The program of the House of RasTafari in this year’s Sunsplash is available and we were in it!
So we left for a few days to the beautiful scenery of Osoppo to join our new friends. We spent three days and two nights of impossible sleep and filmed, interviewed and exchanged opinions with Italian Rastafari.
Giulia Bonacci is in Paris for a few days and we jump at the chance to meet her. She is currently working in Belize on the influence of black nationalism (correct me if I’m wrong) and is planning to fly back very soon. We meet in Belleville and spend hours in a cafe talking about Rastafari, our project and her book.
The recent death of Caribbean poet/politician Aimé Cesaire, and French state funeral with the presence of Sarkozy (although Cesaire had refused to meet him while still alive) calls for the inclusion of the concept of négritude in our discussion of Rastafarian movement.
It’s April and we finished our first video of the trip, “Rastafarians presence in Ethiopia”, about the conference we went to in November and the DVD is now available (at the moment we have just 7 copies)!
We would like to thank: Barabba for the camera and the white DVDs, Miche for the microphone and the DVD serigraphy, Simo for the tripod, Forrow and Carlitos for coming to the presentation and finally Madda for the Glue!
We presented our video last wednesday, during Luca Queirolo Palmas‘ Sociology of Migration course called “Derive e approdi”, held in the University of Genoa, faculty of Education Sciences.
Yesterday we went to the Genoese Buridda squat to listen to the conference by David Hilliard, founding member and former Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. He described the birth of the BPP from the personal engagement of just a few young activists. From his point of view, the key factor for the success of the BPP was their anchorage in the community, the fact they provided services like free health care and “free breakfast program” for children. In his opinion, if the BPP had only consisted in an armed party, it would have never survived the repression of the US government.
In Etiopia, ogni istante è accompagnato dalla musica proveniente da negozi di dischi, bar, ristoranti e autoradio. Inizialmente, la difficoltà consiste nell’adattarsi al volume degli altoparlanti, che sono sempre al massimo e spesso in overdrive, ma superata questa fase, dopo la prima settimana, si cominciano a capire e ad apprezzare i gusti musicali degli etiopi.
There is a land, far, far away…
Download the file and change the .doc extension to .mp3
then listen!
Ken Boothe, Satta Massa Gana, taken from the album:
Sound System Rockers-Kingston town 1969-1978, 2003
