K'naan - Talking bacK TO THE Empire From Mogadishu to Rexdale and back again

[me]

Now that I've made a few recordings and gained some notoriety, I've been invited to speak at workshops and forced to consider my own position on the value or legitimacy of Black History Month.

 

"Is there a black community?" a few of my fellow panelists at the more unimaginative workshops have asked. I knew the answer to that: I was living in one, Jamestown (Rexdale), where we were dealing with weightier questions like "Where are the guns coming from?"

 

Then there are those bloated with wisdom who invariably ask burning questions like "Why have we been given the shortest month of the year?" This sort then quickly offer the answers, while being sure to insert jargon like "politrics" or "overstand."

 

Watching events in Africa, it's so easy, surveying the hunger and the war, to forget how the dilemma faced by blacks today was all structured long ago at a conference table in Germany.

 

On Christmas Eve 2006, Ethiopia, cheered on by the U.S.-inspired Transitional Federal Government, invaded my birth country, Somalia, and overthrew the Union of Islamic Courts. To Africans, this story seems all too familiar. Division and conquest, war and subjugation and here we are.

 

One could start the narrative with the Stanley Electric Group, an automotive light bulb company based in Japan, named in honour of Sir Henry Morton Stanley, one of the most negative figures in black history.

 

Stanley was born in Wales, and at the age of six was committed to a workhouse. At 17, he made his way by sea to New Orleans, where he befriended a cotton broker. He later fought on both sides of the American Civil War. But it was as a journalist that he cemented his ugly place in black history.

 

In 1871, the New York Herald commissioned Stanley to travel in Africa. It was an assignment that would change the course of history when Stanley's ambitions expanded from exploration to exploitation.

 

By 1876, he had found a like-minded partner, the powerful King Leopold of Belgium, a first cousin of Queen Victoria, who believed that a country's greatness depended on the acquisition of colonies.

 

When the king could not find support for his ambitious expansion plans within his own government, he started a private company, the International African Society, and hired Stanley to run it for him. Under the cloak of this "philanthropic" organization, the king assembled a private army called the Force Publique that, through horrendous brutality, extracted rubber and ivory riches from the region.

 

Stanley thus laid the groundwork for long Belgian rule over the Congo, a regime that we know today claimed between 8 million and 30 million African lives. The French, who did not recognize Leopold's private colonization, tried to lay claim to the region themselves.

 

Out of this dispute, the Berlin Conference of 1884 convened, at which 13 European countries and the U.S. recognized Central Africa's Congo region as Leopold's private property.

 

But the effects of the Berlin Conference were much broader. It went on to divide the continent into incomprehensible pieces, in a process now known as the Scramble for Africa.

 

The Europeans basically invaded, imposed a new map on Africa according to their geographical needs, divided tribes and communities that traditionally got along and confined traditional enemies inside new shared borders.

 

All these years later, border disputes are still unresolved, as in Somalia, one of the most homogeneous countries in Africa. Ongoing conflict there began in 1886, when the British invaded the northern part of the country, the French took a piece in the north and Italians captured southern Somalia. Ethiopia's then emperor, Menelik II, encouraged by Britain, took over the ****** region.

 

Celebrated Somali poet Mohammed Abdullah Hassan led a 22-year-long colonial resistance, one of the longest and bloodiest in sub-Saharan Africa, in which Somalia lost a third of its population in the north. The decisive end came when the British, having lost too many of their men, called on a squadron from the Royal Air Force, fresh from a World War I bombing run, to destroy the resistance. Ethiopia's support back then for the colonial powers made a long-term enemy out of its neighbour, Somalia.

 

During a ceasefire in the 1980s, Somalis lived under a U.S.-funded dictatorship that was overthrown in 1991. The country was in complete anarchy, with a handful of powerful warlords struggling to dominate one another. More than a decade later, an alternative in the form of the faith-based Union of Islamic Courts emerged, crippling the warlords and restoring order in the capital of Mogadishu. Undaunted, the U.S., citing fears of Al Qaeda involvement, reorganized and funded the warlords under the umbrella Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terorrism.

 

Fast-forward to 2007: Ethiopia is now withdrawing after its December invasion, and the U.S.-backed pro-Ethiopian Transitional Federal Government, which made warlords from the Alliance into ministers, has been discredited by its reliance on Ethiopian forces.

 

Division and conquest, war and subjugation, tactical separations, ideological impositions and here we are, under the sun of a day when average people in these conflicts no longer know what happened to put them there, why they are dying and why they will continue to die, plagued by disadvantage, hunger and war.

 

Over a conference table in Germany it all began, but we Africans, speeding to our demise when the baton was passed , have all too eagerly carried it on.

 

And so it occurs to me that the month of February is really not so black after all, but half black and half white like the two men whose birthdays it commemorates, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. And maybe, too, like the puppet regimes of Africa that are still in place to serve the interests of Western countries far away.

 

World events today are starting to resemble the old Scramble, with one country waving the flag of domination. I wonder if the Middle East will get a month all to itself one day.

 

http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2007-02-01/cover_story.php

[RedSea]

K'naan is doing great job.

 

where is the source?

[Caano Geel]

source

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

 

K’naan, aka the Dusty Foot Philosopher, winner of a Juno in 2006 for rap recording of the year, left war-ravaged Somalia at 13 and lived in Harlem for a short time before moving to Rexdale. He’s toured with Senegalese sensation Youssou N’Dour and in 2001 performed at the 50th anniversary of the UN High Commission for Refugees in Geneva

 

LoL. Ninka atooro uu iska dhigoyaa, mocking the European colonial dresses, I see. Hi luukis layk Joorj Waashinton, dhont yuu dink?

 

Or perhaps Napoleon Ponaparte.

 

[me]

I can't wait for K'naans songs about this war. I am disappointed about fanaaniinta kale ee Soomaaliyeed, where are the Saado Cali's, Xasan Aaden Samaters, etc etc. they silent while all this is happening.

[Chimera]

I bought Dusty P. on Ebay 4 months ago just for the sake of supporting a fellow Somali

 

a month ago i began listening to it and Damnn i didn't expect it to be so good

 

Smile is my favourite track

 

 

[me]

Dusty foot album never leaves my CD player, but have you listened to the one before that, the fly 13 one? Man I used to play that album although I hated it, just to support the dude. Thank god he made the Dusty album,that whole gangster thing on fly 13 wasn't working for him.

 

For me Until the lion learns to speak. especially this bit

 

I was born and raised in the place

Where the thorn of flame would blaze

Where the foreigners are not embraced

Where they warn you in jogging pace

Where the loners lower their gaze

Where the corners slower the chase

Where they twist and turn in a maze

With a pistol upon your face

 

 

Thats some multi-syllable rhyming. Plus he is using Somali rhyming styles.

[RedSea]

^^^ Saado Cali, and many others are the part of the Xabashi daba dhilif band.

[Blessed]

It's good to see that the brother is using his talent to tell the truth. Many would use it just to feed their ego.

 

K'Naan: Rapping about war

 

Me. I've had his first Album, he's matured alot since then

[xiinfaniin]

Very impressive is his political awareness of the world! Way to go yaa Keynaan [or is it Kacnaan?].

[me]

Originally posted by Shucayb:

^^^ Saado Cali, and many others are the part of the Xabashi daba dhilif band.

To my knowledge, Saado Cali has always been wadaniyad. hadii eenan ahayn Siyaad Barre, Soo Bari Galay umay heesteen. Or she wouldn't have sung Qoraxay, last year.

 

It is funny how you accuse Saado Cali for being Xabashi daba-dhilif while she sung Qoraxaylast year against the Burutality and oppression of the Ethiopian army against Somali civilians in the occupied Somali territories.

 

I am not going to accuse the Somali artists for siding with the Xabashis. I want them to speak up though and to make Wadani songs ee dadkeena ku guubaabinayaan in ay iska dhiciyaan cadowga.

 

 

(I don't get where your going at with these low blows Shucayb or badacase, is it your 'wadaadnimo' and hate any artistic expression or the same old qabyaalad?)

[Chimera]

Originally posted by me:

Dusty foot album never leaves my CD player, but have you listened to the one before that,

the fly 13 one?

no sxb i don't think i knew the brother back then

 

Man I used to play that album although I hated it, just to support the dude. Thank god he made the Dusty album,that whole gangster thing on fly 13 wasn't working for him.

 

For me Until the lion learns to speak. especially this bit

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz2UZuSk5EU

 

video cracks me up especially the beginning

[me]

Hhahahaha, it is a funny video.

 

 

Check this video.

 

http://www.directcurrentmedia.com/amp/knaan/default.asp?mode=all&type=allvideo

 

Instruction

 

1. Open the link

2. Scroll to MUNICH

3.Open the video titled, 110 Now one Refugee

 

When the power favored them,

We destroyed things worse then them

Gangsters hear me crazy mess

They show god through atheists

We were once the patriots, but home is where the hatred is

and then there is the diamond trade

from the gift the curse is made

Gun exchanges for the bling

Bullet for a wedding ring

 

Check the free style, I like that bit with the blood diamond.

 

The other video's are nice too, you can waste a night watching them, even more. Do I sound like a groupie?

[Chimera]

K'naan in Australia

 

06 Sydney

029 Be Free

030 The Naturopath

031 Xavier

032 Backstage Inspirations

033 Onstage

034 The Conditions

 

05 Brisbane

024 Catching Up

025 Mean & Vicious

026 We Like Shitting On

027 My Mothers Pearls

028 Making Fire

 

04 Chillin

020 Rayzak. A Contemplation

021 Babylon

022 Sunset

023 Listening to Lupe

 

03 Byron Bay

012 Blues Festival

013 Smile

014 Hardcore

015 Love

016 Freedom

017Lion

018 Soobax

019 Zion

 

02 Newcastle

006 K'naan's Down

007 K'naan's Back

008 Goomblar

009 The Show

010 More Show

011 Goomblar's Fix

 

01 Australia

001 Australia

002 Vanity

003 Reconnect

004 An Introduction

005 Cell Phone Soundclash

 

where?

[me]

Noooo, your on K'naan in Australia,You should be on Euro tour with Damian Marley.

 

On the middle top part of the screen you see a white field with black text saying: K'naan In Australia, click on that and change it to Euro tour with Damian Marley.