CULTURAL NEWS
Thursday, September 20 – 26, 2007
Ade Bantu at Du Bois Centre
STILL savouring the success of the Burger Highlife shows it organized a few months ago, the Goethe-Institut, has penciled in some music and film-related events for its October programmes, with KORA Award Winner, Ade Bantu, as the star attraction.
The German-Nigerian musician will take the stage at the Du Bois Centre in Accra on October 6 as part of activities to mark the Institut and the Du Bois Centre’s Afro-Germans: Embracing Two Worlds series.
The series is a forum for expression by individuals of German and African/Diaspora parentage born and raised in Germany as well as Ghanaians and other Africans who lived significant portions of their lives in Germany. Its objective is to inform Ghanaians about the German facet of the African Diaspora.
Bantu regards himself as an ‘Afropean’ and his music is inspired by both continents. His style is a fusion of Afrobeat, funk, hip hop, fuji, dancehall and reggae.
Other activities scheduled for the series are a lecture on W.E.B. DuBois by Prof. Anne Adams on October 1 at the Goethe-Institut, screening of ‘Yes I Am’ a documentary film on Afro-German musicians and their search for identity on October 4 at the Du Bois Centre and screening of another documentary film on the life and work of the Afro-German poet and scholar, May Ayim, on October 6 at the Du Bois Centre.
The biography on his website indicates that Adegoke (Ade) and his brother, Abiodun (Abi), were born to a German mother and a Nigerian father in Lagos Nigeria, then relocated to Cologne/Germany.
In recent years, his spicy AfroPean mix has been a natural blend of the most converse elements of both continents’ traditions. Drawing from his forefathers’ roots and his experience of the African diaspora alike, he uses the variety of urban styles and sounds from R’n’B through Hiphop to Ragga to contribute another shade to the soundtrack of a global Africa: profoundly rooted in Yoruba history yet dripping with Western production standards, deeply sensual yet utterly spiritual, thoroughly individual yet highly political.
The political aspect of him was exercised exceptionally with the AfroGerman musical pressure group, Brothers Keepers. The All-Star Ensemble, masterminded by Ade statement. It takes the most outspoken stand against racist violence.
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GRAPHIC SHOWBIZ - Thursday, September 20 – 26, 2007 Page: 10 |