Africa’s metal scene has been quiet compared to its counterparts on other continents. Duma rectify that, and loudly. Vocalist Martin Khanja (aka Lord Spike Heart) and guitarist and producer Sam Karugu hail from Kenya, and they relocated to Uganda to release their self-titled 2020 debut album on Kampala’s Nyege Nyege Tapes. That label is known […]
Tag: Kenya
Posted inMusic
A slice of sunshiny soukous for spring
Revisiting an old favorite by Sam Mangwana’s 80s band Tiers Monde Cooperation
Posted inMusic
J.S. Ondara creates Americana imbued with the heartache of the immigrant experience
The first time Kenyan singer-songwriter J.S. Ondara heard the music of Bob Dylan, he was blown away. As a bow-tie-wearing, poetry-writing teenager, Ondara often felt out of place among his peers, but listening to America’s most famous folk troubadour inspired him to set his own verses to music. In 2013, at age 20, Ondara won […]
Posted inBlogs
Urgent Jumping! collects east African dance classics—including the frantic benga of the Golden Kings Band
The compilation Urgent Jumping! East African Musiki Wa Dansi Classics showcases the proliferating dance styles of Kenya and Tanzania in the 1970s.
Posted inArts & Culture
What it’s like to live in the world’s largest refugee camp
Ben Rawlence’s new book is an enlightening account of Dadaab, a territory rarely covered by the mainstream press.
Posted inBlogs
A journalist’s moment of truth in a Nairobi slum
Debra Pickett writes a novel about a reporter who abandons her story
Posted inFilm
Chicago French Film Festival: Naturalist dramas and formalist filmmaking
Select reviews of screenings at this year’s Chicago French Film Festival, hosted by the Music Box Theatre.
Posted inBlogs
There’s a time and a place for everything, including an informed public
In due time, a democratic government can be held accountable.
Posted inFilm
Paradise: Love: Beach boys, white women, and the deep blue sea
Ulrich Seidl’s career-topping “Paradise” trilogy screens at Gene Siskel Film Center.
Posted inMusic
In Rotation: John Corbett of Corbett vs. Dempsey on vintage dead-stock vinyl from Kenya
Current musical obsessions of John Corbett of Corbett vs. Dempsey and filmmaker Brian Ashby
Posted inBlogs
Oscar-nominated live-action shorts: The “30-Second Auteur” takes to the high seas in Asad
Oscar-nominated live-action shorts: Asad
Posted inBlogs
2016: Obama’s America: an exegesis
I watched Dinesh D’Souza’s crappy movie so you don’t have to
Posted inMusic
In Rotation: Prog-rock guru Charles Snider on Conrad Schnitzler and District 97
Plus: Reader music editor Philip Montoro on Abana Ba Nasery, and Ga’an drummer Seth Sher on Absu, Razor, and Alphonse Mouzon
Posted inBlogs
African Women and Science Fiction
Wanuri Kahiu’s post-apocalyptic short “Pumzi” screens and YA novelist Nnedi Okorafor reads and speaks in the African Woman and Science Fiction program Sunday at the DuSable Museum of African American History.
Posted inBlogs
From a Whisper
Wanuri Kahiu’s 2008 drama “From a Whisper,” about life ten years later for those left behind by the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya, screens today at 2 p.m. at the DuSable Museum of African American History.