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Historical Context for
Hip Hop Store in Malawi
A Response by Masauko Chipembere
First off, I would like to thank you for
exposing the contradictions going on between African American
images and self image in Africa. I am a U.S. citizen with
parents from Malawi. My father was the first minister of
education in Malawi when it got its independence in the early
60s. So I have grown up in a political environment.
Malawi for many years was run by a dictator
called Kamuzu
Banda. Banda had been educated in America and came
back to help lead the revolution against colonial rule. My
father had invited him.
Banda was great at first. He was really
instrumental in pushing the British from power. However after he
achieved this he changed his course. Due to his many years
abroad he had lost touch with Malawian culture. He became afraid that
the same people who had invited him to come back and lead would
push him from power. As a result of this he began making
alliances with the British and South African governments. These
were considered enemies of the African people and the Pan-Africanist
movement that had supported Banda.
My father ended up breaking with Banda and having to flee
into exile. Maybe you rode down Masauko Chipembere highway in
Blantyre?
Anyway, as Banda increased his power he began
to ban certain information. Very little information was supplied
about slavery in the Americas. Why? Because he didn't want the
people to see that he was creating a nation under siege. He
banned books like Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester
Himes or Animal Farm by George Orwell. This created
a great vacuum in people's understanding of blacks in America.
I was in Malawi in 1996 for the first time. I
heard the word "nigger" used all the time by middle class kids who
had grown up watching a bunch of movies from the USA. They had
satellite TV, etc.
I immediately asked them if they knew what
the word nigger meant. They said, "my friend right?" I
then went on to explain the Atlantic slave trade and the roots
of the word.
These young men were crushed and I think that
conversation made them begin journeys that most of them are
still on now.
I say all this to say there are two things
happening in Malawi at the same time:
1) We have a country that has been
systematically mis/under-educated in relation to the world,
especially black struggle. You couldn't be dictator in the 60s
and 70s in Malawi and expose Africans to Martin Luther King and
Malcolm X. In places like South Africa that exposure brought
about folks like Steven Biko and a black consciousness movement
that cried "power to the people."
2) Malawi just got national television a few
years back and has now moved into the media age without a proper
understanding of the history of Hollywood, i.e., D.W. Griffith's Birth
of a Nation. In middle class Christian homes in Malawi you
will find kids watching videos by Foxy Brown with their faces
about 12 inches from the TV. No one has even begun to tell people
that close proximity to the TV can damage your sight.
This will come to light in the next ten years
when a generation of rich kids can't see both physically and
mentally.
This is just a note to give you a bit of
history about the country you traveled through. I must also tell
you that the USA did nothing to help remove this despot from
Malawi. They felt it was better to have a fascist dictator there
for close to 40 years than to have a potentially governed Communist
country, and remained silent.
peace and blessings *
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Henry Blasius Masuko Chipembere
Colin Baker.
Chipembere: The Missing Years. Zomba:
Kachere, 2006. 391 pp Most students
of postwar Africa are able to identify individual nationalists
who played—major roles in the struggle for independence, or
indeed, in the negotiating processes leading to decolonization.
Malawi has a long list of such personalities, and very high on
the list is Henry Blasius Masuko Chipembere. It was he who,
along with other young activists, particularly William Kanyama
Chiume, in 1957 encouraged their rather ineffective party, the
Nyasaland African Congress (NAC), to persuade the older and more
urbane Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda to return home from Ghana and
take charge of the crucial stage of the fight against British
colonial rule. By the time of his death in exile in the United
States in 1975, Chipembere had started to write an autobiography
which, clearly unfinished, covers his life to early 1959. Many
years later, Robert Rotberg edited the manuscript, and in 2001
the Christian Literature Association in Malawi (CLAIM), of
Blantyre, published it in its Kachere series under the title,
Hero of the Nation: Chipembere of Malawi: An Autobiography. Thus
the story of this popular politician, key to understanding
Malawian affairs in the mid-twentieth century, remained
incomplete until the publication of Professor Colin Baker's
Chipembere: The Missing Years.
The book is divided into three parts, the
first consisting of the main biography which is subdivided
further into fourteen short chapters totaling about 160 pages,
the second being a compilation of most of Chipembere's published
and unpublished papers, and the third section comprising the
epilogue, notes, and index. The first chapter, "Before the 1959
State of Emergency," highlights the colony's constitutional
changes, mainly in the 1950s, including those which brought into
the colonial legislature, for the first time, five Africans,
including Chipembere, all elected by provincial councils. It
also highlights aspects of Chipembere's early life, from the
time of his graduation from the University of Fort Hare to his
brief and unhappy employment in the colonial civil service,
progressing to his political activism and entry into the
legislature, and to his rise as a forceful radical and popular
speaker. The chapter also summarizes the part he played in
bringing Dr. Banda back to Nyasaland in 1958, and his key role
in planning the nationalists' next course of action, strategies
which would lead to the state of emergency and the detention of
hundreds of people, including Banda, Chipembere and the majority
of the central executive of the Nyasaland African Congress.
The next three chapters cover the period
from Chipembere's custody in a Gwelo (Gweru), Southern Rhodesia
(Zimbabwe) facility, followed by his release and tours to
various parts of Nyasaland during which time he made some of his
most impassioned anticolonial speeches, to his prosecution,
conviction, and incarceration in Zomba Central prison from
February 1961 to January 1963. His imprisonment meant that he
was not included in the constitutional talks which brought about
the first adult suffrage general elections in August 1961,
resulting in the establishment of a government in which the
Malawi Congress Party, formerly the NAC, had a majority. His
confinement also prevented him from influencing directly
deliberations and decisions on further political changes in the
colony. These events are central to understanding the personal
and political relations between Chipembere and Hastings Banda. .
. .
This is certainly an important book concerning Malawi's recent
past, even though it leaves many questions unresolved. For
example, despite his success in portraying Chipembere as a
vehement anticolonial politician, one with widespread popular
support, Baker does not show clearly the dynamics between him
and his colleagues during daily political life, nor does he
really examine Chipembere's interactions with the common urban
and rural person. What was the basis of his popularity, besides
his rousing speeches? How did the perception of his strong
leadership arise? These and many other questions would have been
answered only by interviewing many more people than Baker does
here. . . . Finally, one must applaud
the decision to publish the book in Malawi, where Hero of the
Nation was also published. Considering the cost of books
these days, it is hoped that many Malawians will be able to buy
and read the biography of this beloved and able politician, the
president-in-waiting whose destiny was never fulfilled.—Owen
J. M. Kalinga,
H-Net
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Masauko Chipembere --A musician from
Malawi in Southern Africa. He was raised in Los Angeles while
his parents were in political exile. His sound is a hybrid
developed through his experiences in both Southern Africa and
America. He sings in Chi-Chewa, Zulu, and English fallowing in
the tradition of the great South African singer Miriam Makeba.
Chipembere began singing at the age of seven
with a barbershop quartet in grade school. From there he never
stopped.
At age 14 he picked up the guitar to
accompany his melodic vocal style. He was in demand at clubs
where he was too young to be admitted.Masauko went on to study
Jazz and Opera at Cal State University Northridge in 1988. It
was there that he got his first real exposure to jazz and
developed a deep love for the art of improvisation.
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His songs
often include improvisational jazz scatting and rapping. Once finished with his studies, Masauko
entered the L.A. music scene. He took what he had learned from
Jazz and the African melodies his mother sang around the house
and created his own healing sound. This sound grabbed the
attention of Russell Pope, a South African music producer also
living in Los Angeles.
Masauko made his first album with the help of
Russell Pope and South African musician Neo Muyanga. The album
was called
Blk Sonshine (Black Sonshine). This album became an
instant hit in South Africa where it was picked up by Fresh
records and BMG music.
The first single from the album,
"Building" went to #1 on South African radio in 2001.
The success of the album gave Masauko a chance to visit and live
in South Africa. While in South Africa he toured extensively
sharing stages with: Mary J. Blige, Ishamel Lo, Cesaria Evora,
Take 6, Talib Kweli, Black Thought (The Roots), Stanley Jordan,
Hugh Masekla and even had the honor of meeting and singing for
his idol Miriam Makeba.
Masauko now lives in Brooklyn, New York and
performs all over the country. His time in Africa exposed him to
the serious problems caused by HIV/AIDS. Now he often performs
in D.C. soliciting funds for various organizations working to
end the HIV/AIDS crisis in Southern Africa.
posted 26 August 2005
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Hastings
Kamuzu Banda (15 February 1898 – 25 November
1997) was the leader of
Malawi and its predecessor state,
Nyasaland, from 1961 to 1994. After receiving
much of his education overseas, Banda returned to
his home country (then British
Nyasaland) to speak against
colonialism and advocate for independence. In
1963, he was formally appointed as Nyasaland’s Prime
Minister, and led the country to independence as
Malawi a year later.[1]
Two years later, he proclaimed Malawi a republic
with himself as president. He consolidated power and
later declared Malawi a
one party state under the
Malawi Congress Party (MCP). In 1970, the MCP
made him the party’s
President for Life. In 1971, he became President
for Life of Malawi itself.
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As
a leader of the pro-Western bloc in
Africa, he received support from the
West during the
Cold War. He generally supported
women’s rights, improved the country’s
infrastructure, and maintained a good
educational system relative to other
African countries. However, he presided
over one of the most repressive regimes
in Africa. He also faced scorn for
maintaining full diplomatic relations
with
apartheid-era South Africa.
By
1993, he was facing international
pressure and widespread protest. A
referendum ended his one party state,
and a special assembly stripped him of
his title. Banda ran for president in
the democratic elections which followed,
but was defeated. He died in South
Africa in 1997. His legacy remains
controversial, with some hailing him as
a national and African hero, while
others denounce him as a tyrant and one
of the most corrupt leaders in Africa's
entire history.— wikipedia |
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Nigger: The Strange
Career of a Troublesome Word
By Randall Kennedy
The
word is paradigmatically ugly, racist
and inflammatory. But is it different
when Ice Cube uses it in a song than
when, during the O.J. Simpson trial,
Mark Fuhrman was accused of saying it?
What about when Lenny Bruce uses it to
"defang" it by sheer repetition? Or when
Mark Twain uses it in The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn to make an
antiracist statement? Kennedy, a
professor at Harvard Law School and
noted legal scholar, has produced an
insightful and highly provocative book
that raises vital questions about the
relationship between language, politics,
social norms and how society and culture
confront racism. Drawing on a wide range
of historical, legal and cultural
instances Harry S. Truman calling Adam
Clayton Powell "that damned nigger
preacher"; Title VII court cases in
which the use of the word was proof of
condoning a "racially hostile work
environment"; Quentin Tarantino's
liberal use of the word in his films
Kennedy repeatedly shows not only the
complicated cultural history of the
word, but how its meaning, intent and
even substance change in context. |
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Smart, well argued and never afraid of facing
serious, difficult and painful questions in an
unflinching and unsentimental manner, this is an
important work of cultural and political
criticism.
As Kennedy notes in closing: "For bad or for
good, nigger is... destined to remain with us for the
foreseeable future a reminder of the ironies and dilemmas, the
tragedies and glories, of the American experience." (Jan.
22)Forecast: This may be the book that reignites larger debates
over race eclipsed by September 11. Look for a bestselling run
and huge talk show and magazine coverage as the Afghanistan news
cycle continues to slow; the book had already been the subject
of two
New York Times stories by early
January.—Publishers
Weekly
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. |
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Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move toward colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly
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Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
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The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century
American Poetry
By Rita Dove
Selecting poets and poems to represent a
century of poetry, especially the
riotous twentieth century in America, is
a massive undertaking fraught with peril
and complication. Poet Rita Dove-a
Pulitzer Prize- winning former U.S. poet
laureate, professor, and presidential
scholar- embarked on what became a
consuming four-year odyssey. She reports
on obstacles and discoveries in an
exacting and forthright introduction,
featuring striking quotes, vivid
profiles, and a panoramic view of the
evolution of poetic visions and styles
that helped bring about social as well
as artistic change [...] Dove's incisive
perception of the role of poetry in
cultural and social awakenings infuses
this zestful and rigorous gathering of
poems both necessary and unexpected by
180 American poets. This landmark
anthology will instantly enhance and
invigorate every poetry shelf or
section.—Booklist
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Sonata Mulattica: Poems
By Rita Dove
This 12th collection from the former
U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize
recipient is her third book-length
narrative poem: it follows the real
career of the violin prodigy George
Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower
(1780–1860), a former pupil of Haydn, as
well as the grandson/ of an African
prince, or so his promoters and teachers
in England said. Moving to Vienna during
the Napoleonic Wars, the violinist met
and befriended the famously moody
Beethoven, who was prepared to dedicate
his famously difficult Kreutzer Sonata
to Bridgetower until a rivalry for the
same woman drove them apart. Dove tells
Bridgetower's story, and some of
Beethoven's and Haydn's, in a
heterogenous profusion of short poems,
some almost prosy, some glittering in
their technique. In quatrains, a double
villanelle, what looks like found text,
short lines splayed all over a page and
attractive description, Dove renders
Bridgetower's frustrated genius: Music
played for the soul is sheer pleasure;/
to play merely for pleasure is nothing/
but work. Dove does not always achieve
such subtleties—those who loved her
early work may think this book too long:
few, though, will doubt the seriousness
of her effort, her interest at once in
the history of classical music and the
changing meanings of race.—Publishers
Weekly |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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