Wonderful time speaking at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute's After Afropolitan conference at the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn. I screened my film, and was on a panel with Binyavanga Wainaina, Farai Gundan, and Zola Dube, moderated by Sean Jacobs of Africa Is a Country. An amazing experience! --AL.

Earlier today at #AfterAfropolitan at @Weeksville Heritage Center cc @AlligatorLegs @YoliZama @BinyavangaW pic.twitter.com/2fC9u8fDvE
— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 21, 2015

Afripop Sessions, at MoCADA museum in Brooklyn last night, put me on to an amazing soul/folk/electronic singer-guitarist, Denitia Odigie. I have a new music crush. Check out this little vid I shot of "Lay Our Burdens Down," made even more poignant by its juxtaposition to the Katrina-inspired performance video art, by Tameka Norris, playing on the back wall.
Check out her band Denitia and Sene, on a U.S. tour through December 11.  And read an interview of Denitia and Sene in Interview Magazine.

Also check out the a/wake in the water exhibit at MoCADA, curated by Erin Christovale, on display until November 30. Artists include my film colleague Danielle Lessovitz, whose short film The Earthquake deals with the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake on an immigrant family in New York City; Wanuri Kahiu's Kenyan sci-fi thriller Pumzi; and the post-global warming apocalyptic drama White. Watch a PBS interview online with White director A. Sayeeda Clarke. --AL.

braved the mad weather for the brooklyn book festival in fort greene yesterday. in a threadbare cardigan over a slip of a blouse, with only my shawl and a leaky umbrella for protection, was quite happy to sit in the cold rain all day for a celebration of words and the people who write them.

i learned quite a few things, namely that the word "text" comes from the Latin "texere," meaning to weave together. a brilliant poet/visual artist shared that nugget of wisdom, arguing that text and textiles are inextricably linked, in an explanation for why she works in mixed media. i was left to ponder why i keep so many of my chosen mediums separate when they are all woven, in a certain way.

besides this bit of brilliance, among others, saw farai chideya, sarah silverman, venus williams & melvin van peebles. missed ta-nehisi coates, nelson george, colson whitehead and elizabeth wurtzel. i wanted to post a news clip before the day gets away from me. more on this later. --AL.

took a little staycation saturday in brooklyn for the fort greene festival. common was on point, but i don't know what malik yoba was doing opening for him on guitar; i think he needs to stick to acting.



on the way home, passed erykah badu walking down fulton street disguised in a wig and extra bulky clothing. i heart brooklyn! :)

Could not get my shit together from the Bronx yesterday and got to the African Fest at Prospect Park near the tail end of King Sunny Ade's performance. Trains were crazy, making the BX-Bklyn commute almost two hours(!). But I'm a trooper. Missed Freshly Ground, though from what I heard of them a couple years ago in Jo'burg, I didn't miss too much. Sorry I missed Cheikh Mbaye and Sing Sing Rhythms, the amazing sabar drummers/dancers that teach my dance classes.

Earlier this week my dad saw King Sunny perform in Albany, and sent along this pic:



Bassey meets King Sunny at the Music Heaven, Central Park, Schenectady, NY (7/12/09). Enjoy the photo of two old men from Lagos: Sunny Ade of Palace Landing Hotel and BEPCO (both of Herbert Macaulay Street, Yaba, Lagos—going back to 1969). God bless the King of Nigeria’s Juju music. It is a small world. Just make it better!!

--Dr. Essien

Lmao! My dad had a photography company, BEPCO, back in those days. I think he even still has his old camera. :)

King Sunny's dancers were on point, a pair of middle-aged Naija sisters with curves (like real women) that could shake their booties in a million different ways. King Sunny might be an old man, but his hips still work too. LOL. Haven't seen that many gyrations on stage since...well, I guess Seun Kuti. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree either, cause I know King Sunny's son Kunle, who lives works and drums in Bklyn. We in the African arts community are always wondering when he will get his shit together, since he's obviously music royalty, though his dad is clearly wondering the same thing since he didn't ask Kunle to perform with him.

After the show, ran into some cats from The AFRican (how many years must pass in order to call it "defunct"?) and Nollywood NYC, the thirty-something-year-old-male-dominated bunch of Naija filmmakers who host screening events. In tow was this crazy dude with extremely chapped lips and a grizzled beard who kept talking about the "spiritual quagmire" he was in regarding other people standing in the way of his success (he was unemployed and living with his parents in Yonkers). Apparently he recently returned from a failed business venture in NG to find himself plagued by various "demonic forces" hampering his success.

I offered that it is often ourselves who stand in our own way, a force far more powerful than anything else. He refused to listen, touting the mysticism and magicalism of Nollywood movies as evidence of the reality of occult, demonic forces (I was lmaoing at this point, and it didn't help that the guy was literally crying...I think his tear ducts have some kind of problem).

You know, if you're broke and unemployed, as many people are right now, please don't expend energy questioning the demonic forces standing in the way of your success. If they truly exist (which is questionable), you're only giving them more energy by thinking about them. Conversely, please do not spend all day praying for deliverance. Instead, focus on what you can do differently if your life isn't working. As my mom always said, may her soul rest in peace, God helps those who help themselves. And I stand as a living testament.

I will pray for that brother. :)

May 26, 2009
After Katiti King's jazz class @ DNA on Saturday, I went to the DanceAfrica Festival @ Brooklyn Academy of Music. I got to dance in the street and see some folks I haven't laid eyes on since moving to the Bronx. Ronald K. Brown/Evidence performed this year (pictured above).

I've been a festival regular since before I moved to NYC, taking a bus in just to spend the day bargaining with street vendors. Six years later it can feel a bit like same shit different day, although my girl Lady Black's sister, a painter, had this amazing portable art -- suitcases and briefcases that she covered in images of Africa and afro-ed sistas. I really should have copped one, definitely something I'd never seen before. I came correct, though -- bought some raw shea butter, a leopard-print clutch, agate ring, and green-and-white-striped bangle. Now accessorized, I am so ready for the IAFF.

Spent Memorial Day at home writing. Bliss. :)

Been back from Johannesburg for a couple of days trying to ease back into things slowly, though next week's film school orientation will likely upset my natural equilibrium. I hate coming back from vacation.

This morning I took a jog around Brooklyn Tech track a block from my apartment. As long as I didn't talk to too many folks, I could pretend that I was still on the continent surrounded by South Africans.

There was an older, stocky sista walking on the track in a black, ankle-length skirt. She wore headphones and kept raising her hands in the air and clapping as she shouted some indecipherable phrase to the heavens. Must be listening to gospel music, I thought, thanking God for another day. She was not unlike any of the women I saw at my friend's wedding ceremony, shouting and waving their hands in the air, clapping and stamping their feet rhythmically. The only real differences were language and zip code.

Crossing the 300-meter mark, I noticed that someone had cut a jagged, human-sized hole through a new chain link fence they had built last month. The fence was supposed to separate the track -- property of the prestigious Brooklyn Tech High School, down the road -- from the surrounding low-income housing buildings in Fort Greene.

Every time someone succeeded in bending back the metal, to make a way inside when the fence was locked after hours, they built a taller, stronger fence to replace the damaged one. Again, some clever young'un would rip a hole through it, so they would build another new fence. It was pointless and inevitable, but it didn't stop the powers that be from building bigger fences.

I looked up and saw a sheet hanging out of one of the project windows, like off some rooftop in the Ninth Ward. Humph. It's funny how, despite all our differences, black folks from Soweto to Brooklyn are really the same -- praying and waiting for deliverance. Trying to break free from physical, emotional, and mental ghettos while the rest of the world is hellbent on building bigger fences.

Maybe I never left Brooklyn after all. When I was in Soweto, some places reminded me of my own neighborhood. People on top of people on top of people and all black. Some places in Soweto are even becoming gentrified, so expensive that well off blacks can't afford houses there, not that that means whites are moving in.

I think things will flow to a natural order as long as folks who leave the ghetto never forget that our liberation is bound up with those still living in it. To forget that is to forget our communities and lose ourselves.

I went to the National Black Writer's Conference at Medgar Evers College on Friday. Sat in on an address by Haki Madhubuti, poet, publisher and founder of Third World Press in Chicago. This guy is bad. He spoke about how Barack Obama used to be a man of the people, but now he's taking corporate jets and not phone calls. Talked about how the Civil Rights Movement left an unfinished agenda for black people. And how today men and women are leaving competitive colleges with strong educations and skills, but lacking consciousness -- a political and cultural concept of themselves as people of black descent -- that ends up slapping them in the face in the workplace.

My favorite quote was, "Anybody can rap reality. What separates the artist from the rapper is that the artist can see beyond Bedford and Crown [Street, in Brooklyn]. The artist is able to see what our tomorrow might be."

After Madhubuti's keynote address, I attended a workshop showcasing works by elder black writers. Many of the women, some of whom were over 80, read hairstories about their struggles to tame, accept, and love their hair in their youth. It was beautiful up until the Q&A segment, which deteriorated into a 20-minute discussion about how mainstream society and black cultural attitudes contribute to hair self-hate.

Sometimes I wish black women would just stop talking about their hair and find another topic. It would free us up to deal with much more pressing issues.

The discussion also helped me realize, in a very tangible way, that I'm not black. Every time I attend one of these these black such-and-such conferences I never hear a significant mention of Africa. I end up feeling so alienated that I don't want to return.

As a little girl growing up, I always felt different because my parents were from Nigeria. My mom started an African dance troupe and we would travel around singing and performing traditional Ibibio dance. She was a pioneer in spreading African culture in Upstate New York. Our house was so deeply rooted in our heritage that I would look at other black girls around me like they were from a foreign culture.

It was tough living in between black America and black Africa. But in college, part of which included a semester at Spelman College, I realized that there is no pinning down a "definition" of blackness.

Even still, in my adult life, among other learned adults, I keep hearing the term "black" thrown around as if it has some singular, and definitive, meaning; I think of it as pluralistic, encompassing all descendants from Africa. Guess I have to check my reality at the conference door.