ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT - The African Mirror

Jun

2021

Senegal’s famed jazz festival returns after pandemic delay

COOPER INVEEN ON a small island where the Senegal River meets the sea, hundreds of mask-wearing jazz enthusiasts listened to French-Senegalese vocalist Awa Ly sing the blues for uncertain times. "Once you touched the sky and you went down," she crooned. "Use your inner senses and you'll figure it out, like a dream you can't remember." Last year COVID-19 halted Saint Louis' jazz festival for the first time in its 29-year history. This year it was back, bringing much needed life to the Island of Saint Louis, a UNESCO World Heritage site famed for its colonial architecture and pastel-coloured houses.…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Usain Bolt and Kasi Bennett welcome twin boys

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

MPHO RANTAO OLYMPIC runner Usain Bolt and partner Kasi Bennett have welcomed two new members to the family, elevating their eldest daughter, Olympia Bolt’s, role to big sister. Bolt celebrated Father’s Day with a post on Instagram where he shared the news with a photo of his family from a photo shoot, including their one-year-old daughter, and first glimpses of their newborn twins named Saint Leo and Thunder. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Usain St.Leo Bolt (@usainbolt) His partner, Bennett, posted her own tribute to the Olympic sprinter, sharing more footage from their family photoshoot, calling…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

The #JerusalemaDanceChallenge showed how Pan African styles can be forged

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

A year has passed since an Angolan dance troupe called Fenómenos do Semba released a video of themselves dancing in a courtyard in Luanda to the South African hit song Jerusalema by Master KG. FRANCESCA NEGRO, Associate research scientist, Universidade de Lisboa With over 16 million YouTube clicks, the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge swept the planet as social media users posted their own versions of the dance. Its success has inspired me to offer some further reflections on the importance of the cultural meaning of this dance and its contribution to the creation of a Pan African aesthetic. How Angolans celebrate The dance…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

The Late Night, Mogadishu

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

JAAMAC JAAMAC MOGADISHU was once known as The Pearl of the Indian Ocean, famous for its architecture, culture and nightlife. A civil war and more recently an Islamic insurgency interrupted that. Now, with elections looming, nightlife is returning to this former Indian Ocean entrepot. At the Late Night restaurant, there's a palpable sense of hope, served up, along with each plate of Jabaati, by the manager himself. It is almost midnight and along Mogadishu's central Maka-Al-Mukarama boulevard, late-night restaurant patrons are coming and going. Three-wheeled "tuk-tuks" throng the area, dropping off customers or waiting for new ones. Judging by their…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

South Africa’s romcom revolution and how it reimagines Joburg

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

NETFLIX went live in South Africa on 6 January 2016. The arrival of the subscription-based content streaming service was a game-changer for the country’s film and television industry, as it had been for other countries. PIER PAOLO FRASSINELLI, Professor, Communication and Media Studies, University of Johannesburg At about the same time – in 2015 and 2016 – there was another turning point for South Africa’s film industry: the arrival of a new, commercially successful genre, the black romantic comedy. For the first time, the country’s black filmmakers were able to make an impact at the box office – and go…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

“My Octopus Teacher” wins Africa’s only Oscar at historic night

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

SOUTH Africa's first ever Netflix original documentary, "My Octopus Teacher", has won an Oscar. The film, directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, won in a strongly contested category at the 93rd Academy Awards held in Los Angeles today. In her acceptance speech, Ehrlich said: In many ways this really is a tiny personal story that played out in a seaforust at the very tip of Africa, but on a more universal level I hope that it provided a glimpse of a different type of relationship between human beings and the natural world." "Nomadland", the story of van dwellers in…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Tems, Wizkid and more nominated for BET Awards

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

MPHO RANTAO NIGERIAN starlet Tems has bagged her first British Entertainment Television (BET) Award nomination. The singer, real name Temilade Openiyi, has been nominated alongside six other artists for BET”s Best New International Act: Viewers Choice, which is usually awarded during the pre-show airing of the BET Awards. Previous winners of this award include South Africa’s Sho Madjozi, Zimbabwe’s Shasha and Wizkid, who has had the most wins in the Best International Act category as an African artist. Tems rose to the top of the music charts with her debut EP, For Broken Ears, but is popularly known for her…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

The magnificent Mabi Thobejane, master South African drummer

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

WINTER chokes the highveld in Johannesburg, South Africa, and takes from me, from our entire culture, a mighty mountain. Gabriel Mabi Segwagwa Thobejane, the diminutive tower of rhythmic power, has left us: a man who did not so much play the drums, but became The Drum. DAVID COPLAN, Professor Emeritus, Social Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand He reportedly suffered a stroke at the age of 74 and passed on 3 June 2021. Even though he was both master and a creator of South Africa’s indigenous sonic archive, Mabi, as we all came to call him, was also a showman and…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

‘Coolest kid’ Elsa Majimbo covers Native

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

IT’s Elsa Majimbo’s world and we’re all just living in it. The online sensation has been revealed as the digital cover star for Native’s June issue, in a feature that sees the “coolest 19-year-old on the planet” in eccentric braiding styles and colourblock-styled outfits. Titled “Into Elsa’s Multiverse”, Native magazine chats to Majimbo on her massive rise online, her conversations with the likes of Olympian Usain Bolt, Rihanna and Naomi Campbell; and how she has been using her newfound fame to carve a space for young, rising African women like herself. View this post on Instagram A post shared by…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

Cardi B files papers to secure ‘Bardi Beauty’ rights

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

AFRICAN MIRROR REPORTER RAPPER Cardi B is making “money moves”, to quote her single ‘Bodak Yellow’. According to TMZ, the rapper’s company Washpoppin Inc. has taken legal steps to secure the rights to the phrase “Bardi Beauty”, which could potentially be used across a variety of the rapper’s merchandise and other products. Cardi’s company originally filed the papers on April 16, but news reports only surfaced when her company updated the court documents which both TMZ and Complex viewed. The listed products from the application to secure the rights to the phrase include cosmetics, fragrances, hair care preparations, non-medicated skin…