight Oil, “My Country,” Earth and Sun and Moon
6. Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders, “Casa Casa Atougra,” The Trance of Seven Colors
7. Big Boi feat. Sleepy Brown, “The Way You Move,” Speakerboxxx
8. Waylon Jennings, “Jack-A-Diamonds,” Are You Ready for the Country
9. Norman Blake, “You Are My Sunshine,” O Brother, Where Art Thou? Motion Picture Soundtrack
10. John Eddie, “If You’re Here When I Get Back,” KGSR Broadcasts Vol. 12
11. Mary Mary, “One Minute,” Thankful
12. Smashing Pumpkins, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
13. Taliani, “Niich Maak Aleze,” Remix Rai 2006
14. Various Artists, “Hfaf Finie n Kien Lo Lay-nu,” Savannah Rhythms—Burkina Faso
15. Musica Antiqua & Richard Goebel, “Salve Regina A—Dur: A Tiempo Giusto” (Johann Adolf Hasse), Salve Regina

King Ayisoba

2007-01-27T11:26:00.000-05:00

Continuing through the Christmas presents...

King Ayisoba is a hiplife performer and kologo (guitar) player from Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region. His lyrics in Farefare are great fun for me to listen to, but the music, produced by Panji Anoff for Pidgen Records, also features nice beats and great guitar work. Sort of like Amadou and Miriam with a hip-hop edge.

His appearance at the top of the Ghanaian charts points up a local variation of the continued fad worldwide for "Saharan" musical sounds, as Ghanaians start mining the North's rich musical landscape, ignored for so long.

Extra Gunpowder? Shocking!

2007-01-17T11:44:00.000-05:00

Here we have the Chinese "gunpowder" green tea of legend and lore, the No. 2 attraction for tourists to Morocco (if you don't know what No. 1 is, I'm not telling you...) The story is that the term gunpowder refers to the fact that the leaves, balled up and very black, resemble the black powder of old musketry. Here we have another take on that idea.

This specimen was procured by family members in Tamale, northern Ghana. While millions of tourists come to Ghana each year, they tend to stay down in the south--forests, beaches, waterfalls--with one trip north to the game park and then back home. If they stayed a bit longer, they might find that some cultural patterns, particularly in the northwest, are very close to those of north Africa. One practice, the drinking of at-te, is nearly identical between Bole and Tangier.

Thus packaging that includes Arabic and French, spoken by nearly everyone between Bole and Tangier.

Arabic:

saddam, a reference to the shock or clash the caffeine will have with your sleepiness, but not without forgetting everyone's favorite dead tyrant.

shay ash-shin al-akhdar: Chinese green tea (note no reference to guns or powder)

French:

The Vert de Chine: Chinese green tea (again, no reference to guns or powder)

Directions: boil it, steep it, make it cold. Keep cool and dry. (loose translation)

English:

fax, email, quantity, producer, and Extra Gunpowder.

Then we have ASKIA: Askia Muhammad I (1442-1538) was the greatest Soninke king. After taking over from the legendary Sunni Ali Ber, Askia Muhammad I extended the Songhay empire to the greatest extent of any of the West African empires. During his reign, what is today Mali became one of the world's great centers for science and scholarship.

According to Wikipedia, askia means in Songhay, like saddam does in Arabic, "forceful one." So again, a political leader known for muscling his way into position is coordinated with the need to get started on the day and do the things that need to be done.

Finally, the visual cues: a soccer ball and an eagle. Yup. I got nothin.

Chinese-Notenglish

2007-01-09T14:12:00.000-05:00

Well, it uses English words, but it doesn't really work, except perhaps as avant-garde or absurdist poetry. The packaging came with a flashlight my brother found in a store in Tamale, northern Ghana.

The long text says:

Operation Method:
1 The regular whole light of magnet in the base and nece ssary position
2 the fan-shaped tooth which locks the organization establishes the lamp holder on different angle and position
3 is it down cigar head can pull out necessary
4wire insert some cigarette device
5in finish using directly cigar head to draw, in the rotationoverlayed before the wire is black through the head is deposited in In the shell of one

I guess I want to know:
(1) Was this a case of reading across or down or otherwise backwards/sideways in the direct back-translation from the Chinese characters, or
(2) was it a case of the layout getting garbled in some computer program, or
(3) is it just somebody's best stab for packaging heading to anglophone Africa (where, really, nobody needs instructions to figure out how to work a flashlight)?

In any case, where did "cigar head" come from?

I'm hoping Language Log or someone with some Chinese can help me out.

Titanic Football

2007-01-09T10:04:00.000-05:00

Gators are reptilian ice bergs. Ninety-eight percent is below the surface, invisible, except for the nostrils and the two little eyes sticking up.

When the Ohio State band played "My Heart Will Go On" at halftime last night in Glendale, I wonder how many of the 37,000 Buckeyes who traveled to Arizona thought it was a bad joke. At that point OSU was down 20 points to Florida.

It was a moment just like halfway through the movie: half the Buckeye Titanic was sticking straight up awkwardly, just like Navigator Troy Smith right before being sacked, again. Half the team was already underwater, just like Engineer Ted Ginn Jr., who partied too hard after his opening kickoff return TD, messed up his ankle, and had to sit out the rest of the game. And Captain Jim Tressel could do little more than man the lifeboats.

At least the SEC was redeemed, after both Arkansas and Tennessee were defeated in theri bowl games. Here's Florida defensive end Jarvis Moss's comment after playing OSU:

"Honestly, we've played a lot better teams than them. I could name four or five teams in the SEC that could probably compete with them and play the same type of game we did against them."

And probable future presidential candidate John McCain got in his coin toss just in time, an early photo-op for 2008, when it will again no doubt be necessary for any successful candidate to find a way to carry Florida and Ohio.

Hey, sometimes even a sinking ship can be a goldmine.

At Long Last

2006-12-19T22:25:00.000-05:00

Chapter 11: Discussion Lists and Public Policy on iGhana: Chimps and Feral Activists, John Philip Schaefer. Buy this book here.

Academic publishing takes a long time. This chapter started in December 1999, when I turned in a short final paper in JoAnn D'Alisera's course Peoples and Cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa. She liked it and got it into a panel at the American Ethnological Society annual meeting in May 2001.

So I rewrote it as a presentation that spring. Around the same time (and I assume with JoAnn's help) I got invited to a workshop in Sweden organized by Kyra Landzelius, who also edited the book. I gave another talk at the workshop, then scrapped several subsequent versions.

I worked on it that fall (2001) some more, got a final version in to Kyra in spring 2002, then another final version over the summer of 2002, before finally getting the final final version done in the fall of 2003. Then it stewed for a couple more years before getting going again in 2005, but the publication date kept getting pushed back.

But at long last, here we are.

Complacency and Apathy

2006-12-05T04:18:00.000-05:00

Sasha Baron Cohen (AKA Ali G, King Julian XIII, and Borat) has finally given an interview out of character. In Rolling Stone, he explains his Borat schtick. Why is it so important to show how easily ordinary American folk can be led by a charming foreigner on a singalong to "Throw the Jew Down the Well"?

"I remember, when I was in university I studied history, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic."

And so it is alarming to see that 38 percent of AOL News readers continue to believe that Muslims should be forced to bear a distinctive form of identification in the United States. The number is the same in a recent Gallup poll, which found that 39 percent of Americans are in favor of special identification for Muslims.

Reuters has reported on a recent stunt by Washington-area radio talk-show host Jerry Klein. He began his show the weekend after Thanksgiving by proposing that a special tattoo be put on all Muslims, or perhaps just a crescent added to their driver's licenses. He intended it as a hoax, but before he confessed to the deceit halfway through the show, he was shocked to find a large number of callers defend his absurd proposal:

"I can't believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said," he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL, which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland.

"For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people's bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver's license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It's beyond disgusting.

"Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen ... We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous."

Measuring Memes

2006-12-04T22:57:00.000-05:00

Please link to this page here (not my blog page), which is owned by Scott Kaufman, a graduate student trying to figure out the growth rate and distribution of a typical blog meme.

Baby Pictures

2006-12-03T08:38:00.001-05:00

There are baby pictures on Flickr, at the right.

Fantastico FCB!!!!

2006-11-28T17:07:00.000-05:00

Or so the grafitti went in Tangier. That's FCB as in Barca or "Futbol Club Barcelona," who beat Arsenal 2-1 in a European championship final (UEFA Champions League) back in May. Let me tell you, the streets of Tangier were mad that night. Here's Ronaldinho on Saturday with a wicked bicycle kick against Villareal. Barca took it 4-0.

Now I've Got the Fame Down

2006-11-24T06:28:00.000-05:00

Fortune must be just around the corner. I hereby claim credit as the sole discoverer of nevertheless used as a negative-form additive connector in American English. That is, until the real discoverer steps forward.

If you do this with a bird or insect, you get to call it after yourself, right? How does "schaeferensis" strike the ear?

More typical negative-form additive connectors include not to mention, nevermind, or to say nothing of. Here are my two examples so far:

"N.C. State fans don’t take well to losing to the hated Tar Heels, nevertheless 23-9 to a 1-9 UNC team playing for a lame-duck coach."

"Miami can continue to have both and help kids that may never have seen the campus of college, nevertheless a private school."

One Bank, With Each Other

2006-11-22T12:11:00.000-05:00

Our credit cards just changed names, so we know what this pitifully beautiful video of a U2 cover (viral advertising?) is talking about:

Found via Umlo.com, a listing of the top viral videos.

China and Africa Redux

2006-11-20T16:53:00.000-05:00

The latest New York Times magazine has a great article about China's relationship with African countries. However, there's some dissimulation going on:

...China offered a model of development, driven from above and powered by high-tech investment, vastly more gratifying and reassuring to third-world elites than the Western gospel of unleashing growth through democratic and marketplace reform. Western donors, led by the I.M.F., conditioned aid on the achievement of meaningful, and often painful, reform. China, by contrast, offered aid without “conditionality.” According to China’s official African policy, published earlier this year, China seeks “a new type of strategic partnership,” which, among other things, “respects African countries’ independent choice of the road of development.” China invokes this doctrine of noninterference when defending the grossly abusive regimes in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Eritrea and elsewhere with which it carries on a flourishing business.

Now, I myself recently pointed out that the Chinese government has been accused of "looking the other way" when confronted with a client nation's human rights failings.

But one needn't dig too deeply into the details of Euro-American economic growth between 1798 and 1956 to uncover the fact that this growth had very little to do with either democracy or free markets. More recently, how closely did Belgium toe that line when it continued to trade with Mobutu's Zaire/Congo? How much did the Netherlands overlook when Suharto was in power in Indonesia? What about the United States and Morocco back in the 1980s--did that regime qualify as "grossly abusive"? For that matter, what about the US and the entire Western hemisphere? Has the US ever taken a hard decision to cut off trade ties to a grossly abusive Latin American regime, so long as that regime remained pro-capitalist and continued to trade with the US?

Further problems: A closer look at this eerie paragraph shows a mention of IMF-led "meaningful, and often painful, reform." But everyone knows that the reform the IMF is talking about involves little more than such acts as selling off state-owned industries to multinational corporations. This means, on the ground, that the government becomes directly responsible for the loss of income for the families whose breadwinners used to have good jobs with the government and now have been fired by XYZ Corp. Inc. Such actions have nothing at all to do with increasing press freedom, releasing dissidents, and lifting bans on political parties. In fact, they'll probably lead to the opposite: a weakening of the government and a crackdown on the bread rioters.

Yet the implication of the next few lines' mention of "grossly abusive regimes" leads readers to believe that the IMF cares at all whether the real opposition parties get equal airtime in the media, or whether their leaders get tossed in jail every couple of years. Yet another example of the conflation of economic and individual liberty, anyone?

There nevertheless remains a stated goal of political as well as economic freedom in many of these trade pacts with the West, a goal that is not stated for trade pacts with China. So does it matter that belief and practice fail to coicide? What's worse, to hold lofty principles but ignore them, or to hold low principles and measure up each time?

Many world leaders seem to know that they can trade with the West and oppress if they want to or need to, just so long as they (1) keep their opponents silenced quietly, as Egypt appears to be trying to do--although with the Internet's persistent pressure and global reach, such coverups might be over (for example, Slashdot has taken up the cause of the opposition bloggers who have been arrested for publicizing the appalling and grotesque sexual abuse of female protestors)--and/or (2) make sure the violence is perpetrated by vaguely "non-governmental paramilitary groups," as is the case in Colombia or Iraq, in which case the government can just blame overly zealous patriots for getting out of hand. But this is what's happening in Sudan, right? These suspiciously well-armed and pro-government Janjaweed "rioters" technically have no formal ties to the government, right? So why does the New York Times have to argue so insistently that the Sudanese government's evil deeds differ so starkly from those of Western allies?

I'm media-critiquing here--I actually favor using any necessary and effective means to deter human rights abuses. But I guess I'm just suspicious whenever news stories critical of China and Sudan seem to ignore history and reproduce conventional wisdom when the evidence is sadly lacking. Sounds like desperate anti-Chinese panic to me...

Are You Latin-Arabian?

2006-11-19T09:57:00.000-05:00

Of course, with the mass conversion of Chiapas to Islam and the Lebanese takeover of Mexican telecoms and cinema, it was only a matter of time...

Here's the Rough Guide's latest fusion compilation, The Rough Guide to Latin-Arabia. Aurgasm clued me in to it, and you can listen here to the entire cut by Moroccan-born musician Rhany, a cover of Compay Segundo's "Chan Chan" (popularized in the Wim Wenders film Buena Vista Social Club). Rhany was born in Marrakech but lives in Tunisia and Paris. He traveled to Cuba to record with Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer, et al.

But apart from all this "Spanish inflection," it's still nice to identify with a North African city in which most people actually do speak Spanish..

Hawg

2006-11-14T05:08:00.000-05:00

This is a nice shot of Tony Ugoh, the latest SEC offensive lineman of the week.

Ugoh, a senior from Houston, played 65 snaps and graded out at 95 percent. He was 100 percent on pass protection and 93 percent on running plays. He also had seven knockdown blocks.

From Hogwired.

(For those of you who missed it: Arkansas is currently as dominant as this picture suggests. They're in the running for a national title.)

Best Music Writing

2006-11-13T12:29:00.000-05:00

This book claims to contain the best music writing in 2006.

wayne&wax's celebrated "we use so many snares" blog entry--in which he uses his patented "What's that sound like? Here's what it sounds like" technique--is featured. Go here to find most of the other chapters online.

(The "claims" above speaks to the book's claim to be exhaustive and/or representative, not to the excellence of the writing, which is assured, at least for wayne&wax's chapter.)

Muslim opens his Hip Hop Shop

2006-11-11T07:20:00.000-05:00

Just after I leave Tangier, Muslim opens his own Hip Hop Shop!

Here's a link to his website:

"Muslim Shop," the first store in Tangier dedicated exclusively to selling Hip-Hop clothing and accessories: T-shirts, XXL pants, hats, bags... Everything, really! Muslim explains: "Need justifies this project. Personally, since I was a kid until now as a rapper, I've had trouble getting what I wanted in Tangier." Thanks to his strong will, the support of a friend, and the efforts and courage of many, the shop is now open.

If you're in Tangier or the area, don't miss this opportunity. Muslim is in the shop, where he serves customers himself, and believe me, the ambience is great! All that's left to do is connect, since Muslim holds promise to be one of the heavies in the future, whether solo, in a group, or in his crew!

ChadStoune has a video introduction.

Election Atonement

2006-11-08T07:57:00.000-05:00

Ohio has tried to atone for electing Dubya in 2004. They have done so by voting in nearly every Democrat they could--no matter how untested--and throwing out almost all the Republican bums, even the (few) reasonable and competent ones. Yay Democracy!

Governor: I understand why they rejected Ron Blackwell. He's a right-wing ideologue, too close to the colossal incompetence of Bob Taft, and even closer to some of Ohio's abysmally seamy corruption scandals. Corruption is typical in Ohio, but some of this stuff the past two years has been enough to turn the stomachs of even the state's most jaded politicos. To tell the truth, I never heard enough about Ted Strickland to convince me why he was better than anyone else apart from Blackwell. But with Blackwell so far behind in the polls, it really didn't matter. So I voted Green.

Senator: This is the one that really bowls me over. Two-term Senator Mike DeWine was one of the "Gang of Fourteen" that opposed Bush on a judicial appointments, and he's shown himself to be both independent and an accurate representative of his constituents, a moderate and reasonable Republican. So how did the voters reward him? "Throw the bum out!" Sherrod Brown has impeccable left credentials, but his campaign ads focused either on his opponent's supposed failings or his own opposition to the war. Now, I'm as down on the war in Iraq as the next leftist academic Middle East expert (wannabe). But that doesn't mean I'm going to reduce myself to voting for a one-issue candidate. I actually kinda liked the spirit of the dialogue and conviviality that DeWine tried to inject into Congress's poisonous partisan atmosphere. But I knew DeWine would lose so I voted for him, as much a reward for standing apart last year as for anything. (No Greens were running.)

"Ethnic Kurds"!?

2006-11-07T07:23:00.000-05:00

I heard this on National Pentagon Radio this morning: Saddam Hussein is again in court today, this time for an incident that resulted in the death of hundreds of "ethnic Kurds."

What is an ethnic Kurd? How is an ethnic Kurd different from any other kind of Kurd?

Since we can talk about Navajos, Manchurians, Berbers, Bantus, and other sociolinguistic ethnic groups without the ethnic prefix being necessary, why do we need to have it here? Google "ethnic navajos" and there's nothing, while "ethnic kurds" returns 95,000 hits.

Does this nomenclature reflect the pressure of the Turkish foreign ministry on American public radio newswriters?

I'm assuming to talk about "Kurds"--Turkish Kurds, for example, instead of Kurdish Turks--would be too much to take, given the close identification between Turkish nationality and Turkish ethnicity. Use of the noun instead of the adjective would be taken as proof that the writer supports Kurdish nationalism! Even the other option, to say that Saddam killed "Iraqi Kurds," could be taken as evidence of bias. It's as if the writer must introduce the adjective "ethnic" in order to reassure worried listeners that those killed were merely speakers of the Kurdish language and not violent PKK separatists...

Such close identification between nation and ethnicity would be far less likely in, for example, Syria, Egypt, or (still?) Iraq, the classic Arab nationalist states.

Which brings us back to the evilness (and counter-intuitiveness) of the current ethnic cleansing in Iraq: Where did all this come from? I have my ideas... And yes, this version does have something to with media, colonialism--of which Saddam was an agent--and self-fulfilling prophecies.

Is this the America we believe in?

2006-11-04T07:28:00.000-05:00

Link it.

China-Africa Trade

2006-11-03T08:05:00.000-05:00

Interesting map.

One guy I talked with in Tangier said African leaders like to work with China because the Chinese don't ask uncomfortable questions.

But Ghana has been trying to build the Bui Dam for 40 years, and only now--with Chinese money--does it look like the dam's going to be built. It's hard to argue with that kind of support.

Index of Civil Conflict

2006-11-02T07:12:00.000-05:00

From the New York Times.

Back in the Day...

2006-10-31T08:18:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid and this guy was riding through the gates of the city on a colt...

Our typical response, upon hearing that some official had been responsible for causing financial loss to the state, was "We go take him for firing squad!"

Oh, how times have changed. Today I'm hearing three stories:

First, the US has probably been subsidizing and arming Iraqi militias. Although someone at some point might have thought, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't just hand out guns to young Iraqi men haphazardly," this glimmer of lucidity was shortly followed by, "Nah, who cares? What's the worst that can happen?"

Second, the Interior Department has given up reducing its illegal subsidy of oil and natural gas companies. Apparently lawyers for private firms are shocked, since they're going forward in their lawsuits to call the companies to task for underpaying royalties. But the department's auditors have been ordered to stand down, even though they're confident they would win. We're looking at losses in the billions.

But finally, a great victory in the battle against corruption! Here in Ohio, the federal government has been cracking down on state errors in food stamp administration that led to losses. The state has in turn come down hard on the counties, and is requiring the counties to make up the difference. The counties agree that they should pay for their mistakes, but they wonder whether, instead of paying out of pocket, they could just have their future disbursement of food stamp money reduced by the amount of the penalty.

As we used to say, "Kalabuli Man (corrupt official)? We go cut his head!"

Harem Scarum

2006-10-27T09:14:00.000-05:00

I had to post a link to my favorite Youtube video right now: MC Hammer's Pray, in which the Hammer wears the pants while the girls (in his harem?) dance.

I first saw this video on a friend's TV in 1990 in Zuarungu, northern Ghana, replayed on the national TV station.

(Enjoy while it lasts, kids: Youtube is going completely corporate!)

Leaning Wit It

2006-10-25T07:16:00.000-05:00

This is fun. (Thanks wayne&wax.) Atlanta-based rappers Dem Franchize Boys have this video to their song "Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It." The video's fun, with the catchy dance that might challenge the mighty Macarena...

What really gets me going is the fashion aesthetic of the video. I came of age during NWA, Eazy-E, Geri curls, big jackets, parachute pants, unlaced high-top sneakers, chains, earrings, etc. "MC Hammer" and 2 Legit 2 Quit (pictured). It's just a nostalgia trip for me to see these crazy young kids doing it again.

So in the spirit of the RunDMC/Aerosmith protomashup of "Walk This Way," we might appreciate this mashup: Dem Franchize Boyz vs. Korn, "Coming Undone Wit It"

Public Enemy No. 1

2006-10-22T14:11:00.000-05:00

If a new law passes, New York City will ban Crisco use in restaurants, although it appears that it might remain on store shelves, for a while at least.

This might make it hard for vegans to enjoy pastries, since the only substitute for Crisco is butter or lard. A total ban on Crisco would also radically reshape how busy people cook, since--as anyone who's ever watched Jacques and Julia knows--when you make your crust with butter, you have to chill the crust in between mixing it and rolling it out.

Further, I think such a law might oppress those of a certain class position who were raised with Crisco. I know, the diet was subsidized and legislated... But one could say the same for "Border" (Tex-Mex) food, with its tripe, mystery meat, and "refried beans," the culinary leftovers from white society's desire for filets and T-bones.

And some might argue that tripe is also dangerous. But just try to ban it, I dare you...

I say, rise up in defense of Crisco!

"We must unite against the common enemy..."

2006-10-22T06:11:00.000-05:00

"The Judean Peoples' Front?!"

"No no, the Romans!"

According to Juan Cole, in signing the Mecca Declaration, Sunni and Shi'i clerics from Iraq have resolved that, essentially, there is no major difference between Shi'i and Sunni Muslims. This is a truly historic landmark. Cole cites a story in al-Sharq al-Awsat. Here's another story.

And speaking of conquerors of the Middle East, get over to LN's always-hip Strange Land to see an animated flash map of Middle East empires over the past 5000 years. (Even though it does leave off all invasions since 1948, including US, Israeli, Moroccan, Iraqi, Turkish, and other attempted or achieved conquests...)

Blad Schizo

2006-10-20T07:07:00.000-05:00

Last week's Tel Quel cover says a lot. Blad Schizo, or "Schizo-Land," is also the title of the recent punk-ska-surfer anthem by Hoba Hoba Spirit, a Casablanca band. Listen here.

Loosely translated from the lead opinion piece:

"Schizophrenia's 'local sauce'

"There is thus a Moroccan schizophrenia, which we maintain even as it influences us. All the symptoms are there, mixed up in a local sauce. Psychiatrist Mekki Touhami describes the specifics: 'Many schizophrenics are locked up, charged through their delirium, in a neo-reality. In our society, this neo-reality often takes the form of a persecution complex: the jnoun [evil spirits] live in me and control me, my neighbors are out to get me, my wife is poisoning and bewitching me.' It's easy to find the same paranoiac attitude in general public policy speeches. Behind each public action, we seek the conspiracy, the conflict of interest, the hidden motives. But these are logical attitudes, when we recall the opacity which prevailed for a long time in our mode of governance. Recall that Tazmamart [a secret prison] was supposed not to exist, and then became the subject of several best-sellers and documentaries on our national television stations. Not so long ago, the famous 'foreign powers' were invoked to explain all of our dysfunctions. Today, official speech has been rationalized: no one dares to fall back on such language anymore. Instead, the street has taken over such duties: Are Arabs doing badly? It's Israel's fault. It's George Bush's fault."

Yogurt Scripts

2006-10-19T05:25:00.000-05:00

I give you a complex of commercial language and alphabet use in Moroccan product packaging:

Two occurrences of Roman script:
- Moufid, an Arabic word meaning useful or beneficial
- OCT, date stamp

Arabic script, representing French loan words and Arabized French words:
- danun (“Dannon”)
- vitaminat (feminine plural, “vitamins”)
- kalsyum (“calcium”)
- vanila (“vanilla”)
- gh (abbreviation for ghram, “grams”)

Arabic script, representing Arabic words:
- dirham (itself a root word from the Greek drachma)
- yustahliku qabla 27 OCT (“to be consumed before Oct. 27”)
- yuhfizu fi daraja 6° c (“to be kept below 6° C”)

I guess I just find it kind of funny that Roman script is used to write an Arabic word, even as Arabic script is used to write non-Arabic words.

Atlantic Charter

2006-10-18T06:20:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of Hawgblawg's reposting of the Magna Carta's section on habeus corpus, I present here the text of the Atlantic Charter (1941).

"The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.

"First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;

"Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;

"Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

"Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

"Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement, and social security;

"Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;

"Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

"Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea, or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments."

Happy First Bloggiversary!

2006-10-16T08:37:00.000-05:00

Exactly one year ago, in my first blog post ever I reviewed Bill Mallonee's show at Scottie McBean's in Worthington (Columbus), Ohio.

Here are the lyrics to the 6/8 mandolin-and-pedal steel country swing ballad "Sick Of It All," one of his songs off the 1997 re-release of the Vigilantes' most famous album, 1993's Killing Floor (which, I'm happy to see, is now out of print and worth $18):

Guess I should get up and cut the grass
Autumn is upon us, summer breathin her last
Prices goin higher and factories shuttin down
My kids are gettin hungry and friends are leavin town

Yes I'm a regular in the tavern in my neighborhood
Lately goin down there more than I should
Dan Rather used to tell me what was meant by it all
Now I just nurse a buzz and I stare at the wall

And I know I've cleaned my guns a lot this fall
But you know how it is when you get so
Sick of it all

Insurance ran out and we're not covered
My savings and loan she just went under
Lord I know I'm a sinner and I know I'm a fool
But how could an honest man pay up on these dues

Gonna make for us a little place in the sun
Now I'm making little ones out of the big ones
History teacher told me once what I should hope in
Now it's this lock stock and barrel and the promises broken

I guess I should get up and go get the mail
Long since overdue bills creditors screaming for theirs
Sure takes a toll on a love carved in stone
I'm wondering how she'd do living alone

I know I've cleaned my guns a lot this fall
You know how it is when you're so
Sick of it all

Reggaeton Fi Tanja

2006-10-14T12:40:00.000-05:00

(This is my official Last Tangier Posting. I typed it up before packing my computer into my suitcase. Then I didn't get to publish it before I flew out, because they have cancelled consigned bags at Casa Voyageurs train station. Among the most annoying and underrated results of transportation-focused terrorism is the unannounced cancellation of luggage consignment and lockers. I ended up going directly to the Muhammad V airport and killing 10 hours there... In any case, on with the blog post!)

I blogged recently about reggaeton, the Puerto Rican style that mixes reggae-dancehall, rap, and “Latin” sounds. I thought I was hearing it in the Tangier streets and in cars going by, but since I don’t speak Spanish I really couldn’t tell. I just listened to the samples on wayne&wax and thought I recognized the sound...

But on my last night in Tangier I found a great CD stand with almost everything I had been looking for. Along with CDs from Muslim and Zanka Flow, I also found:

Koupable, the latest from hotshot Algerian rapper Lotfi Double Kanon. (This is really great—probably the best yet I’ve heard for rapping in Arabic. If you understand Arabic, try to find and get a listen to the first track alone, “Intro.” It will blow your mind.);

The Kachla compilation CD (with contributions from DJ Suspect, Kachla, O-din, La-N, Islamic Gun, Arab Souljaz, La’arbee, Mojahid, Harbee, Zanka Flow, and Muslim);

Bigg’s latest, Mgharba ‘Tal Moute, and...

Reggaeton Beats Vol. 2! There were a couple of reggaeton compilation/remix discs—I chose the one that identified the musicians. Here’s a list of featured DJs and artists:

DJ Glenn B
MC Brainwave
R. Kelly
Luny Tunes
Papa A.P.
Hancel
The Horny Crew
Pablo Bachatta
Raw Jawz
Andy’s Val
C.U.V.A.
DJ Frank
Bimbo
Chacka
Raw Jawz
Leki
Brainpower
Immorales
Beef
Mega D
Misterio Y Hancel
K-Liber
RO-L
Partysquad
Sendar
Reezz & the GMC

DJ Glenn B seems to be the major force behind this compilation. The titles to the last three songs include the phrases “Wat Wil Je Doen Dan,” “In Het Gebouw—Bling Bling—Draai’t,” and “Groeten Uit Purmerend”... These words do not appear to be in Spanish. I am led to suspect that DJ Glenn B is based somewhere in Belgium or the Netherlands, and further that both of these Benelux countries are on the route that Reggaeton is following on its way to Morocco...

Going Postal

2006-10-03T19:23:00.000-05:00

I've added a new link to my blogroll, Aurgasm, after hearing one track, of "postal workers cancelling stamps at the University of Ghana post office."

(I've also added wayne&wax, long overdue.)

I’ll fight like hell to hide that I’ve given up...

2006-10-02T19:25:00.000-05:00

On his 2005 album I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning, two songs by Bright Eyes (Conor Oberst) mention waking up to songs playing on the clock radio: "Old Soul Song" and "Another Travelin’ Song."

"Old Soul Song (For the New World Order)":

Gray light new day leaks through the window.
Some old song comes on the alarm clock radio.
We walked the forty blocks to the middle
Of the place we heard that everything would be

...

We left before the dust had time to settle
And all the broken glass swept off the avenue
And on the way home, held your camera like a Bible
Just wishin’ so bad that it held some kind of truth

This ballad recounts the story of a skeptic tagging along with his friend to an anti-globalization protest. The friend is documenting the protest with a camera, trying to fix and record "some kind of truth." Such documentation is also the task of Oberst himself as lyricist of this story song, which documents and preserves the actions and emotional states of young protestors who wake up early in order to "walk the forty blocks to the middle." The skeptical narrator and his friend are equally isolated from the cohesive groups that have organized the protest--perhaps a typical experience?--and although the friend is a true believer, the narrator lacks confidence that the protest will achieve anything. But he woke up to an "Old Soul Song," and perhaps this allowed him to feel vaguely hopeful.

"Another Travelin’ Song":

...

Well I guess the best that I can do now is pretend that I’ve done nothing wrong
And dream about a train that’s gonna take me back where I belong

...

Well I dream of dark on the horizon, I dream the desert where the dead lay down
I dream of prostituted child touching an old man in a fast-food crowd
Oh yeah I dreamt the ship was sinking, there was people screaming all around
And I awoke to my alarm clock. It was a pop song, it was playin’ loud.

The music of this rollicking pop anthem, the musical equivalent of a road movie, contrasts strongly to the ethereal and pensive atmosphere of the previous song. (Meanwhile, the lyrics provide a precise counterpoint to the music.) But again, we find the device of waking up to a song on the radio. In this case, however, it’s a "pop song playin’ loud"--bad music, the precise opposite of the good music of the "Old Soul Song." The narrator goes to sleep frustrated at his inability to write. He hopes that sleep will bring inspiration, or at least forgiveness--he intends to dream about riding the Freedom Train, a journey to liberation, eternal love and redemption. But once he's asleep, all conscious volition goes out the window. Instead of healing, his dreams bring painful nightmares--terrifying, ugly phantasms that are awfully realistic: the despair of being able to see only "dark on the horizon," isolation and apocalypse in a barren land, poverty and sexual exploitation in a brightly commoditized and hellish shopping mall, and finally the desperate terror of a sinking ship--in other words, no release at all from his cage. We can read the pop song, the bad music, as the source of all this darkness.

I never used to wake up with a clock radio. I’m not sure why, but I think it might have something to do with fear. You see, when you wake up to music, the music enters your dreams and provokes them. I can’t consciously recall most of my dreams past the first three or four seconds after waking up. If it was a good dream, I can spend the next five minutes waking up to a vague, peaceful yearning as I try and fail to remember the lovely details of imaginary stories, histories, sensations—forgetting more than I can remember. The only ones that are strong enough to remember tend to be very dark. Then, I wake up sobbing about terror, death, and loss.

But beyond the unreliability of talk radio or NPR, radio music can hold even more danger for that fragile state between waking and sleeping. If I wake to a good song, maybe one like the Old Soul Song, my whole day can start well. But if a bad song pierces my subconscious, a song I really dislike--usually a pop song playin’ loud--I can wake up in a dark mood, starting the day off badly.

But no radio station programs all good songs. Nearly all FM radio stations seem determined to play bad songs most of the time, with an occasional good song to keep up our hopes for beauty and sweetness, to tempt us to keep listening. So our compromise has been to tune to a reliable station that programs its early morning slot to the exact same set of songs day after day, inserting new songs very slowly, month by month. That way, my subconscious can come to expect the bad song, and it’s less of a shock. Additionally, it predicts the next two or three songs, and forces me awake and into the shower before the really bad song comes on and ruins my mood.

My New Favorite French Word:

2006-10-01T19:13:00.000-05:00

Fatweyer (verb; "to issue a fatwa")

Context? Hassan Hamdani's latest Humeur column in Tel Quel ("A fatwa set in concrete"), about Egyptian televangelist Youssef Al Qaradawi's latest proclamation that it's OK for Muslims to go into interest-bearing debt in order to procure housing.

"Mais Youssef Al Qaradawi a été rappelé à l'ordre par l'Iftaa, réunion d'oulémas marocains, seule habilitée à fatweyer de Tanger à Lagouira."

"But Youssef Al Qaradawi has been called to order by Iftaa, the Moroccan Ulema Council, which has sole authority to [issue fatwas] between Tangier and Lagouira" (extreme northern and southern towns in Morocco).

(Of course, this is "World French" and thus completely free from would-be "gatekeepers" like l'Academie Francaise...)

Hookem

2006-09-29T19:33:00.000-05:00

For AWG...

Thinking About Mustafa

2006-09-24T18:04:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the comment of an anonymous reader, I found this page by a "Ya Mustafa" fanatic in Switzerland, Messioun.

I now have another CD to track down. Think About Mustapha is a 1994 French album that features nine covers of the song, including (in the words of a reviewer):

"- two silly rock N roll (described in the APC website as psychedelic surf!) or punk rock interpretions by Greg Garrigues and Jean Touitou himself.

"- two versions close to the original single (but less kitsh, perhaps) by Jonathan Richman and french pop-rai star Rachid Taha.

"- a semi acoustic minimalist performance (very hard to describe, in fact) by Pascal Comelade.

"- a slow dark dub track by Solo (with two bonus beats at the end of the CD). Perhaps the most hard to recognize version and the weakest track of this compilation.

"- at last, the best (of course), a beautiful, 10 minutes long version by Skopelitis and Laswell (with others musicians that are not listed in the CD sleeve). This is the most serious interpretation of Mustapha, more close to the traditionnal melody than to the sixties hit. It is fascinating to hear what BL and NS can do with just a nice pop song : a beautiful, ambient jewel, certainly the best moment of this CD."

Bill Laswell resurfaces at an opportune time for me, since his work with Gnawa musicians back in the 1990s was absolutely key.

Additionally, this "chase the covers" game has become a legendary form of sport for UT-Austin graduate students in ethnomusicology. The journey made by a melody and chorus through the winding back alleys of lounge-singer repertoires and throwaway pop singles can be absolutely stunning and yield high-quality grist for the mill of global-culture analysis through music. If you don't believe me, see the terrific example of Steven Feld (1996), "Pygmy POP. A Genealogy of Schizophonic Mimesis," Yearbook for Traditional Music 28:1-35.

Shabab ma shi kebab...

2006-09-19T12:25:00.000-05:00

Which means, "boys should not be barbecued." Overheard in Tangier over the weekend. For a full explanation, write me an email and I'll tell the whole crazy story...

But in other news, I'm really getting into Muslim's lyrics. Today we translated the lyrics of "Flouss" (off Bghini Wella Krahni) into formal Arabic so I could understand them better. Flouss means money.

The song's main point (worked into the ground on this track, perhaps) is that money is the cause for most bad things that happen in Morocco, which gives Muslim the opportunity to list the various failures of Moroccan social and governmental structures, as well as international failures. In other words, one might say to complicate the matter that dependence on the generally equivalent form of value (money) to the exclusion of other valuations leads to social anomie.

You may be able to get some downloads here. For sure, Muslim's one-time collaborator and the "godfather" of Moroccan rappers, Bigg, is all over the place.

The track sounds dark and heavy, unrelieved growling to a heavy beat, despite a couple of climaxes. But even Muslim can't sustain the bleak tone, and ends self-consciously, even laughing at himself--as much as he ever might laugh--since of course "flouss sabbab album muralbum" ("money causes competition among rappers") and thus his own success, or failure.

Seeking Arabic sha'abi song

2006-09-15T11:55:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't been posting--too busy! Right now I'm hot on the trail of a track from the 1960s or 1970s, "Mustafa Ya Mustafa." It makes an appearance at the end of one of the tracks I'm working on, mentioned previously, by Barry: "Johnny Walker Bush." I didn't recognize it at first because I didn't know the original.

I've found a cover from 2003, recorded in Belgium by Moroccan pop star Khalid Bennani (pictured), but I'm looking for the original. (You can listen to a 20-second clip at the site above.) My friend says he's sure the original song was Egyptian, but neither he nor the record shop guy can remember the name.

It's not one of the "big" names (Halim, Oum Kulsum, and the like), but rather a sha'abi (popular) singer. Any ideas?

Americans, the People Without History

2006-09-09T11:28:00.000-05:00

And American forgetfulness reaches new heights: In honor of 9/11, I reproduce here the month-old story...

According to the Paris pan-African weekly Jeune Afrique, a Washington Post poll found that 30 percent of Americans have forgotten the year in which the Twin Towers fell. It appears that, like computer hardware, recent political history also goes obsolete after three years.

Ninety-five percent of those polled knew that the events happened on “Nine-Eleven,” but

16 percent said they couldn’t remember the year at all,
6 percent gave a year prior to 2001, and
8 percent gave a year after 2001.

The poll was conducted to coincide with the release of Oliver Stone’s film World Trade Center, which I’m looking forth to getting on DVD within the next few days. I hope that somehow Stone managed to get in somewhere the year in which the events took place, since it appears that Americans really only pay attention to entertainment anymore...

(The bright side? Hey, at least we still have the highly respected Prof. Letterman and Dr. Leno to analyze important world events!)

Interesting last couple of days

2006-08-29T13:43:00.000-05:00

Too much has been going on and not enough time to write it all up! (I also have pics that I need to Flickr, but that takes time too.)

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be invited to a party at Dar Gnawa where members of Embryo, a Germany-based musical collective, jammed with the members of Dar Gnawa into the wee hours.

I also met a couple of Gnawi MREs (that's Marocains Resident a l'Etrangere, or Moroccans who live abroad) at the party who are holding down Gnawa knowledge in Spain. One of them recommended I get a couple of CDs by Muslim, a local Tanjawi rapper, which I did today, got the one he recommended, Bghini oula Krahni ("Love me or hate me"), as well as another.

Then today I got into the Legation Museum early for some research, found out some interesting sources, but I had to leave before noon to meet a friend for lunch at his home. We chatted afterward, found he knows some important people for me to meet, and then we started into a rambling review of, for some reason, war films... Which led us by way of The Battle of Algiers and Revolution to Platoon and Apocalypse Now...

Which reminded me of the scuttlebutt: Francis Ford Coppola was in Tangier this summer buying a home in the Madina.

Etymologies and Then Some

2006-08-28T08:35:00.000-05:00

(This is a response to the comment on the previous posting.)

Paul, thanks for your confidence! There are still many problems with etymology, though, even within eclectic and poetic nonlinear approaches...

First, the total number of roots is probably lower than 8000--waw-waw-waw, for example, wouldn't work as a root, and there are tons of other nonsensical combinations of three consonants. On the other hand, there are some quadrilateral roots, and also some new roots that started out as nouns borrowed from Turkish, Persian, French, etc., that were then "Arabized" into a morphological standard, even though many of these haven't been accepted into formal Arabic yet. Finally, there are tons of loan words that keep getting rejected, but many have slipped through into orthodox texts after many years. Many of these are nouns, and are not Arabized and elaborated into verbs and adjectives, and thus their etymologies are a lot easier to spot.

One interesting related process is the creation of "false etymologies." Because no colloquial system that I know of reproduces all the consonants of Arabic "faithfully," many differences in written form are masked in colloquial pronunciation. For example, the dhal and tha sounds (voiced and voiceless linguadental fricatives?) turn into very strange and distinctive z and s sounds in Lebanese Arabic. In Moroccan Arabic, they much more regularly turn into simple d and t sounds, even though these already exist in formal Arabic as dal and ta. Lebanese like to argue that even though they say tha wrong (being too influenced by Aramaic), they're still less wrong than Moroccans, who would not be able to distinguish tha from ta in everyday speech, apart from context. In other words, in all spoken Arabic you find some homophones, and in everyday etymologies these distant roots are joined because they sound alike. There's a long and celebrated history of some notorious French and American scholars who worked in North Africa without bothering to learn how to read and write Arabic. They got snookered into buying whole-heartedly into some of these everyday etymologies and they went on to elaborate some really charming little theories. Over the centuries, these scholars have provided the Arabic literati with no end of amusement.

Further, for hundreds of years, Arabic linguists did not really pay much attention to the Arabian peninsula (where today pronunciation of spoken varieties continues to diverge sharply from formal Arabic), and were instead based in Baghdad (Persian influence), Damascus (Aramaic influence), and Cairo (Coptic influence). As a result, sometimes the semantic boundary lines between roots are quite obscured, and implications and textures cross back and forth. Even for Arabists, important questions remain unanswered.

For example, in Impasse of the Angels (Chicago, 1997, p. 269), linguistic anthropologist and Arabic language scholar Stefania Pandolfo comes across the Moroccan word "frag" and explains its origin. Since g does not exist in formal Arabic, we must search for the third radical in the root: F-R-?. Egyptian Arabic gets its g from jim (J), but Gulf Arabic gets its g from qaf (Q). Since in Moroccan Arabic "frag" implies "a gap, a separation," Pandolfo proposes F-R-Q, to separate, part, or divide. Since Morocco is closer to Egypt than to the Gulf, though, when I read the word I was thinking about F-R-J, which means to open, part, separate, or cleave. While FRQ and FRJ seem to be related, I thought FRJ was a more likely root, since associated derivations show the emphasis in FRQ to be on the sides that have been divided, while the associated derivations of FRJ seems to focus more on the empty space itself. But then I thought of ghayn. What about F-R-Gh?

I thought of ghayn because I have found that many French speakers, including Moroccans, tend to mispronounce this velar fricative as a uvular fricative ("The French R"), pushing it farther and farther back from g. This tendency has had direct implications on my little field of Gnawa studies, since the "uvular ghayn" obscures the relationship between "Ghana"--pronounced in Arabic the way it's written, "ghana"--and Gnawa. For that matter, such arguments also separate the spelling of Ghana from the way it is currently pronounced by its citizens: "gana." In other words, French speakers tend to discount a relationship between gh and g, because they see a closer relationship between gh and r. Which is pretty far-fetched from a strictly Arabic perspective, where the ra is a rolled r, as in Spanish.

But F-R-Gh is also related in meaning to FRQ and FRJ: to be empty, void, to be vacant, used up, exhausted. Here, the focus is exclusively on the empty space, and its condition upon being emptied.

So there appears to be some relationship between the three roots, and moreover it appears to progress from fullness to emptiness or from wholeness to fragmentation, FRQ to FRJ to FRGh. Now I'm wondering whether F-R-G wasn't some original root in another language, perhaps Coptic, which was mispronounced by subsequent Arabic speakers who created FRQ, FRJ, and FRGh as ways to compensate for their inability to reproduce the g sound. Or maybe, horror of horrors, the origin is the Latin fragmentere... (And this is not out of the question, since of course most Medieval Arabic linguists were conversant in Greek and Latin, and many of the people who became Mediterranean Arabs had contact in one way or another with speakers of these languages.)

To Express or Communicate

2006-08-25T12:20:00.000-05:00

"An unjust decree was promulgated in the 'Moriscos' law, which ordered the eviction of the last remaining Andalucians and compelled them to cross the sea and emigrate to the lands of North Africa [after 1492]."

(From al-Bukhlakhi, Amhannad, in Mafkharat al-Rif: Al-Mujahid al-Maghribi Muhammad 'Abd al-Karim al-Khatabi [“The Pride of the Rif: The Moroccan Mujahid Muhammad Abdelkrim al-Khatabi”], Tangier: Matabi' al-Shamal, 2005, p. 12.)

A common Arabic word for "express," "declare," "voice," or "state clearly" is 'abbara / yu'abbiru. The form (morphology) is "Form 2," fa''ala, which has often been considered to express active intention or intensification. The root is 'ain-ba-ra, which in the simple form 'abara / ya'buru (or "Form 1") most commonly refers to fording a river, crossing a strait, or passing over or traversing an obstacle. This was the word I found in the passage above.

Thus, due to the striking harmony and elegant symmetry of Formal Arabic, in Form 2 the concept of "to cross" intensifies to yield something like "to make an object cross over an obstacle"—in a sense, to express an idea across a void.

We should not understand this crudely as yet another version of the idea that communication is successfully achieved by crossing boundaries between similar individuals: that once encoded carefully, a message can be sent across the abyss that divides each of us from one another, whereupon it is appropriately decoded by the receiver, with the result of perfect understanding.

Instead, I want to stress the tentative and partial connotations suggested by the image of fording a river or crossing a straight. Everyone knows such crossings are dangerous. When we see a friend off on a crossing, we can’t know for sure that everything will go smoothly.

Moreover, from the point of view of the mediator, the form and content of the message are really not that important. In this example, the ferry captain and crew are responsible for mediating, for making sure the cargo or passenger makes it across safely. Sometimes the ride is rough or the course is diverted, the ferry seeking any port in a storm. Occasionally, the boat sinks. But the key factors in the success of such an expression are not content, but rather medium and context. No matter how priceless the objects, no matter how well secured the cargo, the success of the crossing depends on the soundness of the vessel and the severity of winds and currents.

In fact, there is no perfect communication model. There is no discrete chain of "sender-message-receiver." Rather, there is a sender, a message, and mediation—and the media here could range from spoken words to texts to DVDs to online chat to video chat (which is at least triply mediated). On the other side, there are media, a message, and a receiver. Not only do these two sides inhabit different planes, but they also completely interlace and shift and interface with one another, and there is usually a lot of static, framing, and multitasking involved.

Moreover, the connections between each of the constituents of this anti-model are loose and never assured: Although we know that our receivers might have believed that they understood what they thought they heard, they probably have not yet realized that what they heard couldn’t possibly have been what we meant.

Finally, no common language can be assumed. We are crossing between two sides of a gulf, two banks of a strait, and the critical point is that communication occurs across it despite the absence of a common community. Communication must precede full understanding, and thus a fully shared language. In fact, it's only through communication that a shared language can be built, just as we make friends over the course of many conversations and interactions.

So I guess my point is that the Arabic word represents the idea that "communication" implies in a way that is superior to how the English word "communication" represents it, because the English term leads us to argue that a "common" language precedes communication.

OK, I have dissembled a bit here. The Arabic equivalent of "communication" is more properly found in the family of words stemming from the root waw-sad-lam, wasala / yasilu. The meanings involve "uniting," "joining," "combining," and many others all the way up to ittisalat, or telecommunications. But wasala is also a crisp and discrete root that imagines connections and links without implying any necessary commonality of the things that are linked. It’s just that 'abara is so much more tangible and poetic and evocative.

(For my brother, who likes to bash spurious reasoning-from-etymology that pretends to establish "what a word really means" by digging up the bones of Latin and Greek roots: This is not an etymological argument. Just as it’s pretty obvious to any everyday English speaker that "communication" contains "commun," which sounds like and indexes "common," the Arabic relationships are similarly clear to an everyday Arabic speaker. Hey, if Chomsky can pose himself as the final arbiter of what an "everyday speaker" knows, so can I, right?)

Other clarity...

2006-08-18T09:24:00.000-05:00

I've been hearing a lot of Spanish pop in Tangier. I assumed that it came from Tangier's proximity to Spain, and the fact that most of the FM stations you can pick up here are Spanish.

But then I got some mix CDs from Marrakesh, and there was a lot of Spanish music there too... And not just Spanish pop, but also hip-hop and other more interesting styles.

So here's wayne&wax, a blogger who commented on hawgblawg, and his discussion of a Puerto Rican reggaeton group called Calle 13. He has video and music samples that demonstrate its own influences from Brazilian musics...

This all suggests to me that while some of this Latin American music might be mediated through Spain (for the Rif and the north of Morocco), much is also coming more directly to the rest of Morocco through more conventional sources--namely, the Internet.

Lovely Day

2006-08-16T11:04:00.000-05:00

This is one of the nicest days I've seen yet in Tangier--the reason we have a quarter of a million tourists in town right now. Last night it got down close to 60, and I had to shut the window (that's been open since mid-July) or else get a blanket.

Today it's 79 degrees and extremely clear. One of those days when you can see not only Spain... Not only the sand of the beaches... But the white breakers on the beaches, the roads over the mountains, the little houses of Tarifa, all four ferries--all in a row--stretched between Tangier's port and Tarifa's, 8 miles away.

Tel Quel Rawks!

2006-08-11T08:41:00.000-05:00

(OK, it’s less rock than it is a hybrid fusion of hip-hop, funk, Gnawa, raggamuffin, rai, rap, reggae, R&B, punk, bhangra, folk, shaabi, and pop... But you get the idea.)

At the end of July Tel Quel released its 116-page July-August super-edition (25 dirhams/$3), which enables the journalists to engage in the sacred Moroccan middle-class ritual of taking off the month of August. The edition included a free copy of the latest album, Sleeping System, from musical wunderkind Barry.

In 1994, Barry became one of the first Moroccan kids to rap in Darija, at the age of 14, with the rap posse Casa Muslims. He formed a reggae group called Barry and the Survivors in 2001, then launched a hard-core punk experiment, before finally settling into his current blend of Moroccan pop/reggae/raggamuffin fusion.

I already had shot video of portions of Barry’s set at Essaouira, where he opened for Algerian rai-rock-punk legend Rachid Taha. In particular, I got the entire performance sequence—including Barry’s explanations and exhortations, and the crowd’s exuberant reactions—of his hilarious, outlandish, and hard-hitting rocksteady political anthem "Johnny Walker Bush."

I had been feeling pretty defeatist whenever I thought of working through the video of this song in addition to Barry’s chitchat with the crowd—discerning, comprehending, transcribing, then translating the dense Casablanca street darija (like members of Nass al-Ghiwane, Barry grew up in the legendary working-class quarter of Hay Mohammadi)—and I was putting off getting started until my friends at Dar Gnawa got back from their France-Germany tour and could help me out.

But one of the tracks on Sleeping System is a studio version of "Johnny Walker Bush," and the liner notes include the lyrics in Moroccan Arabic, in Arabic script. This is a first for me, for a Moroccan CD to include lyrics, and particularly lyrics in Darija. Anytime you can find Darija in commercially successful publications, it’s a major point. (It’s also lifesaver for someone like me who always feels about one language short of being bilingual...) So I was overjoyed—a lot of work has already been done, and now I also have an "official" version to test against the live one. I’m still going to need extensive help from a young Tanjawi hip enough to break through all the slang...

Last night, though, I really hit the jackpot. In July Tel Quel also published a 196-page "Le Best Of" edition (50 dirhams/$6) that reprises the editors' favorite stories from the last five years of the magazine's existence. This edition includes some tasty extras:

1. "Know Your Rights," a booklet published in collaboration with Transparency Maroc and the Ministry of the Interior, which details all the rights and responsibilities of Moroccan subjects with regard to identity cards and other bureaucratic hurdles, all written in plain, conversational French;

2. Three posters:
(A) An organizational structure of the principal branches and offices of the Moroccan secret security services,
(B) A chart of the major Moroccan Islamist movements,
And (C), my favorite, a family tree detailing the various lineages, births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and current affiliations of all 31 more-or-less active official and unofficial political parties, with such cute little tidbits as:
"Union Constitutionelle: a center-right liberal party founded in 1983 and dictated to by the palace; Leader: Muhamed Abied; Ideology: only God knows";

3. And finally, the compilation CD Stoune 2: Le Best Of de la fusion marocaine, containing 14 tracks by Barry, Dayzine, Oum, Fnaire, Hoba Hoba Spirit, and H-Kayne, as well as a bonus video to the "Dear Mama" duet by Barry and Oum.

The "Dear Mama" video features Oum channeling Rita Marley via Erykah Badu--wearing a head wrap, singing in ethereal R&B Darija and perfectly accented American English--along with Barry singing and rapping in Darija. The liner notes puff it: "Inspired by Tarantino and manga," the video is "one part Mad Max, one part Bollywood, [with] amazing special effects and dancing... You would never dream that the entire video was conceived, designed and produced by three creative young Moroccans who are, on average, only 25 years old."

I had already been scouring music shops for Stoune 2 and Stoune, last year’s compilation, so now I’m already halfway there. Plus, the liner notes have informed me that Hoba Hoba Spirit have offered their entire debut album free for download here, but the download is currently out of service. (Their sophomore effort, Bled Skizo or Blade Schizophrene, should be out later this year.)

Like Sleeping System, Stoune 2 also has lyrics to all the songs, including the reggae track "Basta Lahya" by Hoba Hoba Spirit. Lahya, meaning "beard," is a term used by impudent kids to refer to excessively religious men; I think basta means "stop it" in Spanish. The three verses to the song--in Darija, French, and Darija--mount a series of attacks on the "beards" for ruining the country. Here’s the refrain:

Ayayaye I was born in Casa (short for Casablanca)
Ifriqi miya fal-miya ("One hundred percent African")
Had al-rigi hta huwa ("This reggae is where it's at")
Ayayaye al-hamdulillah mulana ("Praise God our Lord")
Had al-blad bladna ("This country is our country")
On vous l’abandonnera pas ("You'll never be abandoned")

I.e., in six short lines, a wondrous confusion of local, national, and transnational--and specifically pan-African--identifications; including a stock invocation of God, despite the verses’ anti-religious bent; pulled through to patriotism and even nationalism; and all expressed in a heady mix of Arabic, French, and English...

I.e., a goldmine for your friendly neighborhood cultural analyst to go to town on...

Thank you, Tel Quel.

PS: I can’t help reproducing a few important lines from the Hoba's cover of the haunting Nass al-Ghiwane song "Fine Ghadi Biya Khouya" (Where are you going, Brother?), which celebrates and laments migrant laborers. The gentle guitar-driven acoustic ballad (a la the U2 of Joshua Tree) intersperses old-school rap verses in French and Darija with a shaabi chorus chanted Nass-style in Darija, which finally devolves into the refrain from Bob Marley’s reggae anthem "Exodus," albeit changing the lyric to speak to the “movement of harraga” (migrants)... But the lines I especially like:
Un petit peu tradition/Un petit peu science-fiction ("Part tradition/Part sci-fi")
On est des cyber berberes perdus sur la terre ("Cyber berbers are lost upon the earth")
Jabu lina Internet hna fhamna Inter-bnet ("When we heard the word ‘Internet’ we understood ‘Inter-girls’")

Blockheaded Bracegirdles from Hardbottle and Other People Without History

2006-08-07T08:59:00.000-05:00

It's long been my opinion that J.R.R. Tolkein was something of a folklorist at heart, even an old-fashioned--or maybe not so old-fashioned--anthropologist and indigenous-rights activist. His alter ego in Lord of the Rings, Gandalf the Wizard, shares Tolkein's fascination with "little people."

In Tolkein's book The Fellowship of the Ring, I believe, the other wizards universally belittle Gandalf for his interest in the Hobbits of Middle-Earth, these "amazing creatures. You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you."

Apart from Hobbits, Elves, and Rangers, Gandalf's only true friend and ally is the wizard Radagast the Brown, who is friend to the animals, knows them and speaks to them. Radagast has taught Gandalf the animals’ languages and first introduced Gandalf to the giant eagles, who prove such useful deii ex machina in Tolkein’s plots. Just as Radegast can recite the lineages of the various animals, Gandalf avidly masters the histories and knowledges of the Hobbits--the local ideologies and practices of their everyday rural life. (I don’t think I need comment on the parallel drawn between "little people" and animals, their fellow denizens of the natural world.)

Gandalf last encounters Radagast on the way to his first meeting in The Fellowship with Saruman, then still their boss. In the novel it's striking to see how sharply the engaged interest of Radegast contrasts to the gentle but pointed ridicule of Saruman towards the great care Gandalf takes to learn about and spend time with Hobbits, beings so disregarded by the world. As Gandalf tells Frodo:

"Well, what can I tell you? Life in the wide world goes on much as it has this past Age, full of its own comings and goings, scarcely aware of the existence of Hobbits."

And then Gandalf adds:

"For which I am very thankful."

Indeed, by the end of The Return of the King, in the "The Scouring of the Shire" section--tragically, mistakenly omitted from the film--we see that the wide world does learn of the Shire and colonizes it, seeking to incorporate the Shire into the global capitalist system.

Under instructions from the imperialist colonizer Saruman, the Hobbits are transformed from subsistence farmers and small sharecroppers into factory laborers and are even enslaved to work on "pipeweed" plantations. Once put into place, this agricultural-industrial capitalist system outlives Saruman's fall from wizardry and even the destruction of Mordor, taking on its own life, as capital always does.

It takes heroic acts of tradition-reinvention and a sustained struggle of anti-progressive, counter-development, and violent guerilla action before the vanguard formed by Frodo, Sam, Pippen, and Merry--the latter two former criminals and wastrels now galvanized into capable military officers--is able to lead the Shire on back toward its backward-but-free original Edenic state.

(Now, Gandalf is of course an activist-scholar, a researcher as well as a political leader, and only his exhaustive archival efforts in the "stacks" at Minas Tirith enabled him in the beginning to identify the ring early enough to empower the Hobbits to save the world. But Tolkein’s defense of motivated scholarship is another story entirely...)

Men Leaving the Friday Afternoon Mosque

2006-08-05T11:38:00.000-05:00

I remember Tamale
Blazing bright light
Blinding white robes meet black hands and faces
Tall proud against brown walls and rusty red tin roofs
Polished black shoes pushing through red dust
The Walk – slow, regal, yet easy, comfortable
A head thrown back laughing
I feel proud too, and envious.

I remember Beirut
Warm light on tall pockmarked buildings
The south side of town
Dark hair and light faces
Moustaches
Walk out quickly, upset, impatient
Street and business clothes
Slacks, belts, long-sleeved shirts
I feel close to panic.

I see Tangier
Weak light in the muggy air
Traffic jam outside the Cervantes Center
Shania croons about any man of hers
East Asian, West African, Gulf Arab in red checked kufiyya
Young European with thin face and reddish blond cheek fuzz
Dads laugh joke pull along chubby toddlers
A baseball cap and a gray jellaba
Givenchy and Gauthier
T-shirt and baggy faded jeans
I feel invigorated.

Then a royal blue royal police van creeps up the street
And ends my reverie

I just got this down yesterday. It's not very subtle or polished. The first two sections are culled from my failing memory: Tamale, Northern Ghana, around the early 1980s, and Beirut in 1998. I was a little kid in Tamale going by looking out the window of the car. Beirut was on my failed attempt to get into the National Museum my third day in any Arab country ever. With no Arabic, I walked all the way from Hamra to the old race track and saw that the museum was still closed, so I started walking back through the residential parts of town. The Tangier scene is from yesterday, sitting at the Glasgow Cafe. Yes, "Any Man of Mine/Better Walk the Line" really did come on the cafe's sound system exactly as the mosque let out.

The last two lines mark my remembering that this mosque is attached to the regional headquarters of the ministry of Islamic studies, as well as a seminary and school.

Two Kings in Rabat

2006-08-03T07:32:00.000-05:00

I was talking to an Ivoirian friend last weekend, and he mentioned that the president of Ghana was currently in Morocco. I had heard no news of this, so I nodded and smiled. Turns out he was almost right...

The king of Ashanti, Osei Tutu II, is in Morocco on a 10-day state visit to Muhammad VI of Morocco on the occasion of the Fete du Trone last Monday. The celebrations have been going on all week.

Here are stories from Morocco and Ghana.

Panic!

2006-08-01T07:51:00.000-05:00

Just witnessed my first smugglers' panic along Rue Mexique...

Between my home at Hopital Espagnol and the main part of town where I spend most of my time lies the Msalla, a "medina outside the madina." Cars can go partway down the main street down the center ("Rue Msalla," a pedestrian-only open-air market after a few hundred feet) and on one tiny crooked lane cutting across it. Otherwise, Msalla is a densely populated maze of walkways completely impervious to motor traffic for nearly a mile, northwest to southeast. Along the northern boundary lies Rue Mexique.

So I'm walking along the wide sidewalk on the south side of Rue Mexique, doing the traditional thing of waiting for the shoppers to move out of the way so I can keep going straight. Next to the parked cars, young men have laid down tarps, on which they put clothing and other consumer goods. This is the informal economy: much of the merchandise has been smuggled in, and no taxes or fees are paid.

In In and Out of Morocco: Smuggling and Migration in a Frontier Boomtown, David McMurray describes and explains this economy working in Nador, a town on the Mediterranean coast next to the Spanish enclave of Melilia. He tells of the informal sellers coming to terms with the police. And indeed, the traffic cops are always working Rue Mexique, which is like a big carnival after 6 each evening.

But there must have been specific plainclothes customs officers today, because all the sellers started looking down toward the direction I had just come. Their tarps have knots on all four corners with ropes attached. One guy gathered two corners at one end, his friend did the same at the other, and they both raced for the nearest entrance to the nearest Qisariyya, a sort of enclosed shopping mall. These line Rue Mexique, and their back passages all lead to the narrow, twisted passages in the Msalla. After getting out of the way, I looked and looked for the cops, but I couldn't recognize them.

The fact that I've only today seen such a panic is evidence of the tolerance of the state towards this activity, which is on its way to extinction after 2010, when all import duties between the European Union and Morocco are to be lifted. I can imagine that many Moroccan industries producing for domestic consumption will fail after that. One can only hope that enough factories and other businesses are developed as well (in connection with Tanger Med, the new $2.5 billion port and free trade zone due to open in 2007) over the next four years so that the losses can be offset with some gains.

84128

2006-07-27T07:14:00.000-05:00

That's the number of my official signature on the books at the Baladiyya-Chellah in south-western downtown Tangier (municipal services office). I assume the numbering begins anew each month.

My landlady had already registered her signature on the rental contract, but I had to as well (with another 2 dirham tax stamp, three more official rubber stamps and one more official's initials). I then took the contract to the copy shop and got two copies. Then I went back and stood in line for the photocopy to be legalized, which meant it got four more rubber stamps and another official's initials. (I had already had the copies of my other other official documents legalized early that morning.)

Then I took my entire packet over to immigration to submit for my residency application.

The Hezbollians Are Coming!

2006-07-21T08:34:00.000-05:00

I really didn't want to address the latest edition of "Open-Mike-Gate" (AKA "The Shit Heard Round the World"), but Language Log and my mother have brought to my attention the emergence of the Hezbollian Menace. Here's the full selection:

"Listen, Syria is trying to get back into Lebanon, it looks like to me. We passed United Nations Resolution 1559, and finally this young democracy, or this democracy became whole, by getting Syria out. And there's suspicions that the instability created by the Hezbollian attacks will cause some in Lebanon to invite Syria back in, and it's against the United Nations policy and it's against U.S. policy."

As Language Log points out, through "toponomic suffixation" Hezbollians can now take a proud place next to Grecians, Kosovians, and East Timorians.

I might also take this moment to remind the President that the constitution of this "young democracy" was drafted in 1926 and that at least parts of Lebanon were represented at the League of Nations, which was famously shunned by the US Congress. There have always been problems with Lebanon's "confessional democracy," but I think we could say something similar for the United States, which extended voting rights to all adult US citizens only 41 years ago.

Just Like They Said...

2006-07-10T12:56:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I shared the spring plans of Youssef and Fabrice, young Camerounian emigrants, that they would wait for the cover of entertainment before trying their luck during the final rounds of the World Cup Championship. Their goal? To try to cross into Melilia, the enclave on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast "occupied" by Spain.

Sure enough, according the Tangier weekly Le Courrier du Nord, last Monday a group of around 70 sub-Saharan Africans stormed a section of Spain’s billion-dollar "border fence," a series of tilted 20-foot wire walls topped with razor wire and equipped with electronic sensors and guard towers. Border guards opened fire on the unarmed group. Two were killed.

One of those killed died en route to a Moroccan hospital. The other one actually made it to Spain--his body is undergoing an autopsy by Spanish police. The presumed cause of death being "gunshot wound," it’s very unlikely that Spanish border guards were responsible for the killings, since they don’t carry firearms. No names were released, and we may never know who the victims were or where they came from.

This was the first mass attempt on Melilia since October 2005, when six men were killed after Moroccan border guards opened fire on another group of around 100 unarmed sub-Saharan Africans trying to make it across the fence.

As a result, we have the curious situation whereby the Moroccan authorities are keeping nationals of several foreign countries from trying to leave Morocco and enter into another foreign country, and specifically a section of that foreign country’s territory that Morocco unofficially claims.

Moreover, that foreign country has already built massive military- (or prison!)-style fortifications between its frontier and Morocco’s, not exactly a friendly overture.

Finally, the Moroccan authorities appear willing to use deadly force against these foreign nationals, even though the border guards are under no immediate threat from the unarmed would-be emigrants, who are running away from them and from Moroccan territory.

All the while, the Spanish authorities (and all Europeans) are able to sit back and protest that their border guards aren’t even armed, so they can scarcely be held responsible for the killings.

Morocco, Land of the Free

2006-07-05T09:36:00.000-05:00

I was talking to a shopkeeper in Marrakech. Since his shop is in a former Jewish quarter of the city, talk turned to the current influx of Moroccan Jews and other Europeans into the madinas of Morocco. "Why are they coming back?" I asked. Here are his answers:

1. Many of those who went to Europe and America found it hard to live there--high taxes and not many business opportunities.

2. Those who went to Israel met with discrimination, because they were Sephardic Arabic-speakers.

3. Moreover, those in Israel are under daily threat from terrorism. They could be blown up at any time.

So why do they come to Morocco? Taxes are relatively low, the business climate is favorable, and it's a free, peaceful, and secure society.

Meanwhile, I have to wonder how free, peaceful, and secure America is when I read such a story as this, in which a naval veteran arrested for wearing the wrong kind of T-shirt to a Chicago VA medical center.

Dar Gnawa in Essaouira

2006-06-29T07:15:00.000-05:00

HPIM1079
Originally uploaded by sandema.

OK, here's Yahya's attempt to catch up with all the cool kids and do some Flickring... Above are Walid (Abdellah El Gourd's nephew), Ahmed El Gourd (his brother), and Muhammad from the Dar Gnawa troupe in Tangier.

15 Minutes...?

2006-06-24T08:20:00.000-05:00

More like a quarter of a second. In any case, my ugly mug played nationwide on Moroccan TV for a brief instant, just after midnight and right before the weather.

The occasion was a truly historical meeting and joint press conference between H'mida Boussou and Abdellah El Gourd, to which I was a witness. These two have had some differences and misunderstandings in the past, but that's all over now. I got some nice pictures, too.

The festival is really different, much more professional (albeit not enough for the professional musicians) than it was 4 years ago. Essaouira is looking much cleaner, with more paved spaces, grass, and shrubbery. The main stage has also been moved to Bab Marrakech, and the open dirt parking lot that used to be between the medina and the Hotel des Iles has been paved and planted over, and a KITEA store is now there (the Moroccan IKEA).

I can only assume that the classy Hotel des Iles didn't appreciate the main stage being so close, since it is a very quiet and respectable place, despite its main claim to fame being the fact/myth that Orson Welles downed a bottle of Scotch in the bar--now named for the director--every night during the shooting of Othello, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1952.

Blogging from the Gnawa Festival

2006-06-22T07:40:00.000-05:00

OK, here I am in Essaouira for the mother of all Moroccan music fests, the Festival d'Essaouira de Gnawa et Musiques du Monde. At least 400,000 people are here with me. I lucked out in that Dar Gnawa kindly offered to let me stay with them, so I don't have to duke it out with the other tourists for an overpriced hotel room.

So far I've been introduced to many great Gnawa m'allims and musicians. They will all come out this afternoon for an opening procession through the main gate of the medina, and then the weekend kicks off at 7 pm with M'allim Mahmoud al-Filali, from Asila; apart from Abdellah El Gourd, the only other Gnawi on the program this year from the north of Morocco (although Hamid El Kasri could count himself here too).

We Got Game!

2006-06-17T13:12:00.000-05:00

Now we just have to beat USA...

OK, two concessions and two rebuttals:

I concede:
1. That the foul that resulted in a penalty being awarded to Ghana was complete and utter theater.
2. That the late foul on the Czech player should have been a penalty.

Nevertheless:
1. The penalty kick went off the post, resulting in no point scored.
2. Had the Czechs' penalty gone in, the score would still have been 2-1.

My point is that the Czechs seemed just to give up around the 68th minute. I'm a big fan of the Czech Republic, and I know Ghana's midfield is, like, the best in the world, and I know the best Czech strikers are out with injuries... But I was still dissatisfied with the Czech Republic in the last 25 minutes or so of the match. They gave up attacking and just played the "offsides trap" game with the Ghanaian attackers, even when they were only one goal down and should have been trying like anything to score.

What happened to the supposed No. 2 team in the world? On Monday, when Ghana was in a similar spot against Italy, they kept on playing, leading the president of FIFA say that the Ghana-Italy match was the best football he had seen yet, and the Italian coach to say that in many ways, Ghana was a better team than Italy.