Author Archives: Uyi

Art Melody, the Burkina Faso-based gruff-voiced emcee who also completes the high-octane duo Waga3000, came to my attention through the group’s 2012 song entitled “Dal fo yikin bao”, which translates to “remain strong and feisty”. Their furious spit-fire flow, reminiscent of what had attracted me to Senegalese emcees, invited me into their world. Then a bit over a month ago, I received a copy of Art Melody’s Wogdog Blues, his third since his breakthrough debut in 2009. He was taken off of Ouaga’s taxi ranks, where he used to work and would kick the odd rhyme every now and then, into Europe, the continent that once landed him in prison attempting to reach it.

On April 19th, the Deutsche Börse photography prize will open at London’s Photographers’ Gallery. Awarded annually since 1996, the prize has an impressive list of recipients — Jeurgen Teller, Walid Raad, Paul Graham, John Stezaker, to name but a few. But it seems that, although the prize’s shortlist has always been international, the jury has shifted its focus ever so slightly to the ‘global south’ in recent years.

The first time I met Chinua Achebe I had just started teaching at Bard College, where I had been hired as Director of Africana Studies. I saw Chinua one evening at a campus event and nervously approached to introduce myself. I did not expect his humor or his humility. Instead of exchanging a quick word or two, he engaged me in a long conversation about the state of Africana studies and my research in Ghana. I tentatively began to seek out his company and realized that, while he was one of the most important living writers in the world, he was also lonely living in upstate New York. Over the next six years I spent as much time as I could at the house on the Bard campus where Chinua and his wife Christie lived. Sometimes I was invited but eventually I just started showing up; for food and conversation…