Colin Emmanuel - "D’illusions Of Grandeur" (London)

I was too late to grab the free download of the London HipHop album "D’illusions Of Grandeur" (2006)of UK's famous producer/mixer/writer/remixer Colin Emmanuel.

But listen to "My Thing feat KRS1". The intro is taken from Glastonbury when Colin Emmanuel appeared on stage with The Beta Band after having produced their HOT SHOTS PART II.






More music on blackeinstein.bandcamp
See more info on Soul Culture

Roman grave reveals that black people lived in York in the 4th century (UK)

Copyright Yorkshire Museum: The Ivory Bangle Lady skull
A British Roman grave reveals that York (England) was a multicultural society and that black people lived there in the 4th century. The evidence is a skull which was discovered in 1901 in Bootham York in a sarcophagus. The picture above is a computerised reconstruction of how the 'Ivory Bangle Lady' could have looked.

The ancestry assessment suggests a mixture of 'black' and 'white' ancestral traits. It seems likely that she is of North African descent, and may have migrated to York from somewhere warmer, possibly the Mediterranean.

The “Ivory Bangle Lady” will be the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum in August entitled Roman York: Meet the People of the Empire.

Archaeologists have discovered that wealthy black Africans lived in Roman Britain in one of the country’s earliest examples of multiculturalism.

Scientific research techniques have established that a lavish grave containing a woman’s skeleton, an ivory bangle, perfume bottle, mirror and jewellery, belonged to a North African member of York’s high society in the 4th century.

Her well-preserved remains showed that she was 1.5m (5ft 1in) and aged between 18 and 23. There were no signs of a violent death, and muscle markings showed that she had not lived a strenuous life, suggesting that she was affluent. Among the goods found in her grave was a bone with the inscription “Sor ave vivas in Deo” (Hail, sister, may you live in God), suggesting that she may also have been a Christian.

Hella Eckardt, who carried out the study, said: “Multicultural Britain is not just a phenomenon of more modern times. Analysis of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ and others like her, contradicts assumptions about the make-up of Roman-British populations as well as the view that African immigrants were of low status, male and likely to have been slaves.”

The research, A Lady of York; migration, ethnicity and identity in Roman Britain, is published in the March edition of the journal Antiquity. The “Ivory Bangle Lady” will be the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum in August entitled Roman York: Meet the People of the Empire.

Read full story on Timesonline
Yorkshire museum: Africans in Roman York?

You learn something new every day. “Sor ave vivas in Deo”.

A Dutch black woman celebrating a right wing victory?

I wrote a post on August 6th 2009, but I never posted it. It was about a black or Asian woman at a meeting of a right wing political party called the PVV. It's the party of Geert Wilders, the one that tours the planet to "warn" us about Islam.

Tomorrow there will be elections for the city counsels in the Netherlands, and the Anti-Islam party of Geert Wilders will participate in two cities, Almere and The Hague. The polls favour him, and the predictions are that he will win the majority of the seats in these city counsels.

The sad part is that some Surinamese people will actually vote for him, for a number of reasons. Black and Asian. I think I am missing something.

Here is my post I didn’t post.

A newspaper photo of a black young woman at a celebration party of the Dutch right wing political party the PVV. It’s the party of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders who was denied access to the UK because he wanted to show his famous anti-Islam film Fitna. The party had a massive victory in the Netherlands at the European elections because they only had one slogan: say no to Islam.

So what’s that black girl doing there? What’s a black woman doing at a celebration party of a political party which is ready to team up with the big anti-Islam, anti-immigrant and anti-black political parties in Europe.

I wanted to ask the same question to the Dutch black female gospel singer who sang at the kickoff meeting of another anti-Islam party in the Netherlands. She sang for a party who stated that minorities had no voice in the party.

There is context here of course. The Netherlands has increasingly turned right wing due to huge problems with a small part of the Moroccan Islamic youth, and the killing of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Moroccan extremist. Van Gogh made the Islam film Fitna with Islam criticaster Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

I agree that everyone has a right to have a controversial political view. But somehow I thing that as black person in Europe you must find a way to not only to have black awareness, but also to have minority awareness as well. Which can be very difficult sometimes.

Video: Respect the immigrant (Portugal)

This is a video made for an anti-racism campaign to combat the Portuguese intolerance against African, Brazilian and Chinese immigrants. It’s an old one from 2006. Warning: there are some shocking scenes in the video.

Black people in The Netherlands: Surinamese

Dutch black history. I have found an interesting article in an old Ebony Magazine about the background of the Surinamese community in the Netherlands. Although it’s written in an issue of 1967! it still reflects the diversity of the Surinamese community in Surinam and in the Netherlands.

The article is from a very interesting Dutch Surinamese website called Buku ,which is Surinamese for “book”.

A small update. In 1975 almost half of the population of Surinam moved to the Netherlands because of an independence most people didn’t believe in. The black people or Creoles settled in the city of Amsterdam, the Hindustani settled in the city of The Hague.

A snippet from the article

"Why come here for a story?" queried the sixth 'Black Dutchman' I met.
"Isn't Suriname a multiracial country?" I asked. Don't all of the people live together in harmony?" "Yes."

"Wouldn't you call that unique in a world torn by racial strife?"
"Perhaps so," mused the man who takes his way of life for granted.
Forty-five of the next 50 people I interviewed agreed that they live in a peaceful coexistence under a flag made up of five stars representing the five races of mankind; that in Suriname, East meets West and the twain is an elliptical orbit on the flag joining the stars together. The dissenting five are not so sure. With the coming election, Surinam's racial paradise is threatened by a power struggle between the two dominant groups: the Creoles, mixed blood (no matter how dark) descendants of African slaves who head that bauxite-rich nation, and Hindustanis, the east Indian descendants of contract laborers who have passed the Creoles economically, are catching up with them educationally and overtaking them numerically.

Read full article here

Theatre: "Off the Endz" - London

From left to right: Daniel Francis, Lorraine Burroughs, Ashley Walters
Off the Endz is a new play by Olivier award winning writer Bola Agbaje, featuring Ashley Walters (BBC1’s Small Island, ex-So Solid Crew). Royal Court Theatre, 11 Feb - 13 Mar in London.

"My future is here. My aim is clear and simple. I want out. I wanna be rich. I'm not gonna pretend it's anything more than that and I want it now."

David (Ashley Walters), Kojo (Daniel Francis) and Sharon (Lorraine Burroughs) grew up on a London estate. Now in their mid 20s, they're eyeing another kind of life. But how do you choose the right path when temptation lies around every corner? If your emotional or financial debt is sky high, how do you buy your way out?



Bola Agbaje's smart, savvy second play for the Royal Court asks whether being out of the system might be just as good as being in it.

Bola Agbaje came through the Royal Court's Critical Mass programme. Her debut play Gone Too Far! premiered at the Royal Court in 2007, and won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement and a Most Promising Playwright nomination at the Evening Standard Awards 2008. Her other plays include If Things Were Different, In Time and Anything You Can Do for Soho Theatre. Most recently Detaining Justice opened as part of the Not Black and White season at the Tricycle in November.

Royal Court Theatre

Theatre: The Hounding of David Oluwale - Trailer (UK)

Because it's still black history month, an old theatre trailer of "The Hounding of David Oluwale", with Daniel Francis as the main character.

The play was an adaptation of Kester Aspden's award-winning book, the Hounding of David Oluwale. It tells the story of the Nigerian immigrant Oluwale, who was found dead in the river Aire in 1969, having been assaulted over a number of months by police officers.

About Oluwale The Guardian wrote the following story.

Oluwale was educated in the late autumn of colonial rule, a Christian grammar school education filling him with notions of the benevolent, civilising nature of British power.

It was natural for young men in the Nigerian port city to look outwards and imagine the world beyond; in the postwar years, there were many reasons to wish for an escape - food shortages, soaring prices, high unemployment. Nineteen-year-old Oluwale, struggling as an apprentice tailor, was one of a couple of hundred Nigerians in those difficult years who buried themselves in obscure corners of cargo ships for the gruelling two-week voyage to Britain. ....

On May 4 1969, the body of David Oluwale was discovered face-down in the river Aire, close to Leeds' main sewage works. The coroner recorded a verdict of death by drowning. The loose change found on Oluwale's body was put towards a flimsy coffin and a pauper's funeral. The funeral directors were having a clearout and packed old telephone directories around the corpse. His body was committed to a common grave that contained nine others.

Eighteen months later, this unmourned Nigerian was at the centre of a criminal investigation that shook and shamed a city. His body was exhumed on an icy morning in December 1970 following accusations that two Leeds city police officers had hounded him to his death. At the trial a year later, a long campaign of abuse emerged. Others had simply stood by and let it happen. Even in death, Oluwale was accorded little dignity. The defence counsel likened him to a panther. To the judge, he was a "dirty, filthy, violent vagrant". Read the whole story in Legacy of hate

And: Ghostly lessons of a lonely death

Theatre: Causerie imaginée (Imagined chat) - a Negritude conversation

Causerie imaginée (Imagined chat) - an imagined conversation based on the work of Césaire, Damas and Senghor performed by Jean-Michel Martial and Nathaly Coualy.

Sunday February 28th in Paris in theatre Les Feux de la Rampe (last show in France).

He is a man, she is a woman and there were three poets, three singers of the Negritude, three monuments: Césaire, Damas and Senghor. Notebook of a return home, a lecture on colonialism ... poetic texts and politics presented as monologues, sometimes as a conversation. A "Causerie imaginée" interpreted by Jean-Michel Martial and Nathaly Coualy.



Jean-Michel Martial is a French actor and Nathaly Coualy is a French actor/comedian, it’s there first performance together.

"It's been several years since I read these texts in public," says Jean-Michel Martial. "This time I wanted to add the desire and emotion of this person I do not know. The frame was already more or less decided, but Nathaly did things I never expected"

"We found that these texts are answers", says Nathaly Coualy.
Read a review (French) here

Interesting theatre, the show will also be performed in the Caribbean.

And because black history month is coming to an end on February 28th, some links:
Aimé Césaire
Leon-Gontran Damas
Léopold Sédar Senghor

Causerie imaginée
Sunday 28 February at 17h
Aat theatre Les Feux de la Rampe
2, rue Saulnier Paris 9e
01 42 46 26 19
lesfeuxdelarampe@gmail.com
http://www.billetreduc.com/35062/evt.htm

Nneka live in Munich "Focus"

Spotted on: Black in nrw
NNEKA performs the song "FOCUS" at "MUSIC for GOALS 2009" in Munich. The song calls for more respect, tolerance and peace. Video directed by Frederik Hettich Munich.

German bobsledder Richard Adjei wins silver at Winter Games

Germany's gold-silver finish in Sunday's two-man bobsleigh only reinforced the perception that the country dominates sliding sports.

Silver medal-winning brakeman Richard Adjei hopes his skin colour helps to change a different perception.

"I want to show people, hey, Germany changed," said Adjei, the 27-year-old son of a German father and Ghanaian mother. "A lot of people still think Germany's mean and bad, you know? I'm half white, half black, I'm at the Games, representing my country and I'm proud.

"When I do sport, and compete well, they say, 'Germany's changed.'"

The Dusseldorf-raised brakeman is in his first Olympics. He's a former linebacker for the Berlin Thunder in the now-defunct NFL Europe and shifted to bobsleigh in 2007. Despite having played in front of 50,000 football fans, he said seeing the crowd and all the German flags made him nervous Sunday.

Read full story at The Vancouver Sun

4th March in commemoration to the African victims of the slave trade, enslavement, colonialism and racist violence (Berlin)

By Tina Bach

On February 27th, the 4th March in commemoration to the African victims of the slave trade, enslavement, colonialism and racist violence will take place in Berlin.

The march begins at Gröbenufer/May-Ayim-Ufer and is organized by the Commitee for an African monument in Berlin (KADIB).

This year the commemoration march marks the end of the campaign 125 years Afrika Konferenz Berlin which has been initiated by a network of more than 70 organisations.

Also due to the renaming of the Gröbenufer in Berlin-Kreuzberg to May-Ayim-Ufer everyone is invited to participate in the related celebration ceremony from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

May Ayim was a writer of African German descent who contribted immensely to the scientic research about the history of Black people in Germany. Groeben on the other hand was a man known for his role in colonization policies.

After the celebration ceremony at 1 p.m. there will be a march to Wilhelmstr 92, Berlin, where there is a memorial sign in rememberance to the Afrika Konferenz Berlin. The Comitee for an African Monument considers the renaming of the Gröbenufers to May-Ayim-Ufer as an important step to the right direction.

The genocides in which Germany played a role - against Hereros in Namibia and Maji-Maji in Tansania - are not officially recognized until today. Several hundred thousand people of African descent fought together with the allied forces for the resurrection of Germany from the Nazi Regime in World War II.

Thousands of Black Germans, the so-called "Rheinlandbastarde" were sterelized by Nazis or murdered in concentration camps. This side of Germany's history has not been dealth with officially until today.

For details regarding the march see document (PDF) here.

Gérard Depardieu plays black Alexandre Dumas in controversial casting

On the left Gérard Depardieu on the right Alexandre Dumas
A fierce controversy broke out when white French actor Gérard Depardieu played black French cultural icon Alexandre Dumas in the film "L'Autre Dumas" (the other Dumas). Dumas is the "official" writer of the famous novels “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers”.

Dumas (1802 - 1870) was the son of a Hatian/French bi-racial father, Thomas Alexandre, and a white French mother.

According to TheRoot Patrick Lozes, France's Representative Council of Black Associations, objected to Depardieu in the role, saying black actors are not given an opportunity to play white roles in French cinema. "It's very shocking and it is insulting," Patrick Lozes told the London Daily Mail. "It is a way of saying that we don't have any black actors who have the talent to play Alexandre Dumas.

"The other Dumas. The history of Alexandre Dumas and (ghostwriter) Auguste Maquet"


But the film is entitled "The other Dumas. The history of Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet". August Maquet is Dumas's ghostwriter (or "literary Negro" as the French said it back in the 18th and 19th century). He was the ghost writer of “The Count of Monte Cristo” , “The Three Musketeers” and other novels and plays. In fact the film deals with the relationship between August Maquet , “other Dumas” , and Alexandre Dumas.

According to the Guardian the film shed new light on the man who fans say was the true genius behind The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.

In an interesting article in Suite101 "The French Film Industry and Race Discrimination" the author analyses the question whether the choice of Gérard Depardieu is racism or artistic freedom.

In suite101 the author also writes:

Dumas himself was often the butt of jokes,caricature and a frequent target of cartoonists who emphasised his facial features and hair, exaggerating them to accentuate his Haitian heritage. Victoria Foote-Greenwell in her article "The life and resurrection of Alexandre Dumas" in The Smithsonian of 1 July 1996, relates the story of a leading lady once saying as he left, "Open the windows. It smells of Negro."

I agree with Patrick lozee (CRAN) that Dumas had to be played by a black actor, considering France's history with black actors. But I have to admit that Gérard Depardieu is not a bad choice.

According to TheRoot Gerard Depardieu thinks the controvery is “ridiculous” and “unnecessary”. I think Depardieu doesn't want to know the history of Dumas, or better he doesn’t want to know the history of his own country France.

Dumas was reburied in 2002 in the Panthéon of Paris, the place where al the great French are buried. Former France President Jacques Chirac had to acknowledge that racism was the reason why Dumas hadn't been enshrined in the past.

Afro-Europe

Queendom: "Home is where the heart is" (Norway)

The Norwegian group Queendom is an Oslo based theatre group of five black women with backgrounds from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Trinidad and Gambia. All the members of the group are professional theatre artists

Queendom came to the attention of the Norwegian public in 1999 after the premiere of the cabaret 'Queendom On The Rocks- the world seen through the eys of five Black women'. Since then Queendom has produced another two comedy shows, a satirical book, a TV mini-series and continues to compose new, inspiring music .



Queendom now tours and performs extensively as a popular world music band, around Norway and abroad. They have performed at numerous events hosted by commercial companies, festivals, state institutions and NGO's.

Audiences include several Nobel Peace Prize laureates, ministers and members of the Norwegian royal family - as well as ordinary people of all ethnic backgrounds.

Queendom - "Home is where the heart is". Filmed in Bagamoyo, Tanzania August 2009 as part of TV-Aksjonen for NRK (Norway).

Offical website Queendom.