Word: ethiopia
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...congas, ecstatic vocals - this is not the sound of a national culture struggling to make itself heard over the global noise of pop. Rather, these are artists who 40 years ago itched to be part of it, who dressed like doo-wop boys, played funk, jazz and RnB in Ethiopia's hotel bars and nightclubs and were stars of a scene that, for a while, was known as "Swinging Addis...
Onstage, the natty-tailored, balding guy on vibes is jazz arranger Mulatu Astatqé, who once played with Duke Ellington. The priest-like one in the robes is Mahmoud Ahmed, who became Ethiopia's most popular singer, and was once the spitting image of the young Sam Cooke. Alèmayèhu Eshèté still has the yelp (if not quite the glorious pompadour) of his James Brown days. And, draped in his colorful military cape and now somewhat mangey, lion's mane crown, the shamanic Gétatchèw Mèkurya would catch...
...stories are set in sub-Saharan Africa--Rwanda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya. Akpan's method is to present scenes of extreme violence and degradation from a child's point of view. A young boy watches his sister practice prostitution; a man sells his niece and nephew into slavery; a girl looks on as her Tutsi father kills her Hutu mother with a machete. And so on. These stories are so frightening and upsetting, and offer so little in the way of closure or consolation, that you wonder what the point is of subjecting yourself to them--they exist at the border...
...African activists worry that Beijing still sometimes props up ancient autocrats like Mugabe. In nations with strong civil societies like South Africa, there is a growing realization that many Western firms train local workers and understand how to operate in a free political environment. Meanwhile, activists in places like Ethiopia and Namibia have condemned Chinese investment practices, including poor wages and importation of Chinese laborers. In one of the worst incidents, Zambia exploded in protest after an accident at a Chinese-owned copper mine there in 2005 killed over 50 Zambians...
...complain about China's human-rights record on Africa seems beyond a pot-kettle comparison - France has long sponsored African "democrats" like former Central African Republic leader Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who was ultimately convicted of at least 20 murders. Likewise, the U.S. has close ties to Ethiopia's abusive regime, and to oil-rich kleptocracy Equatorial Guinea, whose dictator was welcomed to Washington in 2006 as "a good friend" by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice...