Black Umfolosi : discography
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Album : Festival-Umdlalo Label : World Circuit Year : 1993 Ref : CD WCD 037 |
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Album : Unity Label : World Circuit Year : 1991 Ref : CD WCD 020 |
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News about Black Umfolosi
SAVE THE BABIES
Walking a delicate line between culture, politics and the environment : Malaysia and its Rainforest World Music Festival.
As I was looking out of the bus window last month, cradling my two-month-old baby Natasha Leïla during our five-hour trip between Singapore and the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, I couldn’t help but notice the endless miles of palm-oil plantations hugging the banks of the modern highway. On both sides, these gracious trees covered the rolling hills in neat lines that disappeared into the grey fog as the rain pelted down.
This has been one of the wettest years Malaysia has known since the 1971 floods, driving tens of thousands of people out of their homes and forcing the government to call a state of emergency in several of its 13 states. It pushed Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to admit : « We have to change our ways ». It provoked this reflection in the December 22 editorial by the New Strait Times : «Despite a host of rules and regulations, unbridled development still takes place, resulting in deforestation, uncontrolled erosion, and sedimentation of rivers. »
These comments came shortly after 10,000 delegates representing 187 nations met in Bali, Indonesia, for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. These political top-hats emitted 40,700 tons of gas during their weeklong debates on how to prevent the destruction of what is left of our natural environment. (That figure, by the way, is the equivalent of what 20,350 cars would leave behind them every year in terms of gas emission.) Malaysia is one of those participants which dreams of joining the world’s top industrialised countries, partly thanks to heightened global demand for palm oil-based biodiesel. 87 percent of its deforestation has occured to make way for palm-oil plantation. With Indonesia, it produces over 80 percent of the world’s palm oil, and that is set to increase. By a strange coincidence, its development coincides with a huge decrease in the country’s megafauna, as Sumatran rhinos and tigers, gibbons, tapirs and orangutans disappear as fast as you can say « Timber ! ». Oh, and the indigenous Dayak communities in Malaysian states like Sarawak, are spiralling into oblivion, too.
But let us not be too hasty in our judgement, I whispered to Natasha Leïla, as she stared up at me goggle-eyed. No matter how hard this friendly Asian nation tries to catch up with the high flyers, it still doesn’t reach the knee of the unbeaten world champion. Why, even the Bad Guy, China, only emits one-sixth of greenhouse gases that your average American releases into the atmosphere. A recent study showed that the entire continent of Africa emitted under 3 percent of the world’s emissions. And the United States gave no indication in Bali that it intended to end their grizzly pre-eminence despite warnings that we only have a decade to clean up our act or face a « climate catastrophe ». No wonder Malaysian and Indonesian delegates in Bali like Emil Salim fumed at the « empty propaganda » of what Salim called the «stingy developed countries ». The latter had just blocked a scheme, called REDD, to create a new « carbon credit » market under which states like Malaysia earn credits by preserving their forests.
So now, my dear Natasha, we are left a planet which could well see a rise of a couple degrees in temperature in the next ten years. That will mean over 300 million poor people could lose their homes to floods ; 600 million more Africans will go hungry ; and half-a-million could fall to diseases like dengue fever, malaria and meningitis. 40 percent of the world’s population will face an even bleaker future than they have nowadays. While fortresses will continue to be built around the developed nations to prevent those desperate human beings from finding refuge from the droughts, floods, storms, tsunamis and climate-enduced diseases.
Which made it all the more appropriate and urgent for me to post up a four-part series here on an environmentally-charged festival in Malaysia called the Rainforest World Music Festival. This annual gathering takes place next to one of the few primary rainforest still left in Borneo. Its tenth edition last July threw up several of the contradictions and tensions that link the environment and music culture. It featured a demonstration by the indigenous Dayaks at the festival entrance, for example. They insisted that the onslaught on their natural habitat in these pristine forests was destroying their way-of-life, their traditions and their music. Co-sponsored by a major beer brand, the festival mixed Malaysia’s young jetset with idealists, tourists and party-lovers from the five continents. It showed off the magnificence of Borneo’s flora and fauna … yet talked about everything but.
So, for the next four weeks, Mondomix will bring out four twenty-minute radio specials on this unique festival. It will feature in the « Interviews » section below. This week, it will be lead by local sape artist Jerry Kamit. Next week, it will be the turn of Huun Huur Tu. Part three will be under the name of another illustrious guest at the Borneo gathering, the Ensemble Kaboul. And we will close the series with a part that is headlined by the Zimbabweans Black Umfolosi. These musicians were at the heart of this tenth anniversary edition, in a cultural celebration that also had a strange environmental and political agenda.
Happy listening. Happy New Year. And may this world somehow struggle out of this environmental miasma and offer my Natasha Leïla, the two-month son of Benjamin MiNiMuM Mondomix's editor-in-chief Solal and the one-year-old daughter of Mondomix’s director, Alice Benaïche, a cleaner, more egalitarian planet for them to enjoy.
January 2008.
*Picture : Centre stage at the Rainforest World Music Festival in Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia.
Source : mondomix.com | 2008-02-05 13:40:14.0
Edition from January 29th to February 4th 2008 - BLACK UMFOLOSI
Fourth and final programme in a four part series on the Rainforest World Music Festival in Sarawak, Borneo. The part features the dynamic a capella band from Zimbabwe Black Umfolosi.
Source : mondomix.com | 2008-01-29 13:20:11.0
Save the babies
Walking a delicate line between culture, politics and the environment : Malaysia and its Rainforest World Music Festival.
As I was looking out of the bus window last month, cradling my two-month-old baby Natasha Leïla during our five-hour trip between Singapore and the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, I couldn’t help but notice the endless miles of palm-oil plantations hugging the banks of the modern highway. On both sides, these gracious trees covered the rolling hills in neat lines that disappeared into the grey fog as the rain pelted down.
This has been one of the wettest years Malaysia has known since the 1971 floods, driving tens of thousands of people out of their homes and forcing the government to call a state of emergency in several of its 13 states. It pushed Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to admit : « We have to change our ways ». It provoked this reflection in the December 22 editorial by the New Strait Times : «Despite a host of rules and regulations, unbridled development still takes place, resulting in deforestation, uncontrolled erosion, and sedimentation of rivers. »
These comments came shortly after 10,000 delegates representing 187 nations met in Bali, Indonesia, for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. These political top-hats emitted 40,700 tons of gas during their weeklong debates on how to prevent the destruction of what is left of our natural environment. (That figure, by the way, is the equivalent of what 20,350 cars would leave behind them every year in terms of gas emission.) Malaysia is one of those participants which dreams of joining the world’s top industrialised countries, partly thanks to heightened global demand for palm oil-based biodiesel. 87 percent of its deforestation has occured to make way for palm-oil plantation. With Indonesia, it produces over 80 percent of the world’s palm oil, and that is set to increase. By a strange coincidence, its development coincides with a huge decrease in the country’s megafauna, as Sumatran rhinos and tigers, gibbons, tapirs and orangutans disappear as fast as you can say « Timber ! ». Oh, and the indigenous Dayak communities in Malaysian states like Sarawak, are spiralling into oblivion, too.
But let us not be too hasty in our judgement, I whispered to Natasha Leïla, as she stared up at me goggle-eyed. No matter how hard this friendly Asian nation tries to catch up with the high flyers, it still doesn’t reach the knee of the unbeaten world champion. Why, even the Bad Guy, China, only emits one-sixth of greenhouse gases that your average American releases into the atmosphere. A recent study showed that the entire continent of Africa emitted under 3 percent of the world’s emissions. And the United States gave no indication in Bali that it intended to end their grizzly pre-eminence despite warnings that we only have a decade to clean up our act or face a « climate catastrophe ». No wonder Malaysian and Indonesian delegates in Bali like Emil Salim fumed at the « empty propaganda » of what Salim called the «stingy developed countries ». The latter had just blocked a scheme, called REDD, to create a new « carbon credit » market under which states like Malaysia earn credits by preserving their forests.
So now, my dear Natasha, we are left a planet which could well see a rise of a couple degrees in temperature in the next ten years. That will mean over 300 million poor people could lose their homes to floods ; 600 million more Africans will go hungry ; and half-a-million could fall to diseases like dengue fever, malaria and meningitis. 40 percent of the world’s population will face an even bleaker future than they have nowadays. While fortresses will continue to be built around the developed nations to prevent those desperate human beings from finding refuge from the droughts, floods, storms, tsunamis and climate-enduced diseases.
Which made it all the more appropriate and urgent for me to post up a four-part series here on an environmentally-charged festival in Malaysia called the Rainforest World Music Festival. This annual gathering takes place next to one of the few primary rainforest still left in Borneo. Its tenth edition last July threw up several of the contradictions and tensions that link the environment and music culture. It featured a demonstration by the indigenous Dayaks at the festival entrance, for example. They insisted that the onslaught on their natural habitat in these pristine forests was destroying their way-of-life, their traditions and their music. Co-sponsored by a major beer brand, the festival mixed Malaysia’s young jetset with idealists, tourists and party-lovers from the five continents. It showed off the magnificence of Borneo’s flora and fauna … yet talked about everything but.
So, for the next four weeks, Mondomix will bring out four twenty-minute radio specials on this unique festival. It will feature in the « Interviews » section below. This week, it will be lead by local sape artist Jerry Kamit. Next week, it will be the turn of Huun Huur Tu. Part three will be under the name of another illustrious guest at the Borneo gathering, the Ensemble Kaboul. And we will close the series with a part that is headlined by the Zimbabweans Black Umfolosi. These musicians were at the heart of this tenth anniversary edition, in a cultural celebration that also had a strange environmental and political agenda.
Happy listening. Happy New Year. And may this world somehow struggle out of this environmental miasma and offer my Natasha Leïla and the one-year-old daughter of Mondomix’s director, Alice Benaïche, a cleaner, more egalitarian planet for them both to enjoy.
January 2008.
*Picture : Centre stage at the Rainforest World Music Festival in Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia.
Source : mondomix.com | 2008-01-08 19:23:30.0
FESTIVALS GALORE TO REVEL IN - OR AVOID !
July/August rhymes with a festival-feast throughout much of the world. Mondomix will be present at several, including far-flung corners like Malaysia, the Reunion Island and Morocco. But there are some places one can avoid…
Well, it’s the summer season in the West, and as usual, world music journalists are offered a plethora of festivals to flock to. July and August are vital months for promoters and festival directors, vying to entice the relaxed and enthusiastic music fans with a whole smorgasbord of international artists. Along the French Mediterranean coast alone, there are almost 400 music festivals to choose from. This proliferation is threatening the survival of several among them, as much-needed public funding is being squeezed, and artist fees continue to go spiralling up.
To the north, things are not much easier : “People are sacrificing the luxury of a concert or festival,” sighed one promoter as we discussed her realities. “The prices are not going down and we’re all feeling the economic pinch.” She was working on an unpretentious and enjoyable festival a couple of hours drive south of Paris called Tous sur le Pont. It had just pulled off a tour de force by programming the ageless Iggy Pop and The Stooges for their first French gig featuring their new album The Weirdness. What a wild and whacky evening that was in the courtyard of the Blois Castle. I mean, what would Louis XII have made of this sexagenarian writhing like an iguana to his madcap lyrics, as he looked down from his regal horse ? It was an occasion of endless fun.
Les Nuits Atypiques, southeast of Bordeaux, is another gathering worth checking out. Between July 26 and 29, it invites a rich smattering of quality artists, headed by the gifted Jubran Brothers (Palestine), Romano Drom (Hungary) and the Miyazaki Trio (Japan). The festival has been hard-hit financially in the past few years, yet it continues to pull out an original and challenging programme. Their mixture of music, debate, cinema and theatre aims at reshaping our Euro-centric vision of the world and its socio-cultural realities. Behind this 16th edition is a dedicated group of individuals who have also set up the plucky music label Daqui.
Such manifestations deserve public support for keeping prices reasonable and offering help and services with the right balance of efficiency and friendliness. The lack of both is what keeps me away from festivals like Sud à Arles, Africa Festival and WOMAD. Their smug confidence in a routine turnout of the masses has made them unpleasant hang-outs for music fans keen on discovering new and unusual names in a congenial atmosphere. (I’m sure I’ll be receiving a few letters after that comment, but this Editorial space is also here for me to give my half-cent’s worth. Your reactions are welcome). So much choice out there, so little need to waste one’s energy with aggressive people more set on their own egos than on creating a convivial atmosphere around quality music.
By just Googling “world music festivals 2007”, you come up with over 100 million references. On the first page you’ll fall on summer gatherings in California (Frogtown!), Namur, Budapest and the island of Borneo. The latter is where I’m off, once I return from the exciting fourth edition of the Timitar festival in Agadir, Morocco. The Rainforest World Music Festival, in the Malaysian part of this remarkable island, is celebrating its tenth year in 2007. This is a wonderful occasion to explore the little-reported Malaysian music scene on the world’s third-largest island. It will also be interesting to see how Tarika Be, Huun Huur Tu and the a capella group Black Umfolosi, from Zimbabwe, make out in this stunning setting.
Then I hop onto another island, this time in the Indian Ocean. La Réunion is the paradise setting for the fourth edition of Sakifo. The five days of festivities are programmed for August 1 to 5, and they have a mouth-watering list of artists which include Ayo, Ismael Lo, Winston MacAnuff, Neneh Cherry and Jamika. Behind this flurry of musical exchange is again a dedicated group of music lovers who have spent much of their lives promoting the cultural wealth of the island. It is largely thanks to them that the likes of Daniel Waro, Ziskakan, Baster and René Lacaille have been able to export their Reunion Island music so successfully. They continue to groom emerging talents like Jaboticaba, a folk-blues trio that so impressed the audience at the last Printemps de Bourges festival. Without such devotion, websites like this one would be all the more impoverished.
Back in September !
July 2007
Source : mondomix.com | 2007-07-04 19:23:50.0
Zimbabwe: Black Umfolosi Keeps On Going
THE first internationally recognised Zimbabwean acapella group, Black Umfolosi, is like a train that keeps on going even after the original passengers have disembarked.
Source : AllAfrica | 2007-03-21 21:41:27.0
Black Umfolosi Keeps On Going
THE first internationally recognised Zimbabwean acapella group, Black Umfolosi, is like a train that keeps on going even after the original passengers have disembarked.
Source : ZimbabweStar.com | 2007-03-21 17:37:12.0