Looks like the tables have turned — now we’re writing about his music! Say Africa, produced by legendary bluesman Taj Mahal and recorded at the Dave Matthews Band’s studio in Charlottesville, Va., is a collection of songs with a strong message of hope not only for South Africa, but the entire continent. Mahal lends vocals and banjo throughout the album, and Angelique Kidjo shares her voice and energy on “Nakupenda Africa.”

Check out this recent music video from Vusi’s YouTube channel:

As Vusi says, “Let all those who share in Mandela’s greatest wish — to see an Africa at peace with herself — SAY AFRICA!”

We reached out to Patricia to see if she had any African art, music, or film recommendations that our readers might be interested in. She graciously forwarded these two recommendations– check them out:

From the highly-talented award winning film maker Wanuri Kahiu comes Pumzi (Swahili for breath) a thought-provoking sci-fi short film set in Kenya after the Water War (WW3). Screened at Sundance 2010 and fresh from winning Best Short Film at the Cannes film Festival.

You may also want to check out Paul Sika. Paul views Africa in technicolor- saturating his photographs into something familiar yet vibrant. He is a 21st century entrepreneur who has recently launched his book “At The Heart Of Me” from his bedroom in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire.

ONE is turning to its community of artists, friends, members and staff for their top picks on creative works that have enhanced their knowledge and understanding of the richness of African culture and arts. Today we have a recommendation from Peter Griesar:

Often we can be bombarded with news stories about parts of the world without really having a narrative sense to place these stories in context. For me this has been true for years when it came to the news coming out of Zimbabwe as the only context through which I could see it was the sad colonial history I had learned about in college.

After reading Douglas Rogers‘ faithful memoir “The Last Resort” I was reminded how important it is to remember that beyond the geopolitical angling in media and apparent sides to issues, it is the people’s struggle to maintain their sense of identity that can lead to unlikely alliances.

It is the unlikely alliances that are formed when a culture is under siege that often show us the long path towards a new beginning.

ONE is turning to its community of artists, friends, members and staff for their top picks on creative works that have enhanced their knowledge and understanding of the richness of African culture and arts. Today we have a recommendation from Peter Griesar:

Afrigadget.com features creative ideas and innovative technologies coming out of Africa today. Created by a group of African bloggers from around the continent, Afrigadget.com chronicles everyday people making extraordinary contributions to their community and the larger world.

A few months ago I posted the inspiring story of William Kamkwamba and his windmill – Afrigadget.com features William and so many other people who have realized their unique visions with reused, repurposed and recycled materials – and a massive amount of DIY creativity.

Please take a few moments to explore.

ONE is turning to its community of artists, friends, members and staff for their top picks on creative works that have enhanced their knowledge and understanding of the richness of African culture and arts. Today we have a recommendation from Peter Griesar:

The truth about revolutionary thought is that to others it appears akin to madness. This is just one of the many obstacles that William Kamkwamba overcame to realize his vision of wind powered electricity and irrigation for his village.

William is the co-author with Bryan Mealer of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, the story of William’s experiences growing up in Kasungu, Malawi.

It was inevitable William would follow in his father’s footsteps as a farmer. Drought and famine had halted his formal education early and it was the path so many like him had already traveled. But William always had the spark of an inventor, always innovating and never satisfied until he understood how things worked.
“If solving such mysteries was the job of a scientist, then a scientist is exactly what I wanted to become” he says in his new book with reporter Bryan Mealer, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.” “Before I discovered the miracles of science, magic ruled the world.”

And so this 14 year-old scientist set out to build his family a windmill that would produce electricity. This electricity would allow him and his family to read into the night, save money on lamp oil, and earn money from neighbors as a phone charger. And it is no exaggeration to say that this light he created with his Windmill would eventually be seen around the world.

I had the honor of meeting William and Bryan briefly here in DC a few weeks ago. I learned that William had been a fan of ONE for some time now. The photo here is from his blog.

William Kamkwamba is now 22 and will be heading back to school in January where he is studying science and working to continue bringing wind energy and hope to Malawi and beyond.

If you’d like to know more about William Kamkwamba please check out “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind”, his non-profit Moving Windmills Project, his blog here, and Bryan Mealer’s blog here.

ONE is turning to its community of artists, friends, members and staff for their top picks on creative works that have enhanced their knowledge and understanding of the richness of African culture and arts. Today we have a recommendation from Peter Griesar.

As an American teenager in the 1980′s the issue of apartheid loomed large, and related themes found their way from the news into the popular music and arts of the time. But I didn’t really begin to understand it until I saw Blood Knot by South African playwright Athol Fugard in 1986.

Fugard had opened the 2 man show in 1961 Johannesburg – but only once. Soon afterward the anti-apartheid call caused many artists, including Fugard, to boycott working in their home country.

In retrospect it is hard to believe 25 years of apartheid passed between the play’s debut and the revival I saw in 1986. But then, and still now, Fugard’s work holds up. And it is a stark reminder to those of us who fight for justice that change comes, but slowly.

-Peter Griesar

ONE is turning to its community of artists, friends, members and staff for their top picks on creative works that have enhanced their knowledge and understanding of the richness of African culture and arts. Today we have a recommendation from our ONE team, Peter Griesar.

This week I had the pleasure of hearing Vieux Farka Touré and his band perform here in Washington, DC. Vieux is the son of the late Ali Farka Touré – the Godfather of Malian Blues.

Malian Blues is characterized by loping rhythms and slow rolling grooves, musical equivalents of the camel trek and the weaving Niger River. Vieux’s music is no exception, but his river flows from there through a far more complex landscape; a place where tradition and modernity begin to coexist, then coalesce into joyful revelation.

With his new album Fondo, Vieux and his to this world of his making, a slow river through the intertwining histories of Malian Blues, American Roots, Rock, and Reggae. As Vieux said, “We are all brothers and sisters – I have a very big family!”

Note: Vieux will be sharing some of his recommendations this summer in the A List.

-Peter Griesar

ONE is turning to its community of artists, friends, members and staff for their top picks on creative works that have enhanced their knowledge and understanding of the richness of African culture and arts.

Today we have recommendations from South African singer-songwriter Vusi Mahlesela, ONE Chairman Tom Freston and me, Peter Griesar, ONE’s creative development manager.

If there is something that has influenced or inspired you in this way, please leave a note in the comments of this post. We’d love to hear from you.

South African singer-songwriter Vusi Mahlesela recommends:

Bela Fleck, who’s now inspired me to want to learn to play the banjo, traveled all around Africa tracing the origins of the banjo. He made a beautiful documentary called “Throw Down Your Heart” that chronicles his travels throughout our continent and introduces all the amazing musicians he met along the way. He also made an accompanying record, “Throw Down Your Heart: Tales From the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 3 – Africa Sessions,” released in the beginning of April. Visit his great new site to find out more about the film, to read reviews, and to find a screening of it near you. Enjoy it!

“Throw Down Your Heart”

ONE Chairman Tom Freston recommends:

There is a fantastic new series on HBO, “The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” which takes place in Botswana. Just started. With so much imagery of Africa about war, famine, and pestilence…this series, which stars a great Jill Scott, is the flip side….set in an upper middle class African town, a booming country, with schools, working professionals, etc. Check it out. Sundays at 8pm and 10pm.

“The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency”

And this one is from me:

A week before my first trip to Africa I picked up Ryszard Kapuscinski’s novel “The Shadow of the Sun” on a recommendation of a friend from Senegal. Written by a Polish journalist, the book conveys the fascinating history of post-colonial Africa set through stories from the author’s 40-year career covering the Continent. I finished the book on the trip and left it with a new friend in Mali who has since passed it along to another friend.

“The Shadow of the Sun”

-Peter Griesar

The www.musicbuildstour.comONE Music Builds Tour will be launch later this month, bringing top-selling bands Third Day, Switchfoot, Robert Randolph and the Family Band and Jars of Clay to a city near you. The tour will kick off in Detroit on August 21st and wrap-up in Denver on October 12 and include 23 stops along the way.

This isn’t just going to be a typical rock concert – ONE’s going to be a big part of the show too. Just to name a few of the special things being planned, there will be videos featuring ONE in between sets focusing on three of ONE’s most exciting initiatives: ONE Sabbath, the ONE Campus Challenge and ONE Vote ’08. We also plan on having two booths that will ride along on the whole tour where concert-goers can sign up and learn more about ONE and our issues.

We see this tour as a big opportunity for ONE members across the country to get together, have some fun, hear some great music, recruit new friends to the effort and add some noise to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease.

We’re still hammering out other details and ways we can bring as much attention to ONE as possible (can you say limited edition concert t-shirt?) and we’ll keep you up-to-date as the tour gets set to kick off in Detroit. For now, be sure to check out the ONE Music Builds Tour site, www.musicbuildstour.com, for more info about the bands and a full list of tour stops.

-Peter Grieser