news from kintespace.com ::: Tuesday, September 30, 2008

One of the assertive and creative ways people on the continent called “Africa” have adopted the personal computer outside the realm of music and film making is in the field of glyphic imagery or typography. At first glance, Saki Mafundikwa, his book Afrikan Alphabets, can be seen as a celebration of the African tradition of typography.

The opinion here is that this book can sit side by side with European typographic catalogues like The Postscript Font Handbook in order to remind the people who care that African technology is still useful and, the scholarly research shows, fundamental.

::: Linton Kwesi Johnson: Inglan Is a Bitch (YouTube.com)

::: ::: http://kintespace.com/p_lintonkj0.html

Linton Kwesi Johnson was the first Black poet I ever heard of that had an office. Not like how a professor (who may happen to be a poet) gets an office—but I actually remember seeing some interview years ago with Mr. Johnson explaining how his day in his office went. He described a meticulous schedule—a daily routine that included reading the newspaper. I was deeply impressed and very certain that all of that office work helped to inform his poetry. We are here to report that his work does very well—all over the world.

Here is some guy in Sweden writing about Linton Kwesi Johnson: “Linton Kwesi Johnson has been made an Associate Fellow of Warwick University (1985), an Honorary Fellow of Wolverhampton Polytechnic (1987) and received an award at the XIII Premo Internazionale Ultimo Novecento from the city of Pisa for his contribution to poetry and popular music (1990). In 1998 he was awarded the Premio Piero Ciampi Citta di Livorno Concorso Musicale Nazionale in Italy. In 2003 Johnson was bestowed with an honorary fellowship from his alma mater, Goldsmiths College. In 2004 he became an Honorary Visiting Professor of Middlesex University in London. In 2005 Linton Kwesi Johnson was awarded a silver Musgrave medal from the Institute of Jamaica for distinguished eminence in the field of poetry. He has toured the world from Japan to the new South Africa, from Europe to Brazil. His recordings are amongst the top-selling reggae albums in the world and his work has been translated into Italian and German. Unsurprisingly, he is known and revered as the world's first reggae poet.”

We celebrate Linton Kwesi Johnson through the fleeting rebelliousness of YouTube.com. People from Greece, the UK, France and Sweden bring selections from his live performances. These include “Inglan Is a Bitch,” “Di Black Petty Booshwah” and “Sonny´s Lettah.”

::: rasx() on film: 2000–2006

::: ::: http://kintespace.com/rasx47.html

Hey, I’m no Greg Tate but this first collection of writings on film spans six years with 17 articles with names like Floyd Webb, R/Kain Blaze, Stanley Kubrick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Beah Richards, Dr. Julius W. Garvey, Will Smith, Sam Neil and many others.

It is important to highlight that Floyd Webb starts on the timeline for this collection. His association with Julie Dash, the first Black woman to release a feature-length film in the United States (and probably more regions of the Diaspora), is of great symbolic importance to me.

rasx()