Word: mali
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...rhetoric. Kuti's music--American R.-and-B. guitar and horns over African percussion--is not just a sound but also the manifestation of a political idea: that the black man should know himself yet not be afraid to use the tools of the West to his own ends. Mali's chanteuse Rokia Traore, conversely, is a diplomat's daughter who grew up around the world but uses her native tongue, Bamanan, and Malian instruments on spare and lovely songs like the feminist Mancipera, which calls for the liberation of African women from subservience. For Traore as for the American...
...traditionally an individual's complaint about the surrounding society. Standing on a street in Lagos or on a beach in Brazil, or staring down an invading army of Pokemon and Britneys, however, it can be equally as radical to speak out for your society. To a protest singer in Mali or Haiti, is the target a government that stifles personal freedoms or a global juggernaut that threatens local traditions and economic autonomy? Is the oppressor the state, which might jail you for playing your music, or Western entertainment conglomerates, which can so thoroughly marginalize your music that you might...
...West's growing enthusiasm for African objects that has placed many of them in jeopardy. Most of Mali's archaeological sites, including graves built into the cliffs along the World Heritage-listed Bandiagara escarpment, have been looted. Ethiopia is struggling to protect its oldest silver Coptic Christian crosses and medieval manuscripts. Since 1970, illegal traders in Kenya and Tanzania have carted off hundreds of vigango, or Swahili wooden grave markers. When fighting erupted in the Somali capital of Mogadishu in 1991, one of the first casualties was the National Museum. Within weeks many of its prized exhibits, including ancient Egyptian...
Some attempts to stem the traffic may be working. Authorities in Mali have cut illegal exports 75% by enlisting villagers as informants. Mali is the only African country with which the U.S. has signed a bilateral treaty restricting the importation of cultural artifacts. In Nigeria, museums boss Eluyemi is talking with a group of illegal traders--who insist on being called vendors and have even formed a union--to work out "compensation" for the works they find to ensure that at least some objects remain in the country. The 1995 digging frenzy in Kawu slowed after six months, partly...
West African countries are taking steps to stop the trade. Most have signed the International Labour Organization's Convention 182 against the Worst Forms of Child Labour, which went into effect last November. Last year Ivory Coast and Mali agreed to crack down on the trade between the two countries and announced a range of rehabilitation efforts to help children who return home. But the region's porous borders and ill-equipped police forces make it easy for smuggling to continue. Yai says it's time for West Africa to get tough: "Are you going to tell me that...