By Julia Cosgrove  August 10th, 2010 12:32 pm  |  Comments (1)

In Afar’s September/October issue, which hits newsstands today, writer Frank Bures tells the story of Nigeria’s booming film industry, Nollywood. While researching the piece, Bures went on set with Kunle Afolayan, a young actor/director aiming to improve the quality of Nollywood films. Afolayan’s sophomore effort, The Figurine, swept the Africa Movie Academy Awards earlier this year. Here’s a trailer for that movie, and an excerpt of an interview with Afolayan, in which he talks about the influence of his filmmaker father and why he decided to become an actor.

By Julia Cosgrove  February 7th, 2010 2:34 pm  |  Comments (10)

For each issue of Afar, our staff chooses a destination at random—by literally spinning a globe—and sends a writer on a spontaneous journey. The department, called Spin the Globe, is one of our favorites, because we never know what might happen. In the March/April issue, on newsstands February 9th, we sent writer and actor Andrew McCarthy to Ethiopia. Here’s a short dispatch we received from Andrew while he was on assignment.

By Jennica Peterson  December 8th, 2009 6:00 am  |  Comments (6)

You'll shop for spices in the souk on the International Kitchen's trip to Fes, Morocco.

Thinking about a career change? On WPIX-TV, Afar co-founder Joe Diaz talks about five trips that might inspire you to work in a new field. After this trip in Morocco, you might pursue work as a chef:

Trip: International Kitchen’s “Feast for the Senses in Morocco” program
Overview: In the 1200-year-old Moroccan city of Fez, you’ll work with professional Moroccan chef Lahcen Beqqi to learn the essentials of the country’s cuisine.
Skills you’ll learn: How to choose the freshest ingredients at the market; how to combine spices such as dried ginger, cumin, cinnamon, and turmeric to create the distinct flavors of Moroccan cuisine; how to make traditional Moroccan dishes such as lamb tagine, couscous, and cornes de gazelles—crescent-shaped pastries filled with almond paste.
Other highlights: Visiting the tanneries and an auction of Fez’s famous soft leather. Sleeping in a renovated 14th-century palace in Fez’s medina.
Price: from $2,800 for a six-day trip

Four other career-changing trips:

• Work alongside marine biologists in Greece
• Live the life of an organic vintner in New Zealand
• Help healthcare workers in Guatemala
  
• Teach English and surf in Bali

Photo courtesy of the International Kitchen

By Derk Richardson  November 23rd, 2009 4:40 pm  |  Comments (1)

The music of Morocco has captivated Beats, hard rockers, and jazz improvisers for more than 40 years. For painter Brion Gysin, Rolling Stone Brian Jones, and free jazz avatar Ornette Coleman, it was the flute, reed, and drum trance music of the Master Musicians of Joujouka that mesmerized.

For trumpeter Don Cherry, pianist Randy Weston, and Led Zepellin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, the spell was cast by the hypnotic drones of Gnawa music. Listening to the new CD, Ouled Bambara: Portraits of Gnawa, the source of their fascination is clear.

Gnawa music is simple in format: Chant-like singing is supported by the plucked guembri, a low-toned three-string lute used to set rhyhtm and simple melodies, plus hand claps, shakers, and castanets. But the intention of the music—to connect with unseen spirits and keep the fiercest at bay—is deep, and the effect of extended listening is transporting.

Ouled Bambara features four different groupings of musicians recorded live during a Gnawa ceremony in Marrakech. The CD and accompanying DVD are released by Chicago’s Drag City label, which knows something about trance music, being a prime purveyor of contemporary, psychedelic-tinged  freak-folk. While not slick and punchy like you might expect from Marrakech-to-New York pop star Hassan Hakmoun, the sound quality is remarkably clear and present for a field recording.

As Todd Pitock revealed in “An Old World Finds a New Path” in the premier issue of Afar, a journey through the daunting landscape of Morocco can be both challenging and deeply rewarding. It’s the same with Ouled Bambara, in which music serves as your guide and your transportation.

For a history of the Gnawa, visit Afropop Worldwide.

Watch one of Ouled Bambara’s featured performers, Abdelkbir Marchane:

Related posts: A new Afarish guide to music and travel; Singing in the Sahara with Tinariwen

By Derk Richardson  October 13th, 2009 12:20 pm  |  Comments (2)

The October 13 U.S. release of Tinariwen’s Imidiwan: Companions, an hour-long CD packaged with a 30-minute DVD, marks a homecoming for the African desert blues band. In more ways than one.

Photo by Thomas Dorn.

Since 2001, when The Radio Tisdas Sessions brought Tinariwen to the attention of Western world music fans, the troupe of guitarists and singers has ranged far from its Saharan roots, traveling the globe and performing in venues as varied as the San Francisco Jazz Festival and a castle in Ireland, where the band opened for the Rolling Stones and played to an audience of 65,000.

Fans of West African guitar, especially the Delta blues–echoing riffs of the late Ali Farka Toure and his rising-star son Vieux Farka Toure, get their fix six times over from this string-bending ensemble.

Plus, Tinariwen, hailing from the nomadic Tuareg tribal culture, comes with a compelling 30-year back story rife with tales of exile, refugee camps in Libya, rebellion in northern Mali, sponsorship by the French band Lo’Jo, an appearance at the first Festival in the Desert outside Timbuktu, and much more.

Two polished studio CDs, 2004’s Amassakoul and 2007’s Aman Iman, enhanced Tinariwen’s reputation. But those productions slightly smoothed out the splintery grain of the band’s music. The difference on the new CD is subtle, but recorded in and around the band’s hometown, Tessalit, in the mountains of northeastern Mali, Imidiwan: Companions (World Village) is a stronger, edgier representation of Tinariwen’s music.

“We didn’t know what we were doing when we started,” Tinariwen cofounder, songwriter, and guitarist Ibrahim Ag Alhabig told UK journalist David Hutcheon for a feature in the August 2009 issue of Mojo. “We didn’t understand the [recording] process, we couldn’t take control. Sometimes, on Amassakoul and Aman Iman, we didn’t recognize ourselves so much.”

Continuing its return to roots, Tinariwen has scheduled appearances at four desert festivals in Africa: three in Mali—the Camel Fair in Tessalit, Dec. 29–Jan. 1; the Essouk Festival, Jan. 2–4; and the Festival in the Desert, Jan. 7–9—and one in Algeria, in Tamanrasset, the unofficial capital of the Tourareg people, Jan. 14–17, where Tinariwen has not played for nearly 30 years.

Watch: Tinariwen on YouTube from the Imidiwan: Companions DVD

By Jennica Peterson  September 22nd, 2009 11:33 am  |  Comments (4)

In West Africa, barbers attract customers with brightly painted pictures of hairstyles bearing catchy names such as “Superstars Cut,” “Playboy,” “Y2K,” or “Uhuru” (a Ghanaian dance band). Some styles resemble those of celebrities such as Mr. T, Laurence Fishburne, and rap-star Timbaland. Barbers who don’t own their own shop carry one of these painted signs, scissors, and a mirror; when they find a shady spot, they prop up their sign to advertise their services and then start snipping. “Superstars Cut” sign artist Martin Lissah sells his work from a kiosk at the Arts Centre in Accra, Ghana, or you can purchase multiple artists’ paintings from fair-trade vendor eShopAfrica. From $250.

“Superstars Cut” sign artist Martin Lissah.

Photo of painting by Maren Caruso; photo of Martin Lissah courtesy of eShopAfrica.com.

By Julia Cosgrove  September 17th, 2009 10:12 am  |  Comments (1)

I have a soft spot for people who think outside the box. Emily Pilloton is one such person. She wants designers to make practical tools that help the world. As the founder and executive director of Project H Design, a humanitarian non-profit with nine chapters around the world, Emily was recently awarded a $15,000 Adobe Foundation grant to support work on her new book Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People. Project H tackles such social and environmental issues as access to water, global health, and education—all on a manageable, local scale. One of Emily’s first projects involved redesigning the hippo roller, an innovative water transport system, which she then delivered to a community in Kgautswane, South Africa. For another initiative, she and her colleagues installed a “math playground” at the Kutamba School for AIDS Orphans in Uganda (shown here). Check out Emily and her many projects in this inspiring, short video from Adobe.

Photo courtesy of Project H Design.

By Susan West  September 10th, 2009 8:16 am  |  Comments (1)

“Now I feel like I’ve been on the back roads of Morocco!” said one of our Facebook fans after reading Todd Pitock’s feature article about his journey into the Anti-Atlas Mountains in search of Berber culture.

To give you a little more of that feeling, we thought we’d share some of the photos Todd took during the 15-day road trip. They show the group’s over-packed Land Cruiser and one of their campsites, fellow traveler Elise Poncet’s unique approach to yoga, a café in Guelmim’s camel market, a Berber host weighing saffron, and a Berber shepherd who shared tea with Todd and his companions.

By April Kilcrease  August 28th, 2009 8:01 am  |  Comments (1)

Hot and spicy on the tongue, harissa seems to inspire similarly fiery passions in the hearts of many cooks. But nothing compares to the erotic rapture of Abdelmajid Mahjoub, head of Les Moulins Mahjoub, a family-run farm in Tunisia’s Mejerda Valley. Posted on the food blog Sugar Cauldron, Mahjoub had this to say about his first taste of the chile paste:

I can still hear the enchantment of women crying out of pleasure, they weep out in ecstasy when they see it, unfolding its charms on a slice of bread.

After reading this, and the rest of his rhapsodic poem (“Virgins are bursting away with pleasure, elbowing their way through to reach ecstasy…Its flame, lingering on in my fragile memory, has marked me…with all its sensations.), I had to try it. I ordered a jar and tossed Les Moulins Mahjoub’s mixture of sundried peppers, garlic, cardamom, salt, and coriander into a chicken and pasta dish. While I wouldn’t call the experience transcendent, it was tasty.

As ubiquitous in Tunisia as hot sauce in Mexico, the condiment gets spread on almost everything—pizza, eggs, cream cheese, all food tastes better with a harissa kick. The basic recipe calls for dried red chiles, salt, and olive oil, but north African variations include onions, tomatoes, mint, and rose petals. Mahjoub recommends adding harissa to lablabi, a traditional chickpea stew.

If you’re hankering to pound some chiles with a pestle, food historian and cookbook author Clifford A. Wright provides a Berber-style recipe on his Mediterranean food Web site. A merchant in Tunis gave him the original ingredient list, which required fifty pounds of chiles. Thankfully, Wright has scaled it down.

You can order Les Moulins Mahjoub Harissa from Cube’s online market.

For a simple harissa dish, try Kitchen Caravan’s Harissa Deviled Eggs recipe.

By Julia Cosgrove  August 27th, 2009 8:31 am  |  Comments (11)

Don’t worry—no rabbits are harmed (or used) in the making of bunny chow. For the full story on South Africa’s favorite street food, check out page 44 of the premier issue of Afar. If your interest is piqued, follow this recipe for homemade bunny chow, then upload your pictures of the finished dish to Afar’s Facebook page!*

BUNNY CHOW
(Serves 4)
Adapted from Cook Sister!, Jeanne Horak-Druiff’s food blog. A native South African, Horak-Druiff favors lamb bunny chow.

INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 cinnamon stick
4 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
1 medium onion, sliced thinly into rings
2–3 curry leaves
4 tsp Durban masala (if unavailable, use red curry powder)
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 1/2 tsp grated ginger
1 1/2 tsp crushed garlic
2 large tomatoes, chopped, or a 14-oz can chopped tomatoes
2 1/4 pounds lamb, cubed
3–4 potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 tsp garam masala
Salt, to taste
1 or 2 crusty, square loaves of bread (small farmhouse loaves are best)
Fresh coriander leaves for garnish

MAKE IT
1. Heat the oil and add the cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, onion, and curry leaves. Fry until the onion is golden brown in color.

2. Add the Durban masala (or curry powder), turmeric, ginger, garlic, and tomato. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the mix resembles a puree.

3. Add the meat and cook for about 10 minutes. Then add the potatoes and about 1/4 cup of water. Lower the heat and simmer on low. Keep an eye on it to make sure the bottom of the pot does not burn.

4. When the meat is cooked through and the potatoes are tender (about 30 minutes), add the garam masala. Test for seasoning and add salt if necessary. Simmer for 10 minutes on low heat.

5. Halve the loaves and scoop out the centers (known in South Africa as the “virgins”), leaving the crusts to form bowls.

6. Spoon the curry into the half loaves and serve, garnished with coriander leaves. The virgin can be dipped into the curry and eaten as well.

*To upload your photos to our Facebook page, you must first become a fan of Afar. Also, please note that by posting your photos on our Facebook page, we reserve the right to repost the photos on our blog.

Photo by Maren Caruso.