Intro
In the fifth part of our event series More Aphrike, we focus on cultural belonging and the forming of individual identity in a world which is becoming more fluid while simultaneously raising new borders. Our guests are TAIYE SELASI and BILL SELLANGA. The author and speaker TAIYE SELASI defined the term »Afropolitan« for a new generation of cosmopolitans with African roots, who feel at home in the metropoles of Africa as well as in those of Europe or the United States. Nairobi-based musical adventurer and producer BILL SELLANGA, aka Blinky Bill, mixes the sounds of Kenya with music from other African countries and reaches people far beyond the continent.
About Taiye Selasi
Taiye Selasi is an author and photographer. Born in London and raised in Boston, she holds a BA from Yale and an MPhil from Oxford. In 2013 Selasi's debut novel, the New York Times bestseller Ghana Must Go, was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. The same year Selasi was named to Granta's once-in-a-decade list of Best Young British Novelists. Her 2015 TED talk, "Don't Ask Where I'm From; Ask Where I'm a Local," has reached over two million viewers. She is writing her second novel in Berlin.
About Blinky Bill
Blinky Bill (Bill Sellanga) is a Kenyan Musician/Producer and DJ and a founding member of the forward thinking Art and Music Collective Just A Band. He is an alumni of the US State funded music Program One Beat Music in 2013. He was also participant at Red Bull Music Academy Tokyo in 2014 and is a TED Fellow.
He has played in at Design Indaba in Cape Town 2017, Paleo Festival in Switzerland, Future Ports Of Entry Festival in 2016 in Germany, TEDGlobal in Arusha in 2017, Made In Space in Copenhagen in 2017 amongst others. His music is a mix of futuristic African beats meets, Funk, hip hop, electronica and hint of jazz. He is currently in studio working on his first full length project ‘Everyone’s Just Winging It And Other Fly Tales’ which is slated for an early 2018 release, coming hot off the heels of his first EP 'We Cut Keys While You Wait' that came out in 2016 and is available on all music portals.
Afropolitanism
»For a great many people who read that essay (»Bye-bye Babar. Or what is an Afropolitan?) they could see actually I am enough and I am not alone and that is the space I wanted to create.«
Blinky Bill X Taiye Selasi
»One of the biggest challenges I had with the word »world music«, is because it feels like a prison where you keep everyone who is making music on the continent in this box.«
Interview
7.10.2017 Talk and Performance
The event series »More Aphrike« is funded by the TURN Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, designed to encourage artistic cooperation between Germany and the African continent.
funded by the TURN Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation
