Blog Detail
Leo Africanus
http://theleoafricanus.com
Who was Leo Africanus? A New Yorker writer described him thus: ‘In 1518, al-Hasan al-Wazzan, a diplomat of the Sultan of Fez, was kidnapped in the Mediterranean by pirates, who brought him to Pope Leo X. … Leo Africanus, as he became known, remained in Rome for the next nine years … and compiled his Description of Africa, a collection of learning, hearsay, and personal anecdote that shaped European ideas about Africa for centuries.’
As for me, I am not claiming to be Leo Africanus, but you get the connection. I am an academic and journalist living between Brooklyn, NY, and Ann Arbor, MI. If I can put Cape Town in there it would be perfect. I was born and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, and has lived outside Chicago, Cambridge (MA), London, and Brooklyn, NY. I ran a film festival, is a contributing editor of Chimurenga Magazine (based in Cape Town) and edited two books: one on the current South African President, Thabo Mbeki and a second on cultural politics after the end of apartheid. My writing has appeared in The Nation, Africa Confidential, and the UK Guardian’s Comment is Free website, among others. Primarily, this site is interested in news about news about Africa, but its also about my personal obsessions (the films, music, art, politics, things I like or dislike) and about my experiences as an African immigrant living in New York City.
- Added on: Feb 9th, 2008
- Country: United States
- Language: English
- Author: Leo Africanus
- Listed in: Culture Media Activism
- Tags: africa books music football hip hop arts and letters
Recent Posts
Blues for an Un-hip King
Today, September 6, is the a double ‘celebration’ for Swaziland’s royal family: its the 40th birthday of the Swazi king, Mswati III, as well as that of the country’s independence. The people won’t be celebrating: 43 % of...
There’s a Whole Foods in Zimbabwe
A few days ago, high on the Olympic spirit, Daily Show “commentator” Lewis Black (in character he plays a blowhard) announced the “Evil Dictator Awards.” Radovan Karadzic of Serbia got Bronz. Omar Al Bashir of Sudan gets Silve...
Is Kehinde Wiley ‘a passing art market fancy’?
Is Kehinde Wiley a Conceptual subversive who happens to paint or yet another producer of pictorial fluff that makes him our latest Bouguereau? Do his big, flashy pictures of young African-American men recast as the kings, dandies, prophets and saints...
The first Black President
Ben Brantley in The New York Times reviews of the Bill T Jones musical, FELA! currently on an Off-Broadway run....
Barack Obama, ‘working class hero’
Political scientist Adolph Reed Jnr talking to Bill Moyers on PBS: He could become a working class hero, if he were to take a more coherent position on trade, which he hasn’t done. He could become a working class hero if he were to take a step ...
