Senit represented San Marino in the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 in Düsseldorf

The Italian singer Senit represented San Marino in the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 in Düsseldorf (Germany), but didn’t make it to the final on 14 May. She lost in the first semi-final yesterday.

Senhit Zadik Zadik known as Senit was born (1979) and raised in Bologna, Italy by her Eritrean parents. She started her career abroad, in musicals like Fame, The Lion King and Hair, and performed in Switzerland and Germany.



In 2002 she returned to Italy and claimed to fame in the Italian music business releasing her debut album in 2006 and her second album Un tesoro é necessariamente nascosto in 2007 with these singles: La mia cittá é cambiata, La cosa giusta, La faccia che ho. In 2009 she released her third album So high,all in English with three singles Work hard, No More and Party on the dance floor.

The Norwegian entry Stella Mwangi also didn't make to the final.

African-American students are increasingly travelling abroad

African Americans are underrepresented in study abroad opportunities, according to the Institute of International Education. But things are changing.

According to Jada F. Smith in The Root, international living is booming among African-American students. “Many of them have expanded their marketability by increasing their number of passport stamps with global volunteerism, education, immersion language training or professional experience.”

“I was one of eight young professionals chosen to participate in a six-month media fellowship for recent college graduates,” Smith writes. “ Résumés were compared, quiet rivalries established and pedigrees picked over.

What scored highest with this crowd was an impressive answer to the question, "So, which countries have you traveled to?" Some had spent semesters studying in Spain or a year teaching in Malaysia, along with the requisite post-graduation excursions through Europe and reporting trips to sub-Saharan Africa. As for me, well, I didn't even have a passport.

The others lived in a global community -- one that I saw as gated and inaccessible.

The problem of an un-globalized population has not gone unnoticed. In 2009, President Obama began the "100,000 Strong Initiative," a $2.25 million program intended to encourage young Americans to travel to and study in China. This past February, first lady Michelle Obama spoke to students at Howard University about the initiative and the importance of having an international perspective in a world that is becoming increasingly less U.S.-centric.

Yes, our widespread lack of international participation is so chronic that it has prompted a multimillion-dollar presidential initiative. But where our white peers may need the push to go overseas, students of color often need a shove. Blacks make up about 4.2 percent of all American study-abroad students, while 81 percent are white, according to the Institute of International Education. …

In the past, experts attributed the lack of international travel among young people of color to financial constraints, fear of racism, parents unwilling to support the decision and a lack of role models.”

Read the whole story at The Root

Black and White: Grada Kilomba on dealing with Racism in Europe

"Black people look at themselves from the perspective of white people," says writer Grada Kilomba. "They don't look at themselves from their own perspective."

Kilomba, the author of “Plantation Memories – Episodes of Every Day Racism", has origins in the West African Islands São Tomé e Príncipe and was born in Lisbon where she studied clinical psychology and psychoanalysis at ISPA.

In a very interesting video she describes the nature of racism in Europe, how white Europeans can repair their relationships to minorities, and minorities can heal themselves.



In an interview which was republished in Africanvenir Kilomba answers the question: what exactly does it mean to be white?

"White is not a colour. White is a political definition, which represents historical, political and social privileges of a certain group that has access to dominant structures and institutions of society. Whiteness represents the reality and history of a certain group. When we talk about what it means to be white, then we talk about politics and certainly not about biology. Just like the term black is a political identity, which refers to a historicity, political and social realities and not to biology.

As we know there are black people who are very light-skinned, others who are dark-skinned, others who have blue eyes. It is the political history and reality that constructs these terms."

Festival: Rue Créole at la Villette in Paris - 12-15 May 2011

Festival Rue Créole at la Villette in Paris from 12-15 May

A cultural festival with music from Guadeloupe, Martinique and France. With Akiyo a cultural music group from Guadeloupe, Kali a reggae group from Martinique, and Dédé Saint-Prix a Creole group from France who plays the music of Creole European dances of the eighteenth century.

See more information at www.villette.com

Janelle monae will be at North Sea Jazz 2011 in The Netherlands

US R&B singer Janelle monae will perform at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, on Friday 8 July 2011.

Welcome to the year 2719. Cindi Mayweather realises that she is the ArchAndroid who must save the city of Metropolis from a mysterious power that is trying to suppress love and freedom.

Welcome to the world of songwriter and singer Janelle Monáe. She tells her epic tale in symphonic, funky numbers. On her album The ArchAndroid (2010) she is assisted in her task by Sean 'Diddy' Combs and Big Boi from Outkast, among others.



When touring with artists like Erykah Badu, she drew inspiration from every corner of the globe that she visited. And she is not lacking in imagination. Monáe mixes together hip hop, soul and traces of jazz and world music into a musical journey that can best be compared to a danceable soundtrack from a science-fiction film. (Source: North Sea Jazz)

French racial quotas for black and Arab football players

A news report that top French soccer officials were considering racial quotas to limit the number of black and Arab players in national training programs has set off a furor in France. Officials have denied the report by investigative news site Mediapart, which quoted what it said were minutes from a Nov. 8 meeting that discussed setting a limit of 30 percent on nonwhite players.

The technical director of the French Football Federation has been suspended by the sports ministry pending an investigation.

The national team coach, Laurent Blanc, who played on France's 1998 World Cup champions, has denied that quotas were being considered. That team was called "black, beurre, blanc" for its successful racial mix of black, Arab and white players -- and led to some criticism from right-winger Jean-Marie Le Pen that it did not represent France.

The racial issue surfaced again last year when France crashed out of the World Cup tournament in South Africa after a training field strike. Black players and a white convert to Islam were blamed as the ringleaders and suspended from the national team. They were heavily criticized as unpatriotic and ungrateful.

Some of the alleged discussion at the November meeting centered on assuring that players shared the same "values" and avoiding investing in players with dual nationality who might go play for their parents' homelands. Read the full story at TheRoot

Vote for favorite film of Shadow and Act Filmmaker Digital Showcase

The Showcase is an online short film competition where viewers vote for their favorite films and the winning filmmakers receive cash prizes. Each of the 5 (1 every 2 months) qualifying round winner receives $1,000; final round grand prize winner receives an additional $4,000.

Winners will be determined by the number of votes they receive in each round. Among non-winning entries, one film will be announced as the popular winner at the end of the season based on cumulative votes received and awarded $1,000. Crucial submission criteria: films had to feature a protagonist of African descent and themes reflective of the African Diaspora experience.

See all the films here.

Check out the 1st film on the list (in alphabetical order).

Afro-Europe in Black, Brown and Beige or “No, where do you really come from?”

TableTalk: Afro-Europe or “No, where do you really come from?” A conversation with Trina Roach (left on the photo) and her guest Lillian Ogbogoh (right) on blogtalk radio.

They discuss issues of national and cultural identity, and compare and contrast how those issues are viewed differently from country to country. Is there one black (European) way to act?

Trina Roach is an African American living in Germany and Lillian Ogbogoh is a British Born Nigerian (as she calls herself) who lives in London and has lived in the US.

Listen to internet radio with Creating Tomorrow on Blog Talk Radio

Some of the topics they covered
• How do you self-identify?
• How do you experience “community” amongst other people of African descent where you live?
• How is that sense of “community” expressed in different places in the Diaspora?
• How does the question of “critical mass” influence the lives of people of African descent where you live?
• What role does day-to-day racism play in your life?
• How well-represented are people of African descent in public life?
• What importance was placed on knowledge of Black/African History during your upbringing?
• What can we do to empower children of African descent living in Europe?

Dutch football player Clarence Seedorf receives royal decoration in the presence of Berlusconi

AC Milan midfielder Clarence Seedorf has been named a Knight in the Order of Orange Nassau, bestowed by the Netherlands for his services to football and charity work.

Alphonsus Staelinga, the Dutch ambassador to Italy, presented Seedorf, who is born in Suriname, with the honor in a ceremony on Thursday that was also attended by Milan president and Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi (photo AP).

"If he is the coach of AC Milan, he can bring his brother and cousin immediately, we don't mind a little nepotism,” joked Silvio Berlusconi.

Seedorf is the only player to have won the Champions League with three different clubs—Ajax in 1995, Real Madrid in 1998 and Milan in 2003 and 2007.

In 2005, Seedorf founded the "Champions for Children foundation". He also owns an Italian football club in the serie C.

Asked if he might retire at the end of this season, the 35-year-old Seedorf declined, saying he remains motivated and fit.

Although Seedorf is a hero in Italy he is not very popular in the Netherlands. Although he is regarded as one of the most successful Dutch football players.

The reason why is not very popular is because of his role in a conflict in the Dutch national team during the European football championship in 1996, which eventually led to a dramatic performance in the tournament.

The media saw it as conflict between the black (Surinamese) and the white Dutch players, but it actually was a power struggle over salary within in their club team Ajax.

Zadie Smith about her mother, father and "White Teeth"

Best-selling British author Zadie Smith wasn't in the news because she wrote a new book, but because she claimed her childhood home was brimful of books – but most had been borrowed from a local library by her mother and not returned.

"I didn't steal books from library, says mother of Zadie Smith," wrote the Daily mail.

Her mother Yvonne Bailey-Smith, 56, agreed that her home had been full of books but insisted she bought most of them herself, spending up to £80 a time at local bookshops.

The story behind it was Zadie Smith's campaign to save a north-west London library opened by Mark Twain in 1900. Unfortunatly she lost the battle, the council voted in favour of closing half the libraries in the borough because of Goverment spending cuts.

I think it's the only photo on the net of Zadi Smith's Jamaican mother, and it's a shame it's linked to such a headline. Read the story at www.dailymail.co.uk

Zadi Smith's father

She lost her father 5 years ago. On the photo is Zadi Smith with her father Harvey. About the photo she wrote in NYT, " And this is me and my dad one Christmas past. I'm 5 and he's too old to have a 5-year-old." Her father was 55 by the way, and he divorced from her mother when she was 15.

But I don't believe she meant in a negative way. Because last year she wrote a very moving story about her father in The Sunday Times. To quote the headline, "Zadie Smith, her father and British comedy. A story about a mutual passion for the likes of Monty Python and the punchline she can’t escape — his death."

She wrote: "My father had few enthusiasms, but he loved comedy. ..

When Harvey was very ill, in the autumn of 2006, I went to visit him at a nursing home in the seaside town of Felixstowe, armed with the DVD boxed set of Fawlty Towers. By this point, he was long divorced from my mother, his second divorce, and was living alone on the grey East Anglian coast, far from his children.

A dialysis patient for a decade (he lost his first kidney to stones, the second to cancer), his body now began to give up. I had meant to leave the DVDs with him, something for the empty hours alone, but when I got there, with nothing to talk about, we ended up watching them together for the umpteenth time, he on the single chair, me on the floor, cramped in that grim little nursing-home bedroom ...

White teeth

Needles to say Zadi Smith became world famous when she published her novel White Teeth in 2000. The Amazon review states the book is about race, sex, class, history, and the minefield of gender politics.

But in an interview, Smith says, "I wasn't trying to write about race. . . . Race is obviously a part of the book, but I didn't sit down to write a book about race. So is a book that doesn't have exclusively white people in the main theme must be one about race? I don't understand that."

But her book will always be analysed from racial point of view. One of the most striking examples is the book "Zadie Smith's White Teeth - Irie as an example for 2nd generation immigrants’ desperate search for their place in a multicultural society".

In the book the author analyses the biracial identity of Irie, the daughter of Clara (see video). She writes about about Irie's feeling of unrootedness as a consequence of lacking role models and her unawareness of her own family’s history. Read it here.

In 2002 the novel was dramatised by Channel 4. For those of you who have missed it, see all the episodes at www.youtube.com.

The styles of “Jeunes Parisiens” (Young Parisians) - Photo book by Hugues Lawson-Body

“Jeunes Parisiens” (Young Parisians) is the first book of Parisian photographer Hugues Lawson. In his book he tried to caputure the different styles of the Parisian youth. It took him 3 years to complete his project and his photo book was released in December 2010.

Hugues Lawson also worked for various companies such as Nike, Ikea, Orange, Kinder Bueno and collaborates with various magazines like Time, L'Equipe Magazine, GQ and Elle. Lawson is born in Togo and lives and works in Paris France.

According to the lifestyle magazine Mail Movement, Hugues Lawson was interested in today's youngster, totally different from those of his generation.

Those that we pass everyday, that we stare, we're trying to understand the attitude, the codes, forgetting that each of us have been there before Hugues Lawson put himself in our place and tried to know more, to do a portrait without scratchs of this new generation, which mixes, tangled and often stay in groups.



"I was surprised by these teens, dancing on African music in their hall, in a city of the 20th district, and obviously, I'm getting old," he explains. "I wanted to learn more about this generation and my work forced me to document myself. Some meetings have resulted in others, some funny ones, crazy, rich... And my one-day models were interested in my approach, and have often seen me as one of their own.



Despite my limited slang and my age, they never treated me as an intruder. I wasn't expecting much naturalness and spontaneity from them. My city, Paris, is cosmopolitan and contrary to popular belief, all the Parisians are not white!

I tried to capture this reality," he continues. "In these tribes, I tried to identify: the leader, the origin, the appurtenance to a movement, the style, and then the details: the fringe in common, metal objects, tattoos, piercings, religious symbols, pointy-toed shoes and some platforms of some of them..."



Published by 19/80 Editions, "Jeunes Parisiens" (Young Parisians) isn't a collection of photos, or one of those famous books compiling the fashion outfits of foreigners crossed in the street. "The fashion balance exists in this book, but it doesn't thunder like on the fashion blogs or magazines.



This book is not a "Fashion" dictionary, it's a book about today's "Young Parisian" concludes Hugues Lawson. Indeed, the book contains some notes and texts by Mark Beauge, William Klein and Oxmo Puccino." (Source: Mail Movement)

An interview with Hugues Lawson


Some links:
http://jeunes-parisiens.tumblr.com
http://next.liberation.fr
http://www.ideabooks.nl

La Batunoza ‘Xica da Silva’: The best independent hip hop release of 2011

Time for me to tell you something about the most recent musical revelation from Belgium: ‘Xica da Silva’ from La Batunoza. This project is a collaboration between MC Le Tagarel a.k.a. La Batucada, vocalist Ismael and Brussels hip hop producer Noza. Together they released their best work ever, and it stands tall among worldwide hip hop productions.

La Batunoza is hip hop defying borders. It’s hip hop the way Manu Chao might have made hip hop. It’s music crossing cultures and languages. It’s music for the world.

Les Nubians releases New Album "Nu Revolution"

The Grammy nominated Les Nubians, consisting of Paris-born sisters Hélène and Célia Faussart, released their third album, "Nü Revolution" on April 19th 2011.

The 14 track album will feature special guest appearances by Manu Dibango, Eric Roberson, Freshly Ground, Blitz the Ambassador and John Banzaï. According to Hélène, "The main difference between this album and the others is that Nü Revolution is more uptempo. This album is a celebration of life! We wanted to bring and spread this energy, this joy in a time of uncertainty."

Very creative, diverse and fresh new music from the Afropean soul sisters.

Les Nubians - Afrodance

Video pick by Mavis G from North Carolina


And a bonus: Les Nubians - Les Gens (People) ft. Blitz the Ambassador

Via http://hiphopiscoolagain.com