Tuesday 31 October 2017

18 HOURS THE FILM TO MAKE WAVES AND MOVE MOUNTAINS


’18 HOURS’ THE FILM TO PREMIER NEXT WEEK

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (margaretta.gacheru@gmail.com)

The true story of the young man who survived a heartless hit-and-run accident only to die 18 hours later outside Kenyatta National Hospital is a tale that brought many Kenyans to tears.

But for Kevin Njue, the story of Alex Madaga touched him so deeply he felt compelled to do more than merely weep. It inspired him to first write a screen play based on this home-grown Kenyan tragedy, and then to find the means to make ’18 Hours’ the film that will premier this coming week on Friday, November 10th.

At age 25, Njue is already an award-winning filmmaker. But the 2015 movie that earned him several accolades, ‘Intellectual Scum’, was a short film, just 15 minutes.

But ‘18 hours’, while being based on a true story is a full length feature film, not a film short or a documentary. So the story is not exactly the same as Madaga’s.

But as both the writer and the director, Njue has ensured the profound emotional impact of the actual experience will be felt by most people who come to see the film.

The film’s trailer, which can already be found on YouTube, will confirm that fact for anyone wishing to get a feeling for Njue’s cinematic finesse.

Casting an outstanding team of Nick Ndeda and Brian Ogola as the two para-medics committed to getting Magada (not his name in the film) the care he needs, it’s Sue Wanjiru’s performance as Magada’s emotionally distraught wife that is bound to bring one to tears.

Ndeda also gives an immensely powerful performance as the one with whom we identify as his ambulance takes the dying Magada from one inadequately-equipped hospital to the next. He’s aghast to discover how ill-prepared Kenya’s so-called emergency care units are. He’s also angry and disillusioned by the realization that however much he hopes to save the dying man, the broken nature of the country’s health care system won’t allow him to do his job.

Njue, in an interview on NTV’s The Trend, said his intention in making ’18 Hours’ was not to blame or point accusing fingers at anyone. But he clearly hopes to rouse awareness of the need to improve or better still, to reconstruct the system in a way that can truly save lives and not leave them to die on the streets as did Alex Madaga.  






Monday 30 October 2017

BIKING & HIKING WITH KENYANS IS HEALTHY, ECONOMICAL & FUN

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted October 30, 2017)
Patrick Kamau Njoroge had been riding a bicycle from the time he was ten.
“It was the family’s bicycle so it was mainly used to deliver fresh milk. But when it wasn’t being used for deliveries, I’d go riding with the older boys in my neighborhood,” he recalls.
“We all grew up in Limuru and we found that biking brought us together,” says Patrick, alluding to his two friends Benson Njenga and Joseph Maina. “We all shared a passion for adventure and loved moving around the tea plantations on our bikes. We’ve been good friends ever since,” he adds.
But back then, the three bikers had no idea they’d be making a successful business out of their favorite pastime.
“We actually started thinking about creating a biking business late in 2014 when I was in my last year at [Maseno] University. We didn’t register ‘Active Motion Kenya’ until early 2015,” Patrick says.
But even before AMK was registered, the trio was mobilizing friends to make brief biking trips around the county with them. They didn’t charge anything at the time. But then they found those same friends wanted to take more trips with them. That’s when they began to consider monetizing their bicycle rides.
By this time, Patrick had replaced the family’s ‘Black Mamba’ bicycle with a proper Mountain Bike, the kind that can take on Kenya’s rugged, often bumpy and pot-holed roads.
Today, Active Motion Kenya owns ten mountain bikes which they rent out to clients who come on their weekend bike tours and don’t already have bikes of their own.
“Most of our clients (around 70 percent) have bikes of their own, but for the rest they can rent bikes and helmets from us,” Patrick notes.
But since their weekend biking groups can run in size from five up to 50, AMK occasionally has to get more mountain bikes from their supplier who brings them in from the UK, China and the US.
Active Motion Kenya also organizes hiking tours which the company advertises as being – like biking -- both healthy and economical ways to see the country.
But whether their tours attract bikers or hikers, Patrick says AMK invariably has a para-medic traveling with the tour just in case someone needs assistance.
And when it comes to the bike tours, there’s always a bus backing up the travelers.
“We normally don’t ride our bikes in town,” he says, noting that there are two regular rendezvous points. One’s in front of International House, just around the corner from the Nairobi Hilton. The other is at The Mall in Westlands.
After someone signs up for the tour of their choice, the listings of which one can find either on AMK’s website or on its Facebook page, then they’ll be informed where and when to rendezvous. Setting off in the AMK bus, which is equipped with a super-sized bicycle rack fastened to the top of the bus, the tour will formally begin in any number of places.
Tours may start off in Limuru heading to Mlango Farm or from the Ngong Hills biking towards the Suswa Mountain. They may go from Brackenhurst to tour various tea plantations in the area. Tours may even run from the Aberdares all the way to Thika town.
“What we aim to do is provide our clients with unique and scenic experiences,” Patrick explains to me at our first meeting. He had escorted his group of a dozen multinational travellors to see the Red Hill Art Gallery after which they planned to have lunch just next door at Zereniti Gardens.
Adding that AMK offers ‘package deals’, he says their tours usually include nice lunches. However, when they bike to a place like Suswa Mountain, they’ll bring their own chef to ensure their biker guest eat well.
AMK has also found that hiking is quite popular among both foreign tourists and locals alike. Some hikes are relatively short, running around three hours, while others can go on from six to eight hours.
Among the places AMK takes their hiking clients are the Chyulu Hills, the Aberdares, Mount Kenya; and this coming weekend, they’ll head to Eburru Forest.
“We always make prior arrangements with either the Kenya Wildlife or Kenya Forest Services,” Patrick says, adding “this coming Saturday, we have a free biking event which will start off at Casual Bites Café in Westlands. All are welcome to come.”

.

NOMICAL & FUN

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted October 30, 2017)

Patrick Kamau Njoroge had been riding a bicycle from the time he was ten.

“It was the family’s bicycle so it was mainly used to deliver fresh milk. But when it wasn’t being used for deliveries, I’d go riding with the older boys in my neighborhood,” he recalls.

“We all grew up in Limuru and we found that biking brought us together,” says Patrick, alluding to his two friends Benson Njenga and Joseph Maina. “We all shared a passion for adventure and loved moving around the tea plantations on our bikes. We’ve been good friends ever since,” he adds.

But back then, the three bikers had no idea they’d be making a successful business out of their favorite pastime.

“We actually started thinking about creating a biking business late in 2014 when I was in my last year at [Maseno] University. We didn’t register ‘Active Motion Kenya’ until early 2015,” Patrick says.

But even before AMK was registered, the trio was mobilizing friends to make brief biking trips around the county with them. They didn’t charge anything at the time. But then they found those same friends wanted to take more trips with them. That’s when they began to consider monetizing their bicycle rides.

By this time, Patrick had replaced the family’s ‘Black Mamba’ bicycle with a proper Mountain Bike, the kind that can take on Kenya’s rugged, often bumpy and pot-holed roads.

Today, Active Motion Kenya owns ten mountain bikes which they rent out to clients who come on their weekend bike tours and don’t already have bikes of their own.

“Most of our clients (around 70 percent) have bikes of their own, but for the rest they can rent bikes and helmets from us,” Patrick notes.

But since their weekend biking groups can run in size from five up to 50, AMK occasionally has to get more mountain bikes from their supplier who brings them in from the UK, China and the US.

Active Motion Kenya also organizes hiking tours which the company advertises as being – like biking -- both healthy and economical ways to see the country.

But whether their tours attract bikers or hikers, Patrick says AMK invariably has a para-medic traveling with the tour just in case someone needs assistance.

And when it comes to the bike tours, there’s always a bus backing up the travelers.

“We normally don’t ride our bikes in town,” he says, noting that there are two regular rendezvous points. One’s in front of International House, just around the corner from the Nairobi Hilton. The other is at The Mall in Westlands.

After someone signs up for the tour of their choice, the listings of which one can find either on AMK’s website or on its Facebook page, then they’ll be informed where and when to rendezvous. Setting off in the AMK bus, which is equipped with a super-sized bicycle rack fastened to the top of the bus, the tour will formally begin in any number of places.

Tours may start off in Limuru heading to Mlango Farm or from the Ngong Hills biking towards the Suswa Mountain. They may go from Brackenhurst to tour various tea plantations in the area. Tours may even run from the Aberdares all the way to Thika town.

“What we aim to do is provide our clients with unique and scenic experiences,” Patrick explains to me at our first meeting. He had escorted his group of a dozen multinational travellors to see the Red Hill Art Gallery after which they planned to have lunch just next door at Zereniti Gardens.

Adding that AMK offers ‘package deals’, he says their tours usually include nice lunches. However, when they bike to a place like Suswa Mountain, they’ll bring their own chef to ensure their biker guest eat well.

AMK has also found that hiking is quite popular among both foreign tourists and locals alike. Some hikes are relatively short, running around three hours, while others can go on from six to eight hours.

Among the places AMK takes their hiking clients are the Chyulu Hills, the Aberdares, Mount Kenya; and this coming weekend, they’ll head to Eburru Forest.

“We always make prior arrangements with either the Kenya Wildlife or Kenya Forest Services,” Patrick says, adding “this coming Saturday, we have a free biking event which will start off at Casual Bites Café in Westlands. All are welcome to come.”



.


Saturday 28 October 2017

FEMALE SEXUALITY AT GOETHE INSTITUTE

ART ADDRESSES ISSUES OF SEXUALITY AND GENDER IDENTITY
By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted October 28, 2017)
When sex and nudity are on public display, they’re likely to arouse strong sentiments, either focused interest or fervent outrage, depending on the perspective of the viewer.
The subjects of sex and nudity become even more disturbing or delicious, troubling or tantalizing when they’re framed in the field of fine art.
Artists like Michael Soi, Patrick Mukabi and John Kamicha all have been challenged for daring to address such themes in their art.
Whether the artists taking part in the current group show at Goethe Institute receive insults or applause for their feminist artistry, only time will tell.
But from the outpouring of appreciation that they received at the opening last Wednesday night, the show, entitled ‘Remote’, already looks like it’s a watershed of an exhibition.
It’s only the show’s title, ‘Remote’, that seems curious since the art of both Maral Bolouri and Asteria Malinzi are all about intimacy, immediacy and outspoken truth-telling.
Jackie Karuti’s imaginative and whimsical video might work, given ‘The Planets Chapter 32’ takes us into the far (‘remote’) reaches of the universe. The trip is powered by the artist’s curiosity and the paper kite cum rocket ship that fancifully flies her into outer space.
Only the ‘Troglodyte’ images of Joshua Obaga reflect the sort of alienation, isolation and frustration that yearns to break out of those feelings and re-connect with the living.
But if the title is curious, the concept that curator Zihan Herr has sought to explore is challenging and deep. She wanted her fellow artists to explore concepts associated with dismantling ‘social constructs’, be they limiting social stereotypes or false historical narratives.
Both Maral and Asteria took up the challenge and defiantly employed their artistic methods to dispense with outmoded, inaccurate and dehumanizing social constructs.
In Maral’s case, her multimedia installation draws upon the same research into African proverbs that fueled her award-winning ‘L’Atelier’ piece entitled ‘Mothers and Others’.
The installation comes in four parts. First, there’s a white open box which seems to serve as a trash bin since it’s filled with paper scraps with ugly anti-woman stereotypes written on them. Terms like ‘slut’, ‘whore’, ‘loose’ and ‘pussy’ all were implied in the traditional proverbs; but these are dispensed with by the artist.(nothing more than garbage to the artist).
Going further, Maral boldly draws a black and white set of nine almond-shaped figures. They’re delicately drawn and anatomically, they look exactly like ladies’ primary sexual organ, the clitoris.
She also creates a series of the clit-shaped organ in clay which she’s painted white, as if to underscore its importance to women’s sexual identity and pleasure.
Maral creates one last set of images, one clitoris in the center, one a sharply pointed hook apparently representing the sharp pain that women feel when violated sexually, and one knotted noose sliced open, perhaps a symbol of freedom.
Her art is incredibly powerful as she seems to be declaring both women’s defiance of the stereotypes and her new, uninhibited and bold gender identity which transcends the old and starts afresh to develop new identities and art.
Finally, Asteria’s main medium is photography which she uses to deconstruct the old narrative about slavery and the horror of Africans’ middle passage into dehumanizing servitude. That historical narrative is normally either sanitized or ignored entirely. But Asteria aims to both set the narrative straight and expose the cruelty inflicted on African women. She does so both with a written text and a beautiful full-bodied portrait of a woman. The woman is nude, apparently representing African women’s stark situation both during the Middle Passage and on the slave auction block.
Coincidentally, the nude is also the artist who stands without shame, much as African women had to stand while being dehumanized and treated like objects and animals up for sale.
There’s nothing pornographic about the nude. Neither is there any disfiguration to detract from the beauty of this body.
One cannot predict how long it will be before fundamentalists come to Goethe and protest either the nude who stands near the entrance to the show, or the flagrant display of not just one but ten unmistakably images of women’s ultra-sensitive sexual organ.
The subtle symbolism of Zihan’s show may be lost to those who only look superficially at the art. Its meaning may remain ‘remote’ to general audiences. But it’s also provocative and bound to rouse curiosity and whatever else.

  


Friday 27 October 2017

VISUAL VOICES MAKE RESOUNDING STATEMENT ON THE REALITY OF KENYAN ART




                                                       Anthony Okello's Masquerade'
By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted October 27, 2017)
                                                                                                   Untitled by Fitsum Berhe Woldelibanos

Visual Voices: the Work of over 50 Contemporary Artists in Kenya’ is the book that Kenyan art lovers have been waiting for. It’s a tome that may soon be seen as canonical and a ‘must-have’ for every university and public library having even a slight interest in Africa, leave alone in contemporary Kenyan art.

The size of Susan Wakhungu-Githuku’s voluminous text might suggest it’s simply an attractive ‘coffee table book’ featuring one of Anthony Okello’s striking ‘Masquerade’ masks. But for any publisher to produce an art book that’s more than 600 pages long and containing almost 400 color images is practically unheard of. It’s explicable only if the content inside is precious and important.


                                                                                                          Untitled by Mary Collis
One will only need to open Visual Voices to any one of the 57 artists documented both photographically and biographically in the book to see that the content is indeed impressive and unprecedented.

The photography alone is for the most part sharp, expressive and illustrative of the quality of work that each of the selected artists has produced over the years. Some of it has been shot by Bobby Pall, the professional who Susan has worked closely with since she started Footprints Press back in 2010.  

                                                                                                             Mother by Gakunju Kaigwa
The other outstanding photographers who’ve contributed to the images in the book are James Muriuki and Bedad Mwangi. However, when it comes down to giving credit where it’s ultimately due, one has to hand it to Susan since it was her decision to devote so much space in the book to allowing the art to speak for itself.

In fact, what better way to destroy forever the myth that there’s ‘nothing’ happening artistically in Kenya or East Africa than to provide concrete and colorful evidence of the vibrancy of the current Kenyan art scene. What better way to debunk the lie that the only art forms in the country are curios often called souvenir or airport art.


                                                                                James Mbuthia's Young Girls
Surprisingly, there are still some Africanists who continue to perpetuate that lie. They still claim the only contemporary African art of merit is to be found in West and Southern Africa.

And even now, when the global media is highlighting the surge of intense interest in Pan-African art, they are still largely ignoring East Africa.


                                                                                            Richard Onyango's Untitled (from Lamu Port Series)
But now that ‘Visual Voices’ has been published, the reality of the Kenyan art scene can no longer. Of course, there are issues about the book that a few art critics have raised. The main ones relate to Susan’s selection process and the criteria she used to pick the 57 artists that she did. And why did she leave out others who one could have assumed would be there in the book but are not?

Criteria is always a sticky subject and Susan in her acknowledgements says she worked closely with a ‘selection team’ who helped her choose. But she also admits it was she who made the final pick. 


                                                              Joseph 'Bertiers' Mbatia wins awards with his panoramic portraits of Kenyan life
For the most part the book is broadly reflective of what’s happening right now in the mainstream of Kenya’s thriving art scene. Nonetheless, there are many more up-and-coming local artists who didn’t get into the book. But their time is coming and a tome like Visual Voices is giving young Kenyan artists hope that they too will one day gain the kind of qualitative recognition that Susan has given these 57, most of whom are Nairobi-based and fairly well-established.



                                                                                                      Shabu Mwangi
There are several outstanding local artists who are absent, but most of them made a personal choice not to be in the book. There are others whose inclusion I could question. One is an artist who died more than 16 years ago and who was never actively engaged in the contemporary Kenyan art scene.

I’m not adverse to the book including deceased artists like Samwel Wanjau and Expedito Mwebe, both of whom made important contributions to our current art world. Wanjau is considered one of Kenya’s greatest sculptors and the father to two other outstanding artists who are both in Visual Voices, namely Anthony and Jackson Wanjau. And Expedito left his sculptural mark in cathedrals, conference centres, hotels and private homes all over the country.


                                                                              The late Expedito Mwebe was often called Kenya's Picasso
But if the book had been even more inclusive of deceased Kenyan artists, I would have recommended two more notable painters be there. Both Omosh Kindeh (aka Eric Omondi) and Ashif (George) Malamba passed on a couple of years back, and both were central figures in Kenyans’ contemporary art world. Not so Tonio Trzebinski who passed on in 2001 and was more closely identified with the ‘white mischief’ side of Kenya than the contemporary Kenyan art world.

But leaving aside the issue of what Visual Voices didn’t do, there is so much that it’s done to confirm not just the reality of contemporary Kenyan art but also its longevity. And this was done by ensuring that artists who were practicing as far back as the 1950’s and 1960’s are including in the book. That means that Elimo Njau, Yony Waite, Samwel Wanjau, Ancent Soi and Jak Katarikawe


                                                                                 Uganda-born Jak Katarikawe has lived in Kenya for decades
are all featured in the book. Indeed, all six are treated just as tastefully as the rest. That’s to say they all have full-page portrait photos followed by a full-page of biographical text after which no less than six separate pages of either paintings, drawings, sculptures or photographs reflect the artist’s best work. Two installation artists, Syomia Kyambi and Wambui Kamiru-Collymore


                                                                                 Installation artist and Gallerist Wambui Kamiru-Collymore
were given more pages than the rest, apparently because it’s not as easy to capture the essence of installation art in a single snap.

Equally, what further reveals the rich diversity of the current art scene is the variety of media that the artists employ as evidenced by the photographs of their artwork. There’s plenty of acrylic


                                                                                              Anthony Wanjau's young girl in wood 
and oil paints applied on everything from well-primed canvas, linen and plywood to Lubugo bark cloth, galvanized metal sheets and glass.


                                                              Florence Wangui's 'Mr World' battling roosters in charcoal on paper
The sculptures also are created in multi-media as artists have worked with everything from wood, scrap metal and stoneware to bronze, steel, resin and fibre glass.


                                       Muralist Camille Wekesa painted a 'Tree Lobby' covering floor, walls & ceiling of ex-pat's upcountry private home
Finally, the issue of gender balance is one that the publisher has clearly sought to address. She didn’t quite make it as there are only fifteen women artists out of 57 represented in Visual Voices. Nonetheless, these fifteen are all committed ‘creatives’ who have consistently proved they can hold their own well in what is still a predominantly male-dominated visual art world.
All fifteen are trailblazers who are already serving as role models to other young women and girls who’d like to take that leap of faith and become creative artists themselves.

In this regard, I have to commend Susan Wakhungu-Githuku for daring to publish such a beautiful book. It’s a treasure trove that is bound to transform lives of untold African artists who’ll be inspired by what they see and hear from these articulate visual voices.







Wednesday 25 October 2017

PAPILLON'S ALBUM LAUNCH & BIO


PRINCELY DEBUT ALBUM LAUNCH SOUNDS AS GOOD AS THE ARTISTES LOOK

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (margaretta.gacheru@gmail.com)

The finale of last week’s African Heritage Night was the launch of the debut album by the multi-talented Kenyan musician Papillon (aka Martin Murimi).

‘Heart of Africa’ is the album recently recorded by Papillon with the same remarkable band members who performed last Wednesday night in the garden at Alliance Francaise.

Musically speaking, Papillon has been performing at Nairobi venues for many years. He wasn’t known by ‘the French name for butterfly’ back in 2005 when he first started performing professionally with the Jua Kali Drummers out of Dagoretti.

With Jua Kali, the young percussionist performed in Europe and Latin America. But after attending a number of music workshops and meeting the musician who’d become his main mentor, Ayub Ogada, he split from Jua Kali and formed the Slum Drummers.

But even before he joined Jua Kali, Murimi was making his own instruments out of scrap metal and other found objects. Then once he got exposed to a wider variety of musical instruments, he expanded his own repertoire of home-made instruments.

It was that knack for assembling brand new musical instruments and sounds that appealed to African Heritage House CEO Alan Donovan, who’s promoting several AH bands in the past, and who’s spurred on the innovative instrumentalist ever since.

But it’s Murimi alone who composed all 12 musical pieces in his new album. At the same time, his songs are beautifully embellished by the masterfully musical artists who Papillon also performed with last Wednesday. They included Prasad Velankar on tablas, Michel Ong’ara on flute and guitar, Paul Shiundu on keyboard, David Muli Mbuta on bass guitar, Titus Davis Mwangi on percussion and Nelson Gaitho joining Papillon on vocals.

Performing as a kind of auxiliary team to the African Heritage fashion show, all seven artists were decked out by Mr Donovan as if they were musical princes, which they could have been, given the professionalism of everyone in the band.

Their musical genius was most apparent when artists like Michele, Paul and Prasad were given the latitude by Papillon to perform semi-solo riffs that effectively illustrated of the band’s immense potential to grow and expand as they continue working together.

For now, copies of ‘Heart of Africa’ are available through the African Heritage House. But Papillon is having the album ‘remastered’ in the States. It will be available early next month together with a new cover and booklet story about his unique collection of original instruments and his bio.

PAPILLON’S BEGINNINGS
By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted January 2016)

Martin Murimi aka Papillon has been making musical instruments out of recycled scrap metal and other found objects ever since he joined AMREF’s Dagoretti Child-in-Need Project in the early days of the new millennium.   
Murimi was only a teenager when he came from the village to stay with his dad in Nairobi. But things didn’t turn out as he’d expected. He soon had to learn the skills of survival and self-reliance.
But he had several things going for him. First was his Christian upbringing which included his life-long love of music, especially singing; then there was the wise advice of his mother who taught him to “work with your hands, and you’ll be blessed.”
Murimi’s been fortunate to find mentors who’ve taught him countless life-skills, especially the value and virtue of being resourceful, resilient and hardworking. That’s how he found his way to Dagoretti and AMREF‘s street children’s project which aimed to transform young people’s lives by teaching them to create instruments and make music out of recycled garbage.
Managed by the Italian artist Giovanni Okasho, the project evolved into the Jua Kali Drummers in 2005, and Murimi not only learned to be a powerful percussionist but also to become the group’s assistant director. With Jua Kali, he traveled, performed and even studied for almost a year in Italy and later Brazil.
Jua Kali also performed locally at venues like Bomas of Kenya, Sarakasi Dome and the Sawa Sawa Festival. But it was their musical workshops that helped to broaden Murimi’s perspective on performance and got him playing all sorts of instruments, from flutes and finger pianos to original inventions like the tubaphone.
Those workshops are where Murimi also met Ayub Ogada who subsequently became one of his main mentors once he split from Jua Kali, helped form the Slum Drummers and finally branched out on his own. Yet as much as he admired Ayub’s sound and musical versatility, he didn’t want to become an Ayub clone.
Wanting to have an identity of his own is how Murimi morphed into Papillion (a ‘butterfly’ in French) and began creating his own musical instruments, like his Mwair-wa-oru (Daughter of Ur) and Anywar Abel (caring parent) which he’ll play during Sunday’s African Heritage Day.









THE PERFORMANCE COLLECTIVE DO YAA GYASI'S HOMECOMING @ POINT ZERO COFFEE

                                   Mshai Mwangola-Githonga introduces historical background of Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing at PointZero Book Cafe

COFFEE, CAKE AND BOOKS A DELICIOUS COMBO AT POINT ZERO CAFÉ

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted October 25, 2017)

Book clubs are popping up all over Nairobi. But there is none quite like the Point Zero Book Café.
What makes the PZ Book Café so special is two things: first, it’s the coffee experience since conversations about books are situated specifically at Point Zero Coffee which is right in front of the Nairobi Gallery (the old PC’s office on the corner of Kenyatta Avenue and Uhuru Highway).
Andrea Moraa, (who co-owns PZC with Wangeci Gitobu) is the Coffee Master who introduces her audiences cum customers to new tastes in coffee (which is only half the reason people come mornings on the third Saturday of every month).
For instance, this past Saturday everyone present got to taste Blue Mountain coffee from Kenya and Columbian coffee from Latin America.
It turns out Andrea had done her ‘homework’ (testing with her experienced taste buds) to figure out which coffees go best with which cakes! What she’d discovered was that Blue Mountain goes well with ‘apple and butterscotch’ cake! And Columbian coffee partners well with banana cake.
Everyone on hand last Saturday morning got to taste her ‘discoveries’. But since nobody present had Andrea’s experience in professional coffee and cake tasting, all we knew was that everything was delicious.
But for those who’d come to Point Zero primarily to discuss this month’s book choice, it was the dramatization of Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel, Homegoing by The Performance Collective that was even more delectable.
The theatrical trio of Mshai Mwangola-Githonga, Mueni Lundi and Aghan Odero is no ordinary acting troupe. They are all performing artists who have known each other for years. In their university days, they were all members of Theatre Workshop Productions. And while each has branched out into their own respective fields, they’ve stayed true to the tradition of storytelling which they mastered at Nairobi University.
It wasn’t long ago that they decided the time had finally come for them to reunite and become The Performance Collective. The Point Zero Book Café is the first time they have a regular monthly gig and goal, which is to introduce recent African writings to receptive audiences by dramatizing the texts.
“We also want to stimulate conversations about issues that arise from the texts,” says Mshai who actually started TPC with Mueni shortly after the 2013 elections.
“We began by doing non-fiction. We devised a performance that incorporated a number of actors and called it ‘Weaving Women,’ which was a fabulous experience,” Mshai recalls.
She and Mueni then went on to dramatize eye-witness testimonies from the ICC Witness Project which was also quite successful.
It was only last year that Aghan turned the duet into a trio and they started staging fictional works. Focusing first on Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s award-winning novel Dust, they blended Yvonne’s fiction with personal reflections on their friend and fellow creative.
“It was during that performance that we realized we needed to pay more attention to this project [TPC],” says Mshai who contacted the Point Zero Coffee women and shortly thereafter the PZ Book Café was born.
Thus far the Collective has dramatized readings from five novels. They include Dust, So Long a Letter, Ghana Must Go, Beloved and the book they introduced this past weekend, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.
Last Saturday, Mueni introduced the book by clarifying that their choice of passages was based on their desire to inspire people to read Homegoing thoroughly by next month (since every book gets two Saturday sessions).
The trio definitely succeeded first by giving a bit of background into how the 26 year old author constructed her book, and then dramatizing the first two chapters enabling us to get a taste for the characters, the texture of the writing and the drama that would ensue. Later on, they dramatized ‘the family tree’ using colorful knotted scarves to symbolize the families’ connections over centuries.
Yaa’s historical novel is rich with complex relationships; it’s based on the lives of two sisters, one who grew up privileged having become the wife of a British colonial boss while the other was captured and destined to become a slave on a North American plantation.

Yaa has clearly written an ambitious historical novel. But it’s also one that The Performance Collective made magical and gripping. Their dramatization (and the lively discussion that followed) succeeded in inspiring their audience to go get the book and read it before November 18, which is the second session of the PZ Book Cafe.

Monday 23 October 2017

50 YEARS COLLECTING, RECREATING AFRO-FUSION CULTURE



                                                                                        Alan Donovan with one of his African Heritage models

 By Margaretta wa Gacheru (composed October 23, 2017)
Having just celebrated his 50th anniversary since he first came to Africa in 1967, it’s about time to appraise the impact of Alan Donovan on the region, or at least on Nairobi and Kenya’s contemporary art scene.

Initially, the American designer and CEO of African Heritage House came to the continent not intending to plunge into the depths or even the shallows of a fledgling African art scene. Donovan came to work in Nigeria as a USAID relief worker in Biafra. At the time, Biafra was a war zone from which Donovan himself found relief once he traveled around the country and made his way to the amazing village of Oshogbo. It was a haven filled with artists of all types, including musicians, poets, painters and above all, followers of a deep and diverse cosmology including gods celebrated by local people with ceremonies largely unknown in the West.

Before Nigeria, Donovan had landed in Ghana where he had readily found indigenous art forms existing side by side of cosmopolitan characters who had just gained the country’s independence the decade before.

But it was the dynamism of Nigerian culture and art that convinced Donovan he wasn’t in a hurry to leave the region; neither was he willing to work much longer for the US government. So he took off and made his way to Kenya across the Sahara desert and through the semi-arid region of northern Kenya. That was where he was again charmed by the indigenous African arts and crafts of the local people.

Turkana-land is where Donovan began his collecting of African material culture, not as a scholar or social researcher but as an exhibitor whose first showing of Turkana artifacts became the occasion for his meeting former Vice President Joseph Murumbi and his wife Sheila. Their friendship blossomed from the first day they met. Murumbi initially wanted Alan to go back to Turkana and collect a second set of their artifacts for him. From there Murumbi shared his vision with Alan, of wanting to build a beautiful Pan-African gallery and research centre where Africans could come from all across the region and the diaspora to do their own research on Pan-African art and culture.

From that moment on, Donovan was dedicated to fulfilling the Murumbi dream. Together they built African Heritage Pan-African Gallery starting in 1972. Over the years, the gallery exhibited African artists who were Murumbi’s favorites, such as sculptors like Elkana Ong’esa, John Odoch Ameny, Expedito Mwebe and painters like Theresa Musoke and Jak Katarikawe.

Plus one of Donovan’s specialties was fusing indigenous materials with Western ideas of fashion, design, utility and functionality to create new styles of contemporary African culture. They were hybrid styles which critics would disparage for being too commercial and simply aiming to cultivate markets among Kenya’s burgeoning tourist economy.

But even as his designs were ridiculed by a cynical few for being just another form of curio, they were also being copied by ambitious Africans who could see that Donovan’s designs sold readily to foreigners.

What’s more, he was creating employment opportunities for hundreds of young men and women at a time when rural to urban migration was heating up and joblessness had already become a serious social problem.

Setting up a series of workshops for making everything from jewelry and Kisii stone crafts to tailoring, Donovan frankly worked like a maniac once he and Murumbi created their pan African gallery.

At one stage, he was even supplying fashionable shops in the States like Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s and the Banana Republic with original African Heritage designs. But that was in between his traveling for the Gallery to over 20 African countries to collect artifacts, artworks and especially textiles to bring home to Nairobi.

The impact of Donovan’s and African Heritage’s initiatives to advance what was and continues to be a decidedly hybridized African culture is yet to be measured in full.

But after colonial powers played such a profound and detrimental role in destroying indigenous cultures, traditions and religions, Donovan’s determination to reconstruct African fashion, beauty, business and culture was a blessing in ways that are not yet fully recognized.

But Donovan also did his part to promote local talents, doing his own form of ‘capacity building’ by, for instance, training artisans like Johnson Njenga in replicating elements of indigenous culture which had already been lost.

Yet there is little doubt that Mr Donovan’s role in reviving those African cultures that were crippled under colonialism is yet to be fully appreciated. At his 50th anniversary celebration which coincidentally was the African Heritage Night at Alliance Francaise, the former AH model and designer Emma Too observed that his role in developing Kenyan culture and the arts has been misunderstood, undervalued and the man was yet to receive the full recognition he deserved.

In part that may be because he’s never given up his American citizenship and never tried to be anyone other than himself.

It could also be as his detractors (like Sidney... have argued) his role has been more commercial than cultural, more Eurocentric than Afro-centric.

Or it could be there’s an issue of mistaken identity since historically, the art scene in Kenya has been controlled by expatriate Europeans or Asians in the business of selling curios. Donovan could have easily been mistaken for yet another exploitative European who made sales off Africans’ achievements but hands over a small percentage to the African workers.

Either way, Donovan is no doubt a clever businessman who knows how to create extravaganzas using basic elements of African culture and re-shaping them into works of unprecedented beauty, utility, elegance and art.

Those works have also earned Africans themselves both opportunities and riches. For instance, the African Heritage Bands that he has supported and helped to build have often gone on to soaring heights. Members of his bands, like Job Seda, now known as Ayub Ogada, have written and performed music that’s featured in Hollywood films like The Constant Gardener. And his models have also moved on, some to stay abroad and cultivate careers out there. The best example of that is the Somali model Iman who he first put on a catwalk having recognized her ineffable beauty. But she was readily whisked off to Europe where she rapidly forget to credit Donovan for helping her start off her career.

Currently, he’s been assisting a young musician and musical instrument maker, Martin Murimi, who reinvented himself with Donovan’s help as Papillon. The night of Alan’s 50th anniversary celebration was when Papillon launched his first album entitled ‘Heart of Africa.’

There are countless other artists that Alan Donovan has assisted. There have been refugee artists who he’s help get back on their feet, like John Odoch Ameny. He even helped one of Kenya’s most esteemed and widely recognized sculptors, Gakunju Kaigwa who’d wanted to intern with Odoch Ameny at AH Kisii stone workshop, which is where Gakunju learned (under Odoch) to work with that special soap stone.

Donovan’s role in publishing Joseph Murumbi’s autobiography is also large. Indeed, it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t taken the initiative to ensure Mr Murumbi’s legacy and historical contribution to Kenya does not die.

And having acquired the task from a former Managing Director of the National Museums of Kenya to manage the Nairobi Gallery, Donovan has given over most of the Gallery to creating permanent exhibitions of the Murumbi’s extensive collections of indigenous African jewelry, first edition books and stamps and other rare cultural artifacts. The rest of the Murumbi’s art collections are on permanent display at Kenya’s National Archives, thanks to Donovan’s tireless efforts.

But perhaps the least appreciated work that Donovan did on behalf of the Murumbi’s is to see that Joe’s wishes were fulfilling by ensuring that he and his wife Sheila were buried right near his best friend, Pio Gama Pinto.

African Heritage was also one of the few places in Nairobi that paid special attention to the 1985 United Nations International Decade on Women by bringing together outstanding women artists from all over the world to celebrate the Women’s Conference at African Heritage Gallery.

The women included the celebrated Kenyan woman ceramicist and O.B.E. Magdalene Odondo, Nigerian woman batik artist Nike Seven Seven Okundaye and Australian photographer Angela Fisher who with her American counterpart Carol Beckwith have created a whole series of beautiful photography books starting with ‘Africa Adorned’. It was Donovan who introduced these two women who have been prolific partners ever since.

But one of the most obvious reasons that Alan Donovan is not as well known locally as he is internationally is because the man himself is reserved by nature (some would say shy) and a workaholic who rarely has had time to promote himself other than by producing works that might or might not be attributed to his creativity and masterful design ideas.

Donovan was not able to attend his own 50th anniversary celebration, which was a big disappointment to many who had come to the event especially to congratulate him for his immense life work. But even before his ill became an issue, he had contacted the Obama Foundation and offered to gift his African Heritage House including all the art and artifacts contained therein to Barack and Michelle. He’s been informed via email and through the PA to the former American President (who’s got Kenyan blood running through his veins) that the Obamas would be delighted to accept his gift.

Whether they would ever actually come and live in the African Heritage House (which Donovan designed and constructed based on indigenous West African architectural designs) is subject to speculation. But certainly, if they settled here, they would elevate the global status of country. Their presence would probably even transform a commuter town like Mlolologo into a metropolis. But even if they only came visiting occasionally, their arrival would create scads of traffic jams but put Kenya in the world media limelight. It would also amplify the value of African culture and probably even contemporary Kenyan art.

So Kenyans will look forward to the Obamas’ arrival. We also look forward to Mr Donovan’s quick recovery since we’d like to let him know how much he is recognized by some as an international treasure who has blessed the country and giving Kenyans a more bountiful sense of their own beauty, creativity and capacity to make culture a central feature in the country’s creative economy.   








AFRICAN HERITAGE NIGHT HIGHLIGHTED PAN-AFRICAN FASHION


AFRICAN HERITAGE NIGHT FLOWED WITH FLAMBOYANT ELEGANCE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted October 23, 2017)


The African Heritage Night 2017 was reminiscent of previous AH events which have been organized over five decades since Alan Donovan, the American designer and former USAID worker first arrived in Africa back in 1967.

It was an extravaganza of fashion, beautiful faces and music by another band assembled by local artistes in conjunction with Mr Donovan. In the past it was the African Heritage Band, organized by Job Seda (who later became the acclaimed Ayub Ogada) that performed at AH events.


This time round, it was Papillon with his marvelous musicians who provided the live musical fire of the night. But then the fashion show, choreographed by Nigerian designer Paulina Otieno,
featured an eclectic range of musical accompaniment including Fela Kuti and Ayub Ogada..

The star designer of the night was the internationally – known Nigerian batik artist, Nike Seven Seven Odundaye. Credited with reviving the vanishing Nigerian textile of Adire, Nike’s indigo-blue tie and dye fabrics have been exhibited all over the world.


The one big difference in this year’s African Heritage Night was the absence of Mr Donovan who has been well but who was meant to be the star of the night.


In his absence, Mr Donovan was appreciated by everyone from former AH model Emma Too and Harsita Waters of Alliance Francaise to members of the Nigerian High Commission and Strathmore University’s Dr Luis Franceschi.


                                         Former African Heritage model and designer Emma Too
But even in his absence, Donovan’s presence was felt and tangibly seen in the Pan-African textiles that covered two floors of wall space, filled the cat-walk with elegant, original fashions made from the same fabulous hand-made fabrics and even the band Papillon that the designer has encouraged and assisted all along the way.


Ultimately, it was the fashions that were most breath-taking. Made from textiles that came from Cameroon, Congo, Mali, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Kenya, the fashions stole the show.


But without doubt, the designer that was also a crowd-stopper was Nike Okundaye. With her elegant hand-stamped indigo-blue Adire gown, flame-red coral beads and flamboyant ‘peacock’ headdresses, she was definitely the presiding African Queen of the night.

African Heritage Night's African Queen, the Nigerian batik artist in her 'peacock' headdress and coral beaded necklaces with Alliance Francaise's Culture Director Harsita Waters (all photos by Margaretta)