purejuice

Malick Sidibe, Christmas Eve, 1963

Ouattara Watts, Dream Support

Jane Alexander, Butcher Boys

Samuel Fosso

Willem Boshoff, Kaartland

Kamala Ishaq Ibrahim, Loneliness

12th-14th century Yoruba shrine head

Not. You probably, with all the rest of us, visualize tribal art, as if Africa had no other past or present:

19th c. Fang mask, Louvre

Even if you're as hip as

gloeden and me, you'll probably know little more than the post-colonial camp -- a polemic -- of the heavenly Afro-Brit, Yinka Shonibare. It's hard to get past:

Yinka Shonibare, Reverend on Ice

And while I am much less expert than most of you in the matter of indie rock and cultural appropriation, I submit this: of all the things the indie band Vampire Weekend may be guilty of, their joyous rendering of Afropop music is a good thing. Knocking them for ripping off African happy music, or, more crudely, as I suspect is the actual case, knocking them because they're not playing tribal mask African music or politically correct tormented revolutionary polemic African music, is racist in a particularly ignorant and yet arrogant way.

Clickez ici, as we say in Africa, for a short review of the art exhibit which accompanied The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-1994, which every citizen of the world should own. The first show of its kind curated by (gasp!) an African, Okwui Enwezor.