Neo Nubian, Future of Afre-Kh
MICHAELA DePRINCE
Born Mabinty Bangura in Sierra Leone during the civil war on 6 January 1995, Michaela DePrince is a Sierra Leonean-American ballet dancer. Mabinty’s father was shot by rebels when she was three years old and her mother starved to death soon after.
Suffering from a disfiguring skin condition, the superstitious staff at the orphanage where Mabinty ended up labelled her ‘devils’ child’, mistreating her and leaving the child malnourished. According to her account, “I lost both my parents, so I was there (the orphanage) for about a year and I wasn’t treated very well because I had vitiligo,” she said Monday. “We were ranked as numbers and number 27 was the least favourite and that was my number, so I got the least amount of food, the least amount of clothes and whatnot.”
There at the Orphanage, she saw her first ballerina in a magazine page blown against the gate. It showed an American ballet dancer posed on tip-toe. “I remember she looked really, really happy,” Michaela said in an interview. She wished “to become this exact person.” From the misery of the orphanage, “I saw hope in it. And I ripped the page out and I stuck it in my underwear because I didn’t have any place to put it.”
Soon afterwards, she fled to a refugee camp, walking barefoot for miles after word came that the orphanage would be bombed. In 1999 at age four, she was adopted by Elaine and Charles DePrince from New Jersey and taken to the United States, where she was named Michaela. Michaela arrived in the US traumatised by her war experience and ravaged with tonsillitis, fever, mononucleosis and swollen joints. She also suffered from nightmares. “It took a long time to get it out of my memory. But my mom helped me a lot and I wrote a lot of stuff down so I could recover from it,” she said. “Dance helped me a lot“
Now Michaela’s dreams have come true and she is an inspiring figure in the world of ballet that sees few leading black females in an ascent to stardom that has been atypically fast. At 17, she’s already been featured in a documentary film and has performed on TV show “Dancing With the Stars”. She just graduated from high school and the American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, and will go on to work at the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Her family recently moved from Vermont to New York City to support her dance career and her sister’s acting and singing. Michaela said she has been offered many opportunities to dance with companies in Europe and in the U.S.
On July 19, Michaela performs in her first professional full ballet, dancing the part of Gulnare in Le Corsaire, as a guest artist of South Africa’s two biggest dance companies, Mzansi Productions and South African Ballet Theatre. “Because I’ve been through so much, I know now that I can make it and I can help other kids who have been in really bad situations realize that they can make it too,” Michaela DePrince says.
Michaela hopes one day to return to her birthplace of Sierra Leon to open a school for dance and the arts. “I hope to inspire a lot of young children,” Michaela said, “no matter what people tell you, you should focus on your goals and you should do what you want to do, especially if you want to be a ballet dancer.“
NYASHA MATONHODZE
Zimbabwean model Nyasha Matonhodze was born on July 31, 1995. At the age of 16, she is already making waves in a trade made only for the brave and spirited at heart. She is being touted as the “next big thing” to take on the world of modelling.
In the 2012 list of Africa’s top 20 models put together by Forbes Africa, she came first beating off stiff competition from other modelling big shots like Kinee Diouf, Ataui Deng, Ajak Deng, Grace Bol, Nana Keita, Marika Le Roux, Candice Swanepoel and Aminata Niara. To qualify for the top 20, a model had to be born in Africa and must have done a lot of work during winter/Fall 2011 and Summer Spring 2012. This included advertising campaigns, magazine covers, fashion shows and editorials. Making Forbes’s top 20 list was part of a regular slideshow of successes that she continues to embrace every day. It is surprising how she does it but to think that at her age she’s already shot a high-level advertising campaign directed by renowned fashion photographer Steven Meisel and styled by Karl Templer for fashion mogul Louis Vuitton, makes her story one of a kind.
“I thought ‘Lord you are lucky!’ It didn’t actually hit me until I was in a Rolls Royce sitting eye-to-eye with Miesel,” she told the UK’s Daily Telegraph of the perks that came with shooting for Vuitton. The 5’11/180 model was last year revealed as one of the faces of luxury for the French fashion label who found in Matonhodze a worthy face for their autumn/winter campaign. Her poise and maturity belies her 16 years of age, making her one of modelling’s biggest assets. Plus, it is her statuesque elegance and sweet-sixteen warm personality that’s made her the favourite of most fashion houses.
“I’m getting the chance to work with people who are legends to me. People that I never thought I’d work with. Not only designers, not only stylists, photographers as well and models. What I hope for is a long-lasting career. That is what I want and that is what I hope to get, to be seen on the runway at 24 or 30,” she said in one of her interviews. The Louis Vuitton shoot followed several others she’d already done for big brands like TopShop, Harper’s Bazaar, Teen Vogue and V magazine.
Just like many of her peers, Matonhodze is also overwhelmed by how well she is able to model. “I find it difficult to see myself and think that I’m a model. I feel blessed and honoured to keep getting that next step in my career. I’ve met amazing people that keep supporting me and pushing me further and further. It’s like a dream, no matter how good I do; it’s still so surreal for me,” she tells the New York Magazine. Consistently, Matonhodze has told tales of how her discovery into the world of modelling, “wasn’t really a discovery”.
Her story makes for interesting narration. In 2009, in a school uniform, she walked into the offices of Elite Modeling agency in the United Kingdom and became a finalist in a modelling contest the agency was running at the time, signed a contract, and days later, had her debut at the Spring Louis Gray show in London. She’s also walked for names like Loewe, Jonathan Saunders, Emanuel Ungaro, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Zac Posen, Burberry, MaxMara, DKNY, Carolina Herrera and Michael Kors among a tall, enviable list.
“My discovery wasn’t a discovery. Since I was 12, I was tall and thin so I would always get the whole “you should be a model,” but I never really developed a serious interest about it until America’s Next Top Model”. Nyasha auditioned and competed in Cycle 10 of the very popular modelling reality television contest, and has since that time, gradually built her way up to the top.
“Seriously, that’s when it all changed for me. Everything I wanted was pretty much based off that show”. It definitely took her a lot of hard work and dedication to get to the top after the effort by her parents, whom she had joined in the United Kingdom at the age of eight from Harare, Zimbabwe, where she was born and raised by her grandmother.
“…My mother, she was a single mother at 18 who moved to London without knowing anyone. She’s always worked hard and seeing her overcome so much in life has been an inspiration for me. She’s so successful now, and I want to be like her. I do still have memories of Zimbabwe – falling asleep in the sand, bathing outside, the warmth of the sun, and just the way of living. Moving to England, I saw their perspective on Africa and what they think it’s like, and it’s completely the opposite….”
A great admirer of British Stylist Katie Grand and friends with Sudanese model Ajak, Matonhdze loves photography and enjoys working with Jason Kibbler and Daniel Jackson. Already she’s shot over 90 campaigns, 80 of which were shot in the last year. Matonhodze has certainly got her grind on, and wouldn’t be long that she will make it into a list of the world’s top models. Considering what she’s achieved so far, that shouldn’t be hard to achieve.
Matonhodze is also signed to Marilyn Agency in New York. For a young model to be represented by two different agencies in two different territories, is certainly a big deal and something most models, some older than her, will yearn for. For years to come, Nyasha will be remembered as that young Zimbwabean lady who found in modelling, a life-changing career and went for it. Whether or not she will continue to remain relevant and be respected for what she does years from now is a guess that can always wait, as she continues to walk the fat budget runways of London, Milan, New York and Paris. The cheers will always be loud when you make it out of very ordinary circumstances but allowing the fame to get to you can always be suicidal. Nyasha is fully aware of all that, and isn’t prepared to have a taste of that sweet-sour experience.
“If you’re not strong-minded, modelling can knock your confidence quite harshly. Every day you’re judged on your look, and more so today you’re judged on your personality. With that said, a lot of us are 15 or 16 years old, so some girls could really take the criticism personally. What we have to understand is that there’s not something wrong with us per se, we just aren’t a right fit with the client,” she tells New York Magazine. “You never know what’s next. One minute you’re good and the next is a bit of a … I’m just making the most of the time that I’ve got,” she said in one of her interviews.
Source: MSN
EDWIN BRONI-MENSHA
Some years ago, an idea to create a reusable water bottle to raise money to irrigate Africa’s drought-stricken communities was conceived by 26-year-old Edwin Broni-Mensah. The idea came to him in the most obscure way: in the middle of a game of squash, with colleagues from the University. It struck him so deeply that he had to reconstruct his heretofore academic life to fit an otherwise not-so-friendly daily routine at a tap water business.
WONDER-KID
Today, Edwin is a wonder kid in every sense of the word. At his age – and this is something most persons who continue to review his work can’t emphasize enough – he has so much to show for a life well-lived. In the United Kingdom, where he’s been based for most of his growing years, Edwin continues to dazzle and impress the country’s low and high, poor and rich, with his intelligence. More appealing and sometimes refreshing is the fact that he has been able to make a career out of something that ordinarily wouldn’t make sense to other young British-Black Africans.
A ‘NAIVE BUT BRILLIANT’ IDEA
In one of its numerous write-ups on young UK entrepreneurs making it big in their respective careers, The Guardian website said Edwin is a “Philanthropist whose scheme is either naively idealistic, brilliant, or both. Either way, as soon as you’ve read about his idea, you’ll be kicking yourself for not having thought of it.” This ingenuity and skill is what has helped grow GiveMeTap – and the reason for him being one of the most respected young men in the United Kingdom.
“Tap water is free and portable yet I was spending a fiver a day on bottled water. Our peculiar obsession with buying plastic bottles is little more than a cultural conditioning. We’re too proud to ask for free water in the same way we feel the need to buy crisps to use a café’s loo. Many local people back home become so desperate for water they steal from the main water supply and redirect it to their own homes. I felt it was important to raise awareness,” he has said.
MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING
So how does GiveMeTap work? The initiative is all about: “making clean water easily accessible to every human in the world by creating a network of cafes and shops where you can use your GiveMeTap Bottle to get free tap water refills,” according to a statement on the company’s website.
It continues, “We are improving the convenience of getting tap water and use 70% of profits to help others in need by funding water projects in Africa. Restaurants, cafés, and shops who sign up as a ‘Provider’ will supply free access to fresh clean tap water to anyone carrying our stylish stainless steel GiveMeTap bottle.” All Edwin wanted to do with GiveMeTap was to use the marketability of water as an essential nutritional commodity, to make legends out of nothing, and to bring relief to homes across the world. And, to think that Edwin’s passion for his African roots is something touching and dear to his heart, there couldn’t have been a better way to give back to millions of homes than with GiveMeTap. Already, in parts of the continent, the positive effect of the initiative is being felt. Originally, Edwin started GiveMeTap in and around his Manchester locality, but grew it with time, when it became all too clear that demand had gone beyond numbers he had imagined.
2012 OLYMPICS
Edwin intends to have the product ready for the 2012 Olympics taking place in July in the United Kingdom, in a projection that would readily make GiveMeTap available to millions of people.
And when that break comes, GiveMeTap would move out of the confines recognition as only a shining start-up example to a global success story. Of course, that story will always have Edwin’s name in there. Launched online in 2009, Edwin’s company continues to win several awards, including the “Most Outstanding Black student in Britain” award from Future Leaders magazine.
Source: MSN
K’NAAN
K’naan ( /ˈkeɪnɑːn/), born Keinan Abdi Warsame (Somali: Keynaan Cabdi Warsame, Arabic: كنعان عبدي ورسمه Keynān ‘Abdī Warsamah) in 1978, is a Muslim.His name, Keinan, means “traveller” in the Somali language. K’naan is a Somali Canadian poet, rapper, singer, songwriter and instrumentalist.
MADE IN AFRE KH
Born in Somalia, K’naan spent his childhood in Mogadishu and lived there during the Somali Civil War, which began in 1991. His aunt, Magool, was one of Somalia’s most famous singers. K’naan’s grandfather, Haji Mohammad, was a poet. He spent the early years of his life listening to the hip-hop records sent to him from America by his father, who had left Somalia earlier. When he was 13, K’naan, his mother, and his three siblings left their homeland and joined relatives in New York City, where they lived briefly before moving to the Toronto neighbourhood of Rexdale in Canada, where there was a large Somali community where his family still resides. Despite the fact that he could not yet speak the language, the young K’naan taught himself hip-hop and rap diction, copying the lyrics and style phonetically. He then also began rapping. While growing up in Rexdale, K’naan lost many friends to murder, suicide, prison and deportation. K’naan married Deqa, a pharmacy technician, with whom he has two sons, born in 2005 and 2007. They were divorced a few years later.
FAME THROUGH COURAGE
K’naan secured a speaking engagement before the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1999, where he performed a spoken word piece criticizing the UN for its failed aid missions to Somalia. In the audience was Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, who was impressed by the young MC’s performance and courage that he invited him to contribute to his 2001 album Building Bridges, a project through which K’naan was able to tour the world. This project opened many doors for the young artist, leading to work at other UN events, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Halifax Pop Explosion and to meetings with Canadian producer Brian West and Jarvis Church. His debut album The Dusty Foot Philosopher was released in 2005 to critical acclaim, winning the 2006 Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year, nominated for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize and also winning the 2007 BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music in the newcomer category. K’naan released The Dusty Foot on the Road, a collection of recordings made during his world tour.
K’naan rose to mainstream popularity by participating in the 2008 BET Awards Cypher. This was his first appearance on American television. His second studio album, Troubadour, was released in early 2009. K’naan’s music has featured in several video games such as Madden NFL 09 (with his song “ABC’s”) and FIFA 06 (with his song “Soobax”).
ARTISTIC INFLUENCES
Critics have said K’naan has “a sound that fuses Bob Marley, conscious American hip-hop, and brilliant protest poetry.” His voice and style has been compared to Eminem, but his subject matter is very different. According to the Artist himself, he makes “urgent music with a message”, talking about the situation in his homeland of Somalia and calling for an end to violence and bloodshed. He specifically tries to avoid gangsta rap clichés and posturing. In a statement made to explain the world of difference which exists between where he grew up, and the ghettos of the first world, the Artist is quoted as saying:
“All Somalis know that gangsterism isn’t to brag about. The kids that I was growing up with [in Rexdale] would wear baggy [track] suit pants, and a little jacket from Zellers or something, and they’d walk into school, and all the cool kids would be like, ‘Ah, man, look at these Somalis. Yo, you’re a punk!’ And the other kid won’t say nothing, but that kid, probably, has killed fifteen people.”
K’naan has said that he is influenced by Somali music and the traditional instruments of Somalia. His 2009 album, Troubadour, also draws heavily from Ethiopian sources, particularly Ethio-Jazz by Alemayehu Eshete and Tilahun Gessesse.
ART WITH A CAUSE
In addition to his artistic career, K’naan has engaged in social activism. In 2011, he became a co-spokesman with Bono to raise awareness of the 2011 Eastern Africa drought. Also teaming up with close associate Sol Guy, K’naan performed various concerts for the cause. K’naan has also been active in promoting the Canadian Bill C-393 to help increase medical assistance to countries in Africa. He teamed up with James Orbinski, a Canadian humanitarian physician and co-founder of Dignitas International.
K’naan states that piracy off the coast of Somalia, while not to be condoned, has a reason for its existence.
“It has no basis, no roots, and I’m not talking about, when I say basis – it’s not the same as justifications […] but how there came to be pirates, I think that is probably the most undiscussed thing in major media today – it’s as if they just sprung from nowhere. But Somalis have long known about the issues.”
According to K’naan, fishermen organized and armed themselves so that they could protect their shoreline from illegal dumping of nuclear toxic waste from private companies. He goes on to state that, “greed and the lure of money eventually produced what we see today as Somali piracy”.
LATEST WORKS
On January 24 2012, K’naan released a 5 song EP under the title “More Beautiful Than Silence” including songs such as “Nothing to Lose”, “Better”, and “Anybody out there”. The songs also include collaborations with Nas and Nelly Furtado.
Source: Wikipedia
{jcomments off}
