AFRICAN GREATS SPEAK FREELY ABOUT THEIR CONTINENT YOUSSOU N'DOUR, world music star Homeland: Senegal. Resides: Senegal
"I was born on October 1, 1959, in the port city of Dakar, the Senegalese capital. I have never lived in any other place. I grew up in the section of the city known as Medina, which is close to the seaside, a so-called 'popular quarter'-- which is really an old code phrase for 'very African.' Dakar is a living poem, a place of unbridled energy, remarkable ambition and legendary artistic flair. I know of no other city on earth where people do so much with so little.
As a child I drank in the musical environment common to the region and started to enjoy singing around the age of 10 or 11. In Medina boys would congregate for post-circumcision celebrations called kassaks where singing, drumming, dancing and comedy each had a place. I got my real start there. Since my childhood, everything and nothing has changed in Senegal. The world has shrunk. Our vision has grown. I admire all of Africa's artists, both those of renown, who convey the humanity of our continent in ways which touch people around the globe, and those 'unsung' ones who minister to the emotional needs of our own at home. For instance, the doctors and nurses who devote themselves to the treatment and prevention of diseases on our continent, including AIDS, are today's greatest heroes."
PHILIPPE WAMBA, editor-in-chief, africana.com Homeland: Tanzania. Resides: Boston
"One thing that struck me when I moved to an area outside Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, when I was eight, was the strong sense of community. There was a sense that people were responsible for one another in some ways and were very open and communicative. When I was growing up there were all sorts of shortages of basic commodities and other problems, and often you would find people really helping each other. People would give each other rides all the time--if they saw someone walking, they'd stop and give them a ride. There was a strong sense of being in it together. You'd greet strangers when you passed them in the street, and that is one of the things that I've often found lacking in the United States. I 'feel that there's much that Americans can learn from Africans in terms of community and social responsibility." FEMI KUTI, Afro-beat star
Homeland: Nigeria. Resides: Nigeria and Paris. "I think my African culture is in my attitude. I love my African culture, I love everything in me. I love my blood. I love African clothes. I love Africa. I know Africa is full of abundant talent which has not developed to its fullest. I would love to see great Africa rise again. But honestly speaking, what I see in Africa is that young people want to get out because they don't want to get involved in all the gangsterism or the corruption. I see another set of young people who will never have the opportunity to leave and who will revolt very soon. I see bad leadership, leaders who are not listening to the problems and the cause of the problems, leaders who think everything is all right. I see absolutely no education, because the universities don't function. Where are the teachers? Everybody's in America. Where are all the Nigerian doctors? They're all over, except in Nigeria. The best of the best, they're all leaving.
I think that Europeans mistake Africa's anger for desperation. Africans are only desperate in wanting to survive, and Africans are demanding their own opportunity in life. The will to survive is maybe the most beautiful thing I've seen in Africa. Our greatest hope is Africa's unity. Immediately. One government, one currency, one open market and all that. Immediately. If possible, yesterday."
WILLIAM KENTRIDGE, artist Homeland: South Africa. Resides: South Africa
"I live in Johannesburg. All the places I've lived are within a four or five-kilometer radius of each other. Like most South African Jews, my grandparents and great grandparents came from Lithuania at the turn of the century. I grew up in a liberal family with politically involved parents who were lawyers. I can't remember a stage where I was not aware of living in an unnatural place. There was so much dinner table conversation about the inequities of the society we were living in--that was a kind of daily bread and butter. This is not unique, but it was less than common in white society. There was always a sense growing up of living in a society that was waiting to become an adult, to change. During the 1970s and '80s that seemed completely intractable, and it's that sense of waiting--which existed throughout my childhood--that had been a false expectation. Then when the transformation came in 1989 through 1994, this was a kind of vindication of all those expectations of childhood.
I think one of the exciting things about South Africa after this transformation from apartheid is that it has an open-ended future. Being objective, I don't know how one's going to solve the enormous problems facing South Africa. The largest problem is how to deal with the AIDS epidemic. Both in terms of medicine--how do we stop so many people dying and how do we look after people who are ill--but, also, how do we deal with a bruised society left in the wake of the epidemic? If life becomes so dispensable, if people die with such little cause, so easily, what is the status one puts on the value of life, on long-term projects, on a sense of the future, on a sense of beneficent fate? All those things get thrown out of kilter.
One misconception about Africa would be that it's a uniform, unified category, that you can talk about Africa in a meaningful way. That implies that Africans, whether they are in Egypt or Tunisia or Togo or South Africa, are people that can be talked about as if they were not identical, but certainly similar enough. So that would be the first misconception. The second misconception would be that societies in Africa are essentially pre-modern. It's about understanding the ongoing clash between different kinds of modernization. If you look at 99 percent of the conflict throughout Africa, it has to do with conflicts over modernization; who owns resources and who has access to them, who is able to transform their lives from rural peasantry to an urban society." ANGELIQUE KIDJO, world music artist
Homeland: Benin. Resides: Brooklyn "I was born in Cotonou in Benin. I grew up in that city but I am also from a village called Ouidah, from where my uncles, aunts and both my grandmother and grandfather come. I was raised in a family that is not the common family you find in Benin. My parents were very liberal.
I left Benin in 1983, mainly for political reasons. We were still living under a Communist regime and the music scene started, step-by-step, to praise the government and the ideology of power, which I refused to do. In that kind of regime you don't have much freedom to express yourself, so you stay and do what you're told to do--or you leave. I escaped the country and relocated to France. Now I live in New York.
I started singing at the age of six. Most of the songs I learned were from the family, from ceremonies of baptism, death or weddings, anything that has to do with the daily life. The thing that is different about music in Africa and in the United States is that in Africa, music is a daily thing; every single thing is singable. That's how you keep people together, it creates a stronger solidarity among us. Music is not a business there. We sing because we want to sing. In the north of Benin, there is a little village called Manigri, where the women have a way of making their music with the men accompanying them. When they sing, the men just hum or play instruments, and they are not allowed to sing among the women, and I love that. The tradition in Benin, and most of the countries in Africa, is oral. It has always been oral, because our ancestors never went to school--they didn't need to go to school. Their school was nature.
Nicholas Kristof - NY Times Reporter speaking about Gender and Eye Health (an initiative Seva is involved with) Gender is particularly important, because the development community has steadily realized that you can't make much progress in international development unless you bring women into the equation. We sometimes focus so much on the injustices suffered by women that we risk perceiving poor women as a big mountain of a problem; the truth is that women aren't the problem, they're the solution. If you educate and empower women, bring them into the economy and give them more control over the family pursestrings, then you begin to raise the entire society. This is something that I believe in so passionately that my wife and I have written a book on the topic, to come out in September.
Out Of Africa - famous Africans speak about their continent
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4657983.stm"No one is isolated on this planet..."
Interview , May, 2001
AFRICAN GREATS SPEAK FREELY ABOUT THEIR CONTINENTYOUSSOU N'DOUR, world music star
Homeland: Senegal. Resides: Senegal
"I was born on October 1, 1959, in the port city of Dakar, the Senegalese capital. I have never lived in any other place. I grew up in the section of the city known as Medina, which is close to the seaside, a so-called 'popular quarter'-- which is really an old code phrase for 'very African.' Dakar is a living poem, a place of unbridled energy, remarkable ambition and legendary artistic flair. I know of no other city on earth where people do so much with so little.
As a child I drank in the musical environment common to the region and started to enjoy singing around the age of 10 or 11. In Medina boys would congregate for post-circumcision celebrations called kassaks where singing, drumming, dancing and comedy each had a place. I got my real start there. Since my childhood, everything and nothing has changed in Senegal. The world has shrunk. Our vision has grown. I admire all of Africa's artists, both those of renown, who convey the humanity of our continent in ways which touch people around the globe, and those 'unsung' ones who minister to the emotional needs of our own at home. For instance, the doctors and nurses who devote themselves to the treatment and prevention of diseases on our continent, including AIDS, are today's greatest heroes."
PHILIPPE WAMBA, editor-in-chief, africana.com
Homeland: Tanzania. Resides: Boston
"One thing that struck me when I moved to an area outside Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, when I was eight, was the strong sense of community. There was a sense that people were responsible for one another in some ways and were very open and communicative. When I was growing up there were all sorts of shortages of basic commodities and other problems, and often you would find people really helping each other. People would give each other rides all the time--if they saw someone walking, they'd stop and give them a ride. There was a strong sense of being in it together. You'd greet strangers when you passed them in the street, and that is one of the things that I've often found lacking in the United States. I 'feel that there's much that Americans can learn from Africans in terms of community and social responsibility."
FEMI KUTI, Afro-beat star
Homeland: Nigeria. Resides: Nigeria and Paris. "I think my African culture is in my attitude. I love my African culture, I love everything in me. I love my blood. I love African clothes. I love Africa. I know Africa is full of abundant talent which has not developed to its fullest. I would love to see great Africa rise again. But honestly speaking, what I see in Africa is that young people want to get out because they don't want to get involved in all the gangsterism or the corruption. I see another set of young people who will never have the opportunity to leave and who will revolt very soon. I see bad leadership, leaders who are not listening to the problems and the cause of the problems, leaders who think everything is all right. I see absolutely no education, because the universities don't function. Where are the teachers? Everybody's in America. Where are all the Nigerian doctors? They're all over, except in Nigeria. The best of the best, they're all leaving.
I think that Europeans mistake Africa's anger for desperation. Africans are only desperate in wanting to survive, and Africans are demanding their own opportunity in life. The will to survive is maybe the most beautiful thing I've seen in Africa. Our greatest hope is Africa's unity. Immediately. One government, one currency, one open market and all that. Immediately. If possible, yesterday."
WILLIAM KENTRIDGE, artist
Homeland: South Africa. Resides: South Africa
"I live in Johannesburg. All the places I've lived are within a four or five-kilometer radius of each other. Like most South African Jews, my grandparents and great grandparents came from Lithuania at the turn of the century. I grew up in a liberal family with politically involved parents who were lawyers. I can't remember a stage where I was not aware of living in an unnatural place. There was so much dinner table conversation about the inequities of the society we were living in--that was a kind of daily bread and butter. This is not unique, but it was less than common in white society. There was always a sense growing up of living in a society that was waiting to become an adult, to change. During the 1970s and '80s that seemed completely intractable, and it's that sense of waiting--which existed throughout my childhood--that had been a false expectation. Then when the transformation came in 1989 through 1994, this was a kind of vindication of all those expectations of childhood.
I think one of the exciting things about South Africa after this transformation from apartheid is that it has an open-ended future. Being objective, I don't know how one's going to solve the enormous problems facing South Africa. The largest problem is how to deal with the AIDS epidemic. Both in terms of medicine--how do we stop so many people dying and how do we look after people who are ill--but, also, how do we deal with a bruised society left in the wake of the epidemic? If life becomes so dispensable, if people die with such little cause, so easily, what is the status one puts on the value of life, on long-term projects, on a sense of the future, on a sense of beneficent fate? All those things get thrown out of kilter.
One misconception about Africa would be that it's a uniform, unified category, that you can talk about Africa in a meaningful way. That implies that Africans, whether they are in Egypt or Tunisia or Togo or South Africa, are people that can be talked about as if they were not identical, but certainly similar enough. So that would be the first misconception. The second misconception would be that societies in Africa are essentially pre-modern. It's about understanding the ongoing clash between different kinds of modernization. If you look at 99 percent of the conflict throughout Africa, it has to do with conflicts over modernization; who owns resources and who has access to them, who is able to transform their lives from rural peasantry to an urban society."
ANGELIQUE KIDJO, world music artist
Homeland: Benin. Resides: Brooklyn "I was born in Cotonou in Benin. I grew up in that city but I am also from a village called Ouidah, from where my uncles, aunts and both my grandmother and grandfather come. I was raised in a family that is not the common family you find in Benin. My parents were very liberal.
I left Benin in 1983, mainly for political reasons. We were still living under a Communist regime and the music scene started, step-by-step, to praise the government and the ideology of power, which I refused to do. In that kind of regime you don't have much freedom to express yourself, so you stay and do what you're told to do--or you leave. I escaped the country and relocated to France. Now I live in New York.
I started singing at the age of six. Most of the songs I learned were from the family, from ceremonies of baptism, death or weddings, anything that has to do with the daily life. The thing that is different about music in Africa and in the United States is that in Africa, music is a daily thing; every single thing is singable. That's how you keep people together, it creates a stronger solidarity among us. Music is not a business there. We sing because we want to sing. In the north of Benin, there is a little village called Manigri, where the women have a way of making their music with the men accompanying them. When they sing, the men just hum or play instruments, and they are not allowed to sing among the women, and I love that. The tradition in Benin, and most of the countries in Africa, is oral. It has always been oral, because our ancestors never went to school--they didn't need to go to school. Their school was nature.
Nicholas Kristof - NY Times Reporter speaking about Gender and Eye Health (an initiative Seva is involved with)
Gender is particularly important, because the development community has steadily realized that you can't make much progress in international development unless you bring women into the equation. We sometimes focus so much on the injustices suffered by women that we risk perceiving poor women as a big mountain of a problem; the truth is that women aren't the problem, they're the solution. If you educate and empower women, bring them into the economy and give them more control over the family pursestrings, then you begin to raise the entire society. This is something that I believe in so passionately that my wife and I have written a book on the topic, to come out in September.