Music, book and film reviews from the last 3 months
Through his cartoons, Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro) has been campaigning against apartheid since the 1980s. He has written 28 books and publishes a daily cartoon in the South African Daily Maverick. We went to meet him Order prevails in Zapiro’s bright and pleasant creation space. Smiling and apologizing when his dog’s barking interrupts the conversation, for…
Read moreMexican folk art is present in all aspects of community life. During the civil (and Christian liturgical) year, no less than 120 traditional religious feasts are celebrated. The greatest of all is the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Almost all the religious festivals that take place throughout the year provide a theme and a…
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Soweto Theatre is a community space where new generations of artists are forged from historical memory A captivating shade of red dominates the modern building, which expands into geometric and irregular shapes, next to the mythical Jabulani amphitheatre. It was there that Zindzi Mandela read the speech “My father says …”, it was 1985, when…
Read moreThe meaning of the rites of passage in Africa culture. ‘The funeral rites express the solidarity of the living with their dead relative; in some way, the relatives and the whole village accompany the dead and help them reach their destination’. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, during funeral rites those who lift the coffin…
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Through circus art, Kine Circus helps boys and girls in danger of exclusion to find themselves and have a life plan. “Kine in Amharic has several meanings, including ‘secret’. With our art, we try to convey a message. We talk about the problems that surround us and how to solve them, using the language of…
Read moreA heart that beats to the rhythm of Africa Paul Van Haver was born in Etterbeek, a small town near Brussels, in 1985. Yet his story really begins only nine years later, in Rwanda, where his father, an architect of Tutsi ethnicity, was killed that year during one of the most terrible genocides of the…
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‘City of Lights’, as Rabat, the administrative capital of Morocco, is called. The name is not prosaic, but full of symbolism to describe a city undergoing a complete metamorphosis that tries to show its mastery while maintaining a balance between tradition and modernity. We visit the city. In recent years Rabat has made an effort…
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Victoria Falls is one of the best known and most spectacular sights in Africa. Its history is lost in the mists of time. We visited this majestic and mysterious birthplace of the rainbow A 1,737- meter-long crack in the ground blocks the way to the Zambezi, which falls with an impressive drop of up to…
Read moreThe Asheninka, are an indigenous ethnic group that lives in the centre of the forest in the district of Ucayali in the province of Atalaya in the northern part of Peru. Minga: not only communal work but also small informal tasks for the family. The term minga comes from the Quechua culture mink’a meaning ‘asking…
Read moreMention Colombia and one immediately thinks of cumbia: a rhythm, an atmosphere, a dance, a way of singing, a synthesis of the essence of a people. A people still struggling to find a balance and social pacification between modernist and traditionalist thrusts, between terrorist regurgitations, the ever-untamed violence of drug traffickers and a complex interracial…
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The rumba is a typically Congolese rhythm. This popular music, which crossed the Atlantic Ocean during the slave trade, spread to Latin America. Transformed, it returned home to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo, from where it conquered the African continent and the whole world. Since 2021, it has been…
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The ancestral Andean Amazonian wisdom is transmitted through songs, mythological stories, and the narratives of the wise men and women, whose message is the importance of generating, preserving, and caring for life in its entirety. The Ayahuasca ritual in the Peruvian Amazon and the preparation process of the aspiring Amazonian shaman. The name ayahuasca is…
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“We want to create a federation of international journalistic organisations that collaborate in this effort, starting from the global South,” says Filipino journalist and 2022…
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Once upon a time, there was a leopard. He had a huge walnut tree that was full of nuts. Stingy as he was, however, he forbade…
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Three young Comboni missionaries from three continents share their vocation stories and missionary experiences. Fr Victor Cunanan Parungao from the Philippines reflects on 15 years of…
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