Zapiro

I missed this several weeks ago when it came out, but it's so funny I just had to post it. I love Zapiro.

A bull in winter

Everyone needs a sweater in this cold weather

OLEK AND THE CHARGING BULL ON WALL STREET from olek on Vimeo.

I love creative yarn-crafters! Good job Olek.

Waka Waka

Before I left for South Africa I posted a few youtube videos from music I had referred to in my Society for Ethnomusicology world cup paper. Here are some additional related links.
The story of Waka Waka as told by Scribbles from the Den.
Zangalewa, the song Waka Waka is based on


WFMU Beware of the Blog has a great post about searching for the origins of this song, including numerous links to versions from all over the world.

I got all these links through the IASPM email list. Thanks to everyone who posted. I'm speaking on this topic at the IASPM conference in Grahamstown in June/July.

World Cup music

I gave a paper on the 2010 World Cup music at the Society for Ethnomusicology conference in LA last week. A version of it written before the world cup is due to come out in the Journal of Soccer and Society soon (if they get back to me with an alternative to signing away my copyright) and I'm working on a version based on the conference talk as a follow-up to the first, so I won't publish the whole paper here, but I did want to link to all the music I discussed, not least so that potential future readers can easily find it all in one place.
Vuvuzelas
Diski Dancing

What Makes Us South African?

Wow, I'm posting a lot these days.
I wanted to link to this article by Mark Gevisser, not just because I generally enjoy reading what he has to say, but also because I recently saw a David Goldblatt exhibit at the Jewish Museum here in New York, and while I really enjoyed it, my thoughts were similar to Mark's on the topic of South Africanness and these images. They felt really familiar, and yet also really distant to me. Not really what I would use to represent the South Africa I know to someone who doesn't know it. And similarly the World Cup (which I'm thinking about a whole lot again because I'm speaking about it in Los Angeles in a couple of weeks) made me feel very ambivalent about the way we generally represent our country to ourselves and others.

Karen's Video Blog

Karen just released her first video blog. It's just a plug for the new album, but I hope it means there will be more in future.

Do What You Do

Anne Hirsch of comedy group The Cracks has a blog, and posted on their appearance in Karen Zoid's video "Do What You Do".