ARTS & CULTURE

Photo: Musicians perform on the streets of Maputo, Mozambique, on International Jazz Day 2019. Photo: Mauro Vombe

Peace Through Jazz Music

The Trumpet Is a ‘Cool’ Instrument to Unite People

By Franck Kuwonu from Africa Renewal

NEW YORK (IDN) – Each year, on April 30, music lovers around the world celebrate International Jazz Day to “honour jazz and its enduring legacy, as well as its power to bring people together,” says Audrey Azoulay, the director-general of the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which works to promote global peace, justice and rule of law.

Jazz events held each year in different countries around the globe culminate in the International Jazz Day, a star-studded musical concert in a major city. This year it took place in Melbourne, Australia. Other cities have hosted the event since 2012, when the UN headquarters in New York City hosted the inaugural.

: UN Bureau; THE WORLD; Africa; 29 August 2019

Photo: Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Great Novelist Ben Okri Explains Why Nigeria Has Become a 'Literary Factory'

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – “In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.”

This must be one of the best opening lines ever penned by a novelist. It’s the work of the Nigerian novelist, Ben Okri, who won English literature’s premier annual award, the Booker prize, for his book, The Famished Road.

: Jonathan Power; ARTS & CULTURE; 27 August 2019

The Unique Sights & Sounds of Sri Lanka Come Alive in America

By Nandasiri (Nandi) Jasentuliyana

The writer is Former Deputy Director General, United Nations Office at Vienna (UNOV), Director, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, and President Emeritus, International Institute of Space Law & Policy.

NEW YORK (IDN) – When the annual Sri Lanka Day was celebrated in the historic city of Pasadena, Sri Lanka took its rightful place among the ethnic festivals held in America. The featured event of the day was the 'Pageant of Lanka', a miniature Kandy Perahera. It took the breath away of the onlookers who filed along the historic route of the annual New Year's Day Rose Parade, the most prestigious parade in America.

: Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 15 August 2019

The 'Roof of the World' Festival Keeps Tajikistan's Traditional Culture Alive

By Alisher Kukanbekov

KHOROG, Tajikistan (IDN) – In this mountainous Gorno Badakhshan region with around a third of the population estimated to be unemployed, the exodus of the people for greener pastures abroad has gathered momentum in the past decade. To protect the colourful traditional culture from disappearing along with its population, the ‘Roof Top of the World” annual cultural festival was launched 12 years ago.

It now has the added objectives of attracting both its expat population to come back for a summer cultural break as well as to attract tourist to the region.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; CENTRAL ASIA; 13 August 2019

Times Pummeled Over Job Posting Called Offensive by Africans

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – The New York Times is still recovering from the verbal bashing it received from Kenyan writers shocked and angered by the paper’s outdated references to Africa in a recent ad for the job of Nairobi Bureau Chief.

How far has Africa come, wondered educator Alice Wairimu Nderitu, since the day when posters portrayed wild animals with the title “The Highlands of British East Africa as a Winter Home for Aristocrats”?

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 16 July 2019

Photo: Kulangsu, a Historic International Settlement World Heritage site (China). © Cultural Heritage Conservation Center of THAD / Qian Yi

World Heritage Committee Stresses Need to Enhance and Preserve African Heritage

By Krishan Dutta

PARIS (IDN) – The World Heritage Committee has inscribed a total of 29 new sites on the World Heritage List – one in Africa, two in the Arab States, ten in the Asia Pacific region, 15 in Europe and North America and one in Latin America. The List now features 1,121 sites in 167 countries.

The Committee approved the removal from the List of World Heritage in Danger of the sites of Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works (Chile) and Birthplace of Jesus: the Church of the Nativity and Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem (Palestine). One property has been added to the List of World Heritage in Danger: the Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California (Mexico).

: UN Bureau; ARTS & CULTURE; 16 July 2019

Photo: Aimé Césaire. Source: Toward Freedom

Remembering the Martinque Poet Aimé Césaire

By Rene Wadlow

The writer is President of the Association of World Citizens, and author of ‘Aime Cesaire: (1913 - 2008) A Black Orpheus’.

GENEVA (IDN) – Aimé Césaire, whose birth anniversary we note on June 26, was a Martinique poet and political figure, a cultural bridge builder between the West Indies, Europe and Africa. A poet, teacher, and political figure, he had been mayor of the capital city, Fort-de-France for 56 years from 1945 to 2001, and a member of the French Parliament without a break from 1945 to 1993.

: Ramesh Jaura; ARTS & CULTURE; 27 June 2019

Photo: Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina in Nairobi, Kenya, on January 27, 2014. Source: The East African

A Pioneering Voice in African Literature Dies

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – Binyavanga Wainaina, one of Africa’s best-known authors and gay rights activist, has died in Nairobi after a short illness. He was 48.

Wainaina won the 2002 Caine prize for African writing. Credited with founding the literary magazine and collective Kwani? and advancing the fight for LGBTQ rights in Africa, he made headlines around the world in 2014, when he responded to a wave of anti-gay laws around the continent by publicly outing himself in a short essay, published to mark his 43rd birthday.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 28 May 2019

Hookah Culture Invades Central Asia

By Milena Melnikova*

NAYRN, Kyrgyzstan (IDN) – The culture of smoking hookah is becoming popular among young adults in the Central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, because of its affordability as well as due to its being legal as a way to relax and get rid of the accumulated stress, in the absence of other forms of entertainment. Cafes and restaurants seem like an expensive choice, discotheques are almost non-existent here.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; CENTRAL ASIA; 10 April 2019

Image credit: The Ouagadougou Pan-African Film and Television Festival (FESPACO)

New ACP-EU Culture Programme Launched at Pan-African Fest

By ACP Press

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – Assistant-Secretary-General of the ACP Group, Léonard-Emile Ognimba, together with the Director General for Development and International Cooperation of the European Commission, Stefano Manservisi, officially launched the new ACP-EU Culture Programme on the occasion of the 26th edition of The Ouagadougou Pan-African Film and Television Festival (FESPACO), on February 24, 2019 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.