Mbira is indeed a very “tangible” instrument. Only if you connect with it will it help you to produce the most enticing sound, a phenomenon in which beat mixes with harmony. As of this week, UNESCO recognizes mbira crafting and playing as intangible heritage in Zimbabwe – and also, with the variant name sansi – in Malawi. I’ve written about my experience with mbira elsewhere, so here’s the UNESCO summary video:
While mbira/sansi is less iconic in Malawi, where it is played in the south, it is an iconic instrument amongst the MaShona people that dominate Zimbabwe. Hence the move by UNESCO was met with applause, and Hope Masike – a young and accomplished mbira player and musician featured in some of the media coverage.
I’ve been following Teju Cole for a while, and like what and how he writes, and his playlists. This is from seven years ago, about Obama’s drone warfare., his “A reader’s war“, which appeared in The New Yorker in 2013, February 10. Cole starts out by praising the “reader in chief” Obama for his erudition that is so welcome after the anti-intellectual Bush years. Then there are the drone wars, though, one bad guy killed at 17th attempt, the 16 fails leaving uncounted “collateral damage” behind, every one a human being killed – literally – out of the blue. Cole:
I sit rigid in my seat, thinking, I don’t want to die, not here, not yet. I imagine those in northwest Pakistan or just outside Sana’a who go about their day thinking the same. The difference for some of them is that the plane is already hovering in the air, ready to strike.
As I was following the online Poetry Africa Festival from KZN, I heard Phillippa Yaa de Villiers recite her poem “Stolen Rivers”, a poem she dedicated to Chiwoniso Maraire. Like the poet, I deeply admire Chiwoniso, I find her very inspirational, and her music enchanting. I have written about her here, and now I allow myself to copy-paste the poem here (> page 2):
Harvest is a superb word to talk about language roots. Quite obviously, the German and English words of the headline share the same word root, one that is backed by shared cultural and climatic geography: Herbst is harvest time. Autumn, on the other hand, is a relative newcomer to the English language, one of the hundreds and thousands of words borrowed (and never given back, to quote a bonmot well known amongst English language historians) from Latin and/or French. What fascinates me about plucking out linguistic roots is that it’s like opening a window into the history of a speech community, and ultimately of all of mankind. Language roots are ultimately shared by all humanity, even if language should have developed independently in different places. Over time, we kept on mixing – genetically as well as culturally. So, especially for those who believe in cultural purity, or the existence of ‘pure’ nations and races – let me propose this challenging piece of language history: German Herbst (‘autumn’) and English harvest apparently have Semitic roots!
This morning my wife, from Malawi and still somewhat disappointed by the German government that doesn’t give us the Monday off, asks me: “So this is your Independence Day?!” Uhmm, I’m from East Germany, that got me thinking. Isn’t it rather Dependence Day? … Now, I intend this ironically, in all seriousness! 😉
Actually, I get the sense that this 30th anniversary is more meaningful: I think we, as East Germans, are becoming who we are. I find it is noticeable, especially these days, and it feels healthy. Less victim of circumstances and world history, more confident.Wir sind der Osten is just one of the shapes this has taken.
This goes back to a Facebook nomination chain post, which I shall simply replicate here. Now, since I’m somewhat unruly, I did provide commentaries (contrary to the request), but refrained from nominating anyone – I’m actually not a big fan of these requests and I usually opt out from them.
So, if you like, see ten of my favourite travel pics. It’s not a top ten or anything, just a start in roughly chronological order. In this recap, I made it up to 1994. Now that’s a few months ago, so to say, and I reckon I’ll do this “10 choice pics” thing more often.
Number 1/10
1988, Kaluga – then Soviet Union, now Russia. As the East German schoolkid that I still was, I had sucked up the slogans about our “big brother”, the Soviet Union. “To learn from the Soviet Union is to win” (Von der Sowjetunion lernen heißt Siegen lernen). When I went there at the end of the eighties for a one-week school exchange trip, I saw actual poverty for the first time, and even the family I visited, who was not poor, lived way below the standards I was used to. I saw beggars for the first time of my life, in Moscow. And yet, there was the Perestroika going on, Michael Gorbachev’s reform movement. For us East German teenagers it was almost shocking to see, and as the relationships between the East German government under Honecker and Gorbachev started to sour, they were refreshing. The slogan in the picture calls upon on Kalugans to put all their strengths into the Perestroika, more Democracy and economical reforms.
Travelling in the times of Corona is not easy, and risky. Still, we decided to head over to France, where I haven’t been in over a decade, and for Chimz it would be the first time. Göttingen to Paris, where we went camping, took barely eight hours. Two days later we went further south, to near Royan, north of the Gironde estuary, and north of Bordeaux. On the way back we managed to spend a few days in the Bretagne, and stopped over in Aachen and Cologne.
On my way to Magdeburg I used to pass by the signpost many times. Now it was about time to pay a visit to the paläon research museum in Schöningen (near Braunschweig). When you’re in the region, go. It’s worth it! Here are just some pictures.
Wasn’t there always talk of “developing countries” vs. the “developed world”? I guess that was right: some countries indeed were developing while others started whingeing more and more, and rested comfortably on their “achievements”, and whinged some more when they were asked to share those, or give back. Pathetic.
