on Mixcloud
No Small Money Brass Band performed two awesome sets to close the night at BUKA Restaurant in Brooklyn. One of NYC’s hottest dance party sensations. Inspired by the rhythms, folk songs, highlife classics, indigenous church and big brass band music traditions of Africa and the Caribbean. No Small Money is really bringing something new to the dance floors of New York City. And folks are dancing!
A section of No Small Money performing at BUKA NYC
Band and Music Information coming soon:
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NY Afro Fest 2011 brings together culture, arts, literature, music (both popular and sacred), politics, dialogue, food and community in its celebration of the African Diaspora, and in recognition of the United Nation’s designation of 2011 as the international year for people of African Descent. The festival also coincides with the release of Afrobeat Journal’s second Issue, themed: African rhythms, roots, culture, in homage to Randy Weston.
A cross section of NY Afro Fest 2011 Literary Panelists. Photo by Ayesha Haruna-Atta
The September 24th NY Afro Fest event served up an exciting line up: a Literary Conference and live music performances. It will continue with live broadcast on WBAI 99.5 FM on Saturday Oct 1, 2011 of global African Sacred musics and African Art music. Buka New York Restaurant (946 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY 11238) was co-host the September 24th event.
NY Afro Fest opened at BUKA with live music from Asiko Afrobeat’s pulsating sounds. Archive here: NY Afro Fest 2011: Afrobeat With Asiko
The Literary Conference followed, after the panel had to be moved to wbai radio station due to technical difficulties. The panel’s theme: Root Words: A Celebration & Discussion of African Literature. Our panelists are Catherine E. McKinley, author of Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World; Tanya Wright, author of Butterfly Rising, actress (HBO series True Blood) and director; Ngozi Achebe author of Onaedo – The Blacksmith’s Daughter; FitzGerald Chinemerem Ajoku author of “Continental Drift” The African, African American Experience and Marva Allen partner and CEO of Hue-Man Bookstore and Cafe in Harlem. Audio Archive here at the top.
The panel was moderated by the very able poet and writer Benjamin Hinson and assisted by Ayesha Harruna Attah, author of Harmattan Rain. The conference was pulled together by Nana Brew-Hammond author of Powder Necklace, Benjamin Hinson, Ayesha Harruna Attah and Afrobeatradio’s Wuyi Jacobs.
We then returned to BUKA to continue the festival with a wonderful performance by Tuelo el Bandimo: Audio Archive here: NY Afro Fest 2011: Tuelo le Badimo
The nights perfornces was xoncluded with an unbelieveable performance by No Small Money Brass Band. Audio Archive here:
NY Afro Fest continues on October 1 with sacred music of the African Diaspora. For updates visit www.AfrobeatRadio.Com.
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NY Afro Fest is a collaboration between WBAI producers Wuyi Jacobs of AfrobeatRadio and Imhotep Gary Byrd of Global Black Experience with the support of WBAI management and team of engineers. New York Afrobeat Festival, Inc. is a not-for-profit enterprise dedicated to fostering and promoting African cultures and communities through art, music, performance and visual arts. We aim to excite, entertain, inform, educate and to create awareness of the value of the cultures of Africa within the vibrant multicultural fabric of New York City.
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For those of you who missed the NY Afro Fest’s September 24th debut, which a lot of people did due to technical problems with connecting to WBAI 99.5 FM, Tuelo le Badimo (which means Tuelo and the Gods/Ancestors) performed at BUKA Restaurant in Brooklyn after the Literary panel. The music is exhilarating. The banter between band members, the improvisation with Anthony Sloan and the play on words and songs, the restaurant bell chiming in at inordinately appropriate moments, the foot traffic and street conversations, even MTA buses and vehicular traffic contributed to this unique Brooklyn experience. Tuelo le Badimo led by Tuelo Minah truly brought down the blessings of the Ancestors to NY Afro Fest 2011. Look out for Tuelo le Badimo on AfrobeatRadio on WBAI soon.
Tuelo le Badimo at BUKA Restaurant, NYC. Photo: Nat/BUKA
The Band
Tuelo Minah Singer/Songwriter/Guitarist, from Mafikeng, South Africa; Mark Anselm, lead guitar- Annapolis from Maryland; Dominique Joseph, Drummer/Percussion- Tampa from Florida, and Tsholo Mokubung, singer, hand percussion from Kimberley, South Africa.
The Songs in order of appearance:
- Here we are
- Trafficking
- Come as You are
- Kelebogile
- Bombs
- Will the circle be unbroken- Cover, Carter Family
- Malabulabu – Tswana Traditional
- Dominique Joseph – Drumming
- Fela
Thank you for such a wonderful performance.
By AfrobeatRadio
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For those of you who missed the NY Afro Fest’s September 24th debut, which is a lot of people did due to technical problems with connecting to WBAI Radio. Afrobeat band, Asiko led by Folorunso Kolade, AKA Bros Foly, opened the NY Afro Fest 2011 with a great performance at BUKA Restaurant in Brooklyn. Look for Asiko on AfrobeatRadio on WBAI soon.
NY Afro Fest 2011 - Asiko performing at BUKA Restaurant, NYC. Photo Nat/BUKA
The Band
Foly Kolade – lead vocals and talking drum; Horn section: Tenor Sax - Connell Thompson; Baritone Sax - Tim Stocker; Trombone - Dan Lehner; Drums - John Thomas Robinette 111; Bass - Kevin Marth; Conga – Sunday Bada; Backup Vocal – Kantaki Washington
NY Afro Fest 2011 - Asiko performing at BUKA Restaurant, NYC. Photo Nat/BUKA
The songs in order of appearance:
- LA LA
- Naija Politics
- Winners Never Quit
- Oun Ti e Je
Thank you for a wonderful performance.
By AfrobeatRadio
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MLK Memorial Statue
On Saturday September 3rd, 2011, we were honored to have with us via telephone two African American writers, activists, and radio hosts to speak with us about the controversy surrounding the new Martin Luther King Memorial Monument now in place between the Lincoln and Washington Monuments in Washington D.C..
The monument’s August 25th unveiling ceremony, with an address by President Barack Obama, was postponed because of Hurricane Irene, to a still undetermined date in September or October.
Our guests:
Kevin Alexander Gray, author of the collection of essays, Waiting for Lightning to Strike, the Fundamentals of Black Politics, contributor to The Progressive, Counterpunch, and his own blog, The New Liberator, and, host of Live from the Land of Hopes and Dreams on Sirius Satellite Radio, from Columbia, South Carolina.
Dr. Jared Ball, writer, activist, and mixtape artist, Pacifica WPFW Host, Professor of Communications at Morgan State University, author of I Mix What I Like, the book and the blog, and, of the Black Agenda Report editorial, “The Corporate King Memorial and The Burial of a Movement.”
Also, on the phone, from San Francisco, AfrobeatRadio Producer Ann Garrison.
Audio excerpts played during the program are:
“Who’s King?” by American political prisoner and writer Mumia Abu Jamal available at: Prison Radio Project: “Who’s King?”
Excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” Riverside Church Speech available at the Stanford University Archives: “Beyond Vietnam.”
Music pieces played:
Intro extract from: Epitaph For A Man Who Dreamed (In Memoriam: Dr Martin Luther King, JR. by Adolphus Cunningham Hailstork performed by the Paul Freeman Chicago Sinfonietta Conducted.
Why Do you Not Dance from the CD titled CHAKA. Composed by Prof Akin Euba and performed by City of Birmingham Touring Opera.
The program was produced and hosted by Ann Garrison and Wuyi Jacobs
This program was broadcast live on AfrobeatRadio on WBAI 99.5 FM on Saturday September 03, 2011as part of our regular weekly program.
]]>Skoto Gallery present paintings by eminent New York artist
Kendall Shaw
In
Back Seat at the Drive-in
Surabstract paintings
September 8th – October 15th, 2011
The reception is on Thursday, September 8th, 6-8pm. The artist will be present.
SKOTO GALLERY 529 West 20th Street, 5FL.
New York, NY 10011 212-352 8058
info@skotogallery.com www.skotogallery.com
Behind the Trellis, 1992-96, mixed media on paper, 44×72 inches.
‘Back Seat at the Drive-In,’ is a selection of paintings that have been taken from an ongoing body of work done by Kendall Shaw over a long and productive career. The show is concerned with the artist’s personal response to the body, its interactions, and kinetic and social expression. Love, desire, passion, and playfulness rule our intimate responses to each other; all these things are referenced in Shaw’s paintings. There is quiet regard, as in a 1965 painting in which a few simple, but clearly rendered lines on warm-colored unprimed canvas evoke the soft female presence of Frances, the artist’s wife. Then there is the Dionysian bacchanal of forms that animate an ‘abstract’ painting from 1994 such as “Sex And The Hot Toyota.” The ecstatic vibrancy of notational line and color in “Hip Hop,” completed in 2002, puts the active figure back at the evocative center of painting. Rather than the cooling down effect as occurred in contemporaneous minimalist abstraction and an intensifying ‘painting is dead’ despair, Shaw concentrated the visual into an erotically sensitized skin of paint across the live body of canvas.
The artist’s innate love for people in all their physical diversity, personal differences and complexity, includes the life-affirming drive toward natural expressions of sensuality and sexuality in art as in life. Disregarding art world cynicism, his touch energizes the potential of abstraction in a drive away from the anomie that prevails in much current art. In formal terms, Kendall Shaw, whose paintings have long married a humanistic foundation with formal abstraction and representation, defines a new term—surabstraction, that provides an over- arching concept for his work— one that would help us understand his drive toward a metaphoric ‘realness’ within the arena of abstract form:
People ask what kind of paintings do you make. Humans love to classify, and that was the base of Aristotle’s writings as he saw new plants and animals on his journey through India with the conquering Alexander. If I answer that I make abstract paintings folks become satisfied, because that classification is familiar to them. The problem with classification is that there are rules and descriptions. The classification becomes a box with restrictions. A painting can be a metaphor for what seems to be real in life. I want a painting to echo life as much as possible, to be real in itself.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Shaw left behind his advanced studies in science and a burgeoning research career, to engage in an active and affirmative life amongst a seminal group of progressive artists. With teachers, friends, and colleagues who were at the driving center of classic American modernism such as Ralston Crawford, Stuart Davis, George Ricky, Ida Kohlmeyer, and Mark Rothko, the young scientist was directly immersed in an advanced stream of artistic thought and accomplishment. In 1961 he was Invited to teach at Columbia University School of Architecture, and has lived in New York ever since.
Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the eighty-seven year old artist has had an exemplary career not only as artist and teacher, but also in the field of stage design. For example, his design for a John Bernard Meyers produced musical, with words by Gertrude Stein and music by Ann Sternberg was at the Astor Place Theatre in 1972. The play was later performed at the Museum of Modern Art, as well as the Grace Rainey Rodgers Auditorium of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Music was recorded and released by Polydor Records.
Kendall Shaw’s most recent solo shows include his 2011 idiosyncratic interpretation of Bible stories, ‘Let There Be Light’ presented at the Narthex Gallery & Living Room Gallery of St. Peter’s church in mid-town Manhattan. Both the Ruskin Gallery/East Anglia University, Cambridge, England, and the Ogden Museum for Southern Art, in New Orleans, presented retrospectives in 2007.
While this is his first solo exhibition at Skoto Gallery, Shaw was represented for more than thirty years by fabled gallerists such as Tibor de Nagy, John Bernard Meyers, and the Lerner-Heller Gallery. His work is now part of many private and public collections around the world. A brief list includes: Peter Ludwig, Aachen and Vienna; Museum of Contemporary Art, Nagaoka, Japan; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; Orlando Museum, Florida; IBM Corporation, New York; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; J.P. Morgan/Chase Manhattan Bank, NY.
Carl E. Hazlewood
August 2011
Brooklyn, NY
The Acclaimed Curated Film Series
September 17 to 18, 2011
BAMcinématek BAM
Peter Jay Sharp Building 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
For Schedule/Times/Tickets: BAM.ORG
Admission: $12 Cinema Club members: $8
BAMcinématek presents “Creatively Speaking” September 17th and 18th. Celebrating its fifth year at BAMcinématek, Creatively Speaking™ offers films that speak to the wide-ranging experiences of people of color across the Diaspora. In celebration of the United Nations declaring 2011 as The Year of People of African Descent, this year’s Creatively Speaking film series at BAMcinématek brings together a hand-picked selection of high quality, entertaining and informative films and videos representing the breadth and depth of the diversity of people of African descent from around the world.
Curator, Michelle Materre, states, “This year, we present three feature films that have yet to receive widespread theatrical exposure. Children of God is a debut feature narrative by Kareem Mortimer, set against the backdrop of the beautiful island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas –a nation grappling with a surge in violent homophobic crimes. Fire in Babylon, by award-winning UK director Stevan Riley, tells the story of the glorious domination of the West Indian cricket team which became one of the greatest teams in sports history, while also celebrating the emancipation of a people with its roots in politics, pride, anti-colonial fury and music.
For Updates & Information: Creatively Speaking on Facebook
For Immediate Release Contacts:
Tamika Durham, Press Coordinator at durham.tamika@gmail.com ; cell: 973-752-7884
or Neyda Martinez at neydamartinez1@hotmail.com ; cell: 917 656 7846.
creativelyspeaking.tv/upcoming.html www.BAM.org/BAMcinematek
With standing-room only, the 600 seats at the Broad Street Ballroom was filled with fashionistas, buyers, press, designers, admirers and models as Africa Fashion Week July 11-17 kicked off with the with edgy sophistication of Korto Momolu, the Project Runway star from Liberia. Totaling over 21 featured designers including headliner Bill Witherspooon, Kikoromeo, Suakoko Betty, AAMAA a la Mode, Washington Roberts, and Saint Wobil, fashion designers from Africa and the Diaspora were gracing the downtown Manhattan runway. Sponsored by USAID/East Africa’s “Origin Africa”, the three day fashion show and week long programme was organized by luxury brands company Adirée and included an exhibition and industry networking events.
Just a few years old, Africa Fashion Week is a phenomena occurring in London and other major cities. This event is part of an on-going effort to improve African trade and encourage sustainabilty, fair trade and green marketing. According to Diane Harper, a blogger for USAID, “…By building the capacity and increasing competitiveness of African goods, USAID promotes broad based, sustainable economic growth that is necessary to accelerating development and eradicate poverty in Africa.” Some $7.8 million in business deals where reportedly generated between the American garment sector and African businesses.
With a mirade of cultures whose innovative traditions serve as a source for both materials and ideas it isn’t surprising that many US and European designers and fashion houses would look to Africa for inspiration. However, the issue of intellectual property rights, living wages for workers, transfer of techonology and training that will move the continent one step closer towards realization of MDG’s and other socioeconomic objectives is yet to be realized. The East African Community (EAC) and other regional intergovernmental organizations such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) focused on developing economic markets within the continent seek to make Africa a producer of goods and finished products, not just provider of raw materials, raw talent or skills. Africa Fashion Week (AFW) shows promise. See: www.AFWNY.com
Overall, the show catered to the occidental market but it did host a few gems for those with global African sensibilities. Some of the pieces took our imaginations to the most extreme places, like a few designs those featured in the photo essay. Mr Witherspoon’s (see photo styling a straw fedora) radically chic, funk-inspired clothing for men mixed bright colored leathers, graphic prints, fake fur, bone and silk to make one of the most potent statements about black male power spiritually; physically; and sartorially made the fashion shows nothing short of fantastic. But for all its glory, occassioanl groaners and questionable political agenda, it appears the organizers themselves did not fully support the argument they are making for their brand or understand the objectives of Origin African and USAID.
If Adirée expects the rest of us to encourage design and fashion from African then the least they could do is be consistent and through with that most important message. Perhaps they should consider how they show their support and respect for African farmers, weavers, printmakers, designers, tailors, seamstresses, manufacturers, and distributors thorough out the continent by doing what any exceptional artists does well: pay attention to details. With the plethora of European hair weaves flitting about the heads of key organizers of the event, and the hopelessly conventional compunction of having team members do the “NY thing,” with their wardrobe, a powerful message was lost however subliminally on the audience and potential buyers. Namely otherwise beautiful young female ushers of African descent wore “little black dresses” instead of sporting attire no matter how short or of what sartorial tradition that send the message home: Support African Fashion! And be the change they want to see in the world. Adirée’s organizers and staff should have worn outfits made with African textiles or designed by one of the African designers showcased. They didn’t … Perhaps next year?
All images and reporting by Dowoti Désir
For more AfrobeatRadio Images, visit AfrobeatRadio on Flickr
Ms. Dowoti Désir is the Founder of the DDPA Watch Group. She is culture rights activist, curator of contemporary art in the African Diapsora, and independent scholar based in New York. Dowoti Desir is producer with AfrobeatRadio.
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The Mandelbrot set is a famous example of a fractal
According to the report on his passing by the New York Times, ‘Dr. Mandelbrot coined the term “fractal” to refer to a new class of mathematical shapes whose uneven contours could mimic the irregularities found in nature.’ In the era of quantum mechanics, complexity and chaos, the ideas behind fractal thinking could no longer be ignored and grudgingly, fractal geometry began to gain acceptance in the Western academy. We want to salute Mandelbrot for his tenacity in bringing the concept of fractals to the Western academy. While we commend Mandelbrot for his doggedness, we use this opportunity to state that before Mandelbrot coined the term ‘fractal’ and popularised it in the Western academy, the knowledge and application of this geometry of nature had always existed in the thinking of African peoples.
Fractal geometry was at the heart of the African ontology and knowledge system, from divination and architecture to hair weave and craft. More than 40 years ago, Claudia Zaslavsky exposed to the West her research on the African mathematical heritage. Her book, ‘Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Culture’ was a major contribution to the understanding of mathematics in everyday life in Africa. This analysis was carried to another level by Ron Eglash at the end of the 20th century.
In his research presented in the book ‘African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design’, Ron Eglash was exposed to the fact that the knowledge and application of fractal had been alive for millennia in Africa. There are invaluable lessons to be learned for humanity by exploring further the heap of ideas surrounding fractals. Particularly, African societies, the African academy and the political leadership in Africa must pay close attention to exploring the transformational and revolutionary ideas embedded in fractals.
IMPRESSIVE CONTRIBUTION OF BENOIT MANDELBROT
There is no doubt about the tremendous contribution of Mandelbrot to the fields of mathematics and science. Almost every discipline in the Western academy has been affected by fractal geometry. For decades, Benoit Mandelbrot was at the forefront of explaining and writing about fractals. ‘If you cut one of the florets of a cauliflower, you see the whole cauliflower but smaller. Then you cut again, again, again, and you still get small cauliflowers. So there are some shapes which have this peculiar property, where each part is like the whole, but smaller,’ explained Mandelbrot. He argued that seemingly random mathematical shapes followed a pattern if broken down into a single repeating shape. The concepts of self-similarity and scaling in fractals enabled scientists to measure previously immeasurable objects, including the coastline of the British Isles and the geometry of a lung or a cauliflower. We now know that the seminal contribution of fractal mathematics led to technological breakthroughs in the fields of digital music and image compression. Computer modelling and the information technology revolution have been pushed by insights from fractal geometry. In his interviews and books, Mandelbrot argued that seemingly random mathematical shapes followed a pattern if broken down into a single repeating shape. This is what in fractals is called self-similarity. This concept of self-similarity is also linked to the other key elements of fractal concepts: scaling, recursion and infinity.
Frost crystals formed naturally on cold glass illustrate fractal process development in a purely physical system
In fractals, this concept of infinity is also known as the Cantor Set. In the late 19th century, George Cantor (1845–1918) had provided a new approach for European mathematicians when he showed that it was possible to ‘keep track of the number of elements in an infinite set’, and did so in a descriptively simple fashion. Starting with a single straight line, Cantor erased the middle third, leaving two lines. He then carried out the same operation on those two lines, erasing their middles and leaving four lines. In other words he used a sort of feedback look, with end result of one stage brought back as the starting point for the next. The technique is called ‘recursion’ (Eglash, p. 8). This concept of infinity had for long, before Cantor, been part of the African divination system. In Africa, Eglash encountered some of the most complex fractal systems that exist in religious activities, such as the sequence of symbols used in sand divination, a method of fortune telling found in Senegal. The concept of infinity had a metaphysical link with infinity. This sand divination was to be later referred to as ‘geomancy’ in Europe (Eglash, p. 99–101). Eglash and others credited Mandelbrot with the conceptual leap in the application of fractal geometry from the simulations of natural objects.
The relevant point is that fractals existed in nature and before Mandelbrot there was Koch and Cantor. Before Koch and Cantor there were many people in Africa who understood fractal geometry and the explicit and implicit mathematical idea that was to be found in everyday life in Africa.
AFRICAN FRACTALS
It has been established that before Mandelbrot exposed the Western world to the application of fractals, these forms of knowledge had always existed in the ontology and creativity of Africans. The ideas about the infinite nature of the universe that are now central to particle physics were manifest in many African communities with the celebrated case of the Dogon people, which is the most widely known. Other aspects of advanced geometry and physics were present in the numeric systems of many societies, especially in relation to the Lusona drawings of the Chokwe people. When the colonial missionaries could not decipher the complex mathematics behind the Lusona they deemed the Chokwe to be the most backward and uncivilised in Africa. It is now known that the Dogon and Chokwe reflected a deep understanding of the mathematics of nature. African village settlements show self-similar characteristics, circle of circles, circular dwellings and streets in which broad avenues branch down to tiny footpaths with striking geometric repetition, distinguishable from the Euclidian layout. Ron Eglash presented his research findings in his book ‘African Fractals’ to show that African fractals emanated from a conscious knowledge system and not from unconscious activity.
It was during an aerial exploration of rural parts of Africa that Eglash grasped the central aspect of the architectural designs in terms of self-similarity and scaling of patterns. In his book he said clearly that, ‘While fractal geometry can take us into the far reaches of high tech science, its patterns are common in traditional African designs and the concepts are fundamental to African knowledge system.’
Eglash’s findings also include the use of sophisticated mathematical ideas in everyday objects. In the arid region of the Sahel, for example, artisans produce windscreens by utilising a scaling design that gives them the maximum effect – keeping out the wind-driven dust – for the minimum amount of effort and material. Abdul Karim Bangura, another scholar of African science and mathematics, in his review of Eglash’s text noted that:
‘Aerial photographs of various settlement compounds revealed that many were composed of circular structures enclosed in other circles, or rectangles within rectangles, and that the compounds were likely to have street patterns in which broad avenues branched into very small footpaths. As Eglash notes, at first he thought it was just from unconscious social dynamics. But during his fieldwork, he found that fractal designs also appear in a wide variety of intentional designs–carving, hairstyling, metalwork, painting, textiles–and the recursive process of fractal algorithms are even employed in African quantitative systems…. These results, Eglash concludes, are congruent with recent developments in complex systems theory, which suggest that pre-modern, non-state societies were neither utterly anarchic, nor frozen in static order, but rather utilized an adaptive flexibility that capitalized on the non-linear aspects of ecological dynamics.’
Since the writing of this review, Ron Eglash has not only written extensively on African Fractals but his widely watched presentation at the TED conference has brought the ideas of Fractals to an international audience.
When Eglash returned from Africa, one of his colleagues advised him to focus on scaling patterns in African hairstyles. In the conclusion on scaling, Eglash himself admitted: ‘While it is not difficult to invent explanations based on unconscious social forces – for example flexibility in conforming designs to material surfaces as expressions of social flexibility – I do not think that any such explanations can account for this diversity. From optimisation engineering, to modelling organic life, to mapping between different spatial structures, African artisans have developed a wide range of tools, techniques and design practices based on the conscious application of fractal geometry’ (p. 85).
Photograph of a romanesco broccoli, showing a naturally occurring fractal
Scaling and self-similarity are descriptive characteristics; one can see these in African designs. The idea is to grasp how these were intentionally designed so that we can have a better grasp of African fractals. Eglash then went on to look closely at African architecture, designs, art and village structure, cosmology and divination systems and sought to understand how all of these are linked to an African knowledge system. I have elsewhere used the term the African ideation system or worldview. The question for us is to understand how this is linked to political relations in Africa.
Of the five main elements of Fractals that were highlighted in his book – scaling, self-similarity, recursion, infinity and fractal dimensions – Eglash drew attention to the recursive processes that generate a feedback loop. Eglash gave three examples of recursion, namely, cascade, iteration and self-reference.
I was introduced to fractals and African mathematics by Sam E. Anderson, and I met Eglash in 1999 to engage him on this concept of African fractals. Ever since my meeting with Eglash, I have seen the revolutionary implications of fractal thinking and a fractal worldview. I have sought to further the understanding of the relationship between fractal optimism and politics in my book, ‘Barack Obama and Twenty First Century Politics’. In this book, I sought to underline the importance of self-organisation and self-mobilisation as the basis for a new bottom-up politics that could unleash a new form of participatory democracy for the 21st century (based on the intentional activities of conscious humans). Fractal has been applied in many other fields. In the application of fractal to political science, elements such as recursion, cascading, self-similarity and memory help us understand the self-replication of genocidal violence, exploitation, militarism, masculinity and environmental plunder, among others. Thus, it becomes imperative for there to be a coordinated human intention to make a break with such traditions (negative recursion) and to establish a different legacy that would form a positive recursive loop for the transformation of society for posterity.
SELF-SIMILARITY, RECURSION AND SOCIETY
One lesson of fractal for African (and other) societies is the conceptual application of the ideas of self-similarity and self-referencing in recursion, and the imperative that this mode of thinking breaks the certainty and predictability of determinism. Determinism, simplicity and reductionism had migrated from the physical sciences to implant the artificial divisions in the academic disciplines that became the hallmark of the social sciences in the Western world. F. Kapra had warned against this certainty of Western thinking. In the book, ‘The Turning Point’, he argued:
‘For two and a half centuries physicists have used a mechanistic view of the world to develop and refine the conceptual framework known as classical physics. They have based their ideas on the mathematical theory of Isaac Newton, the philosophy of René Descartes, and the scientific methodology advocated by Francis Bacon … Like human-made machines, the cosmic machine was thought to consist of elementary parts. Consequently it was believed that complex phenomena could always be understood by reducing them to their basic building blocks and by looking for the mechanisms through which these interacted. This attitude, known as reductionism, has become so deeply ingrained in our culture that it has often been identified with the scientific method.’
Humans now know that this reductionism of the ‘scientific method’ emanated from a European reading of science and human knowledge. With the advances in digital technology and genetic engineering, advances made possible by the application of fractal geometry, the promise of the future demands that humans have a deep appreciation of the inter-relationship between humans and nature so that we do not become slaves to technology. This demands from us the obligation to intervene as humans to reverse the headlong rush towards dehumanisation and the destruction of the planet earth. Fractal thinking and the understanding of the consequences of the reference points for progress demonstrates the necessity to make a break with the recursion of negative self-similar patterns such as conflicts and wars, domination, exploitation, militarization and religious and ethnic tensions. We can see that we are in a feedback loop of economic crisis, intensified exploitation, stock-market failures and conflicts. This kind of recursive process has a definite reference point which is the history of capitalism, racism, domination, oppression, greed and plunder. It is in examining the connection between the two (recursion and cultural categories) that the use of fractal geometry as a knowledge system (and not just unconscious social dynamics) becomes evident.
The next lesson of African fractals is for African educational institutions. African education must support research agendas that seek to unearth the richness of Africa and focus on positive aspects of the African knowledge system as an indispensable site of knowledge. The road to the re-establishment and reaffirmation of Africa as a site of knowledge has never been smooth, and may get rougher unless our scholarly tradition refrains from following a recursive path that is self-similar to that which attempted to deny and subjugate our intelligence and ontology. Three years ago, Paulus Gerdes and Ahmed Djebbar produced the important bibliography on ‘Mathematics in African History and Culture’. This bibliography carried forward the traditions of Cheikh Anta Diop, who did so much to unearth and highlight the contributions of African mathematics to research and learning.
Diop studied in France at the same time of Mandelbrot. Diop moved to Paris in 1946 and studied nuclear physics and Egyptology. He submitted his thesis to the University of Paris in 1951, but could not find a committee to examine his work on the Egyptian contribution to math and science. It was after nine years that he was granted his doctorate by the University of Paris in 1960. It was not by chance that Diop was a physicist who had studied relativity and quantum physics. It was this study that brought Diop back to an awareness of the richness of African knowledge and intellectual traditions and although he did not use the term fractals, his research and work shared many points of convergence with Benoit Mandlebrot.
POPULARISING FRACTALS IN THE WEST
Just as how it was difficult for the ideas of Diop to be accredited in the French academy, so Mandelbrot’s popularisation of the idea of fractals in the West was not an easy task. Mandelbrot attended school in France at the same period when the African scientist Cheikh Anta Diop was also studying in Paris. Between 1949–52, Mandelbrot wrote his Docteur d’Etat ès Sciences Mathématiques: Faculté des Sciences, Paris.
After receiving his doctorate in 1962 from France, Mandelbrot moved to the United States, where he pursued postdoctoral work. Mandelbrot followed a tortuous career between industry and the academy because of his view on complexity and infinity. It was not until he was nearly 75 years old that he was granted tenure in the mathematics department at Yale in 1999. His book, ‘The Fractal Geometry of Nature’, was first published in 1982.
Writing in the popular magazine the New Scientist, one reviewer said of the book:
‘Fractal geometry is one of those concepts which at first sight invites disbelief but on second thought becomes so natural that one wonders why it has only recently been developed…’
The reviewer further writes about Mandelbrot: ‘First, he has enriched our geometric imagination … with computer graphics of stunning beauty … Secondly, he demonstrates that fractals are good models for an impressive variety of natural objects … Thirdly, he emphasizes that fractals imply an unconventional philosophy of geometry [contrary to the conventional] “Newtonian” picture … Mandelbrot’s essay is written in a personal, intense and immediate style.’
Mandelbrot wrote the book, ‘The (Mis)behavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin, and Reward’. In this book, Mandelbrot warned that markets are far riskier than society wanted to believe. From the gyrations of IBM’s stock price and the Dow, to cotton trading and the dollar–euro exchange rate, Mandelbrot showed that the world of finance can be understood for its volatility. Contrary to the advice of stockbrokers, there was nothing certain about the future and stability of the stock market. The ideas of fractals were further popularised and published in Scientific American in 1999 under the title, ‘A Multifractal walk down Wall Street.’ In this article Mandelbrot argued that:
‘Fractal patterns appear not just in the price changes of securities but in the distribution of galaxies throughout the cosmos, in the shape of coastlines and in the decorative designs generated by innumerable computer programs.
‘In finance, this concept is not a rootless abstraction but a theoretical reformulation of a down-to-earth bit of market folklore – namely, that movements of a stock or currency all look alike when a market chart is enlarged or reduced so that is fits the same time and price scale. An observer then cannot tell which of the data concern prices that change from week to week, day to day or hour to hour. This quality defines the charts as fractal curves and makes available many powerful tools of mathematical and computer analysis.’
Despite the warnings about the fact that there was uncertainty in this branch of finance, a brand new group of financial wizards attempted to bring back the linearity and certainty of capitalist development and growth to predict the unlimited rise of the stock market. These wizards were to be called ‘quants’ on Wall Street, and they populated the area of speculation called the market for derivatives. Warren Buffet had called these derivatives ‘financial weapons of mass destruction’. The world was brought face to face with the complexity and chaos of this branch of finance in 2008, yet the mindset of certainty and unlimited potential of capitalism has meant that the gurus of the world of quants have returned to the mythical world of unlimited profits.
In the New York Times report on the passing of Mandelbrot we are reminded by Mandelbrot himself that life is not linear and not based on a straight line:
‘Dr. Mandelbrot compared his own trajectory to the rough outlines of clouds and coastlines that drew him into the study of fractals in the 1950s.
‘“If you take the beginning and the end, I have had a conventional career,” he said, referring to his prestigious appointments in Paris and at Yale. ”But it was not a straight line between the beginning and the end. It was a very crooked line.”’
The important point was that human intentions become an important aspect of human interactions with nature and it is this intentionality that existed in Africa that was brought out in the book ‘African Fractals’ by Eglash. The study of fractals illustrates the importance of the human intention to make a break when the recursive processes lead to militarism, destruction and greed. While the quants have applied fractal geometry to the modelling for the derivatives market, it is only the conscious actions by citizens that can make a break from these financial weapons of mass destruction. This break with negative recursion and the establishment of a positive recursive loop is applicable to our education system, our leadership orientation, our engagement with the environment and in our relations as humans. In this bid, we propose that there must be human intentions to make Ubuntu – shared humanity and respect for the environment –the reference point that would self-replicate and cascade itself across all sections of society.
Written by Horace Campbell
Horace Campbell is a teacher and writer. His latest book is ‘Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA‘, published by Pluto Press.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 2010-10-21, Issue 501
All pictures in this article belong to copyrights owners. Pictures of Fractals were taken from Wikipedia/Fractals
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Atongo Zimba
The soul of African music, says Atongo Zimba, lies in our traditional musical instruments. Atongo Zimba, is a master of the Koloko, a two stringed Calabash lute played in the savannahs of northern Ghana. His music, a fusion of the traditional and the modern, is rooted in this tradition. Meet a successful musician whose passion it is to preserve African musical instruments!
Atongo Zimba was born on the savannahs of northern Ghana in 1967. His grandfather taught him how to build and play the koliko or molo, and the first songs he learned were rooted firmly in tradition, dealing with everyday life in the countryside of northern Ghana’s Bolgatanga region.
Being a child of his time, he was also exposed to African popular music on the radio and like many of his contemporaries; he was enthralled by the sounds of Fela Kuti’s afrobeat. It was to have a seminal influence on his musical development and Afrobeat inspired him so much, he decided to leave his hometown and explore the musical idioms of the surrounding regions.
Avisi Asaw of Radio Netherland Worldwide caught up with him in Mali to explore the untold success story of Atongo Zimba. Avisi’s interview with Atongo is embedded in this post.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Producer and arranger Sultan Makendé (aka Dave Yowell), who co-produced the legendary Captain Yaba album in the late 1990s, came up with a funky modern African sound which fused modern electronic instruments with the acoustic roots of the African Sahel.
Savannah Breeze builds on the musical ideas and grooves he pioneered together with Francis Fuster. Working with musicians steeped in jazz, funk and African music, Savannah Breeze moves effortlessly through a variety of grooves available to the contemporary musician – funk here, jazz there, a searing griot solo.
Atongos’s own repertoire has also been informed by his countless encounters with musicians from a variety of traditions. His cover version of the polka classic “No Beer In Heaven” is a major hit in Ghana! Atongo Zimba loves to play music and it shows.
And indeed, what catches your ear throughout, is that distinctive voice, alternately praising, and cajoling, poking fun, criticizing, and caressing.