Artists & Reviews

Echoes of Time: Promoting Liberian Literary Heritage

January 18, 2021 admin2Liberian Literature0 comment

Echoes of Time: Promoting Liberian Literary Heritage By Eduardo de Bosco To talk of literature in Africa, one cannot but mention the west coast and a number of countries on the east, south, as well as other regions of the continent. Names such as Chinua Achebe, Camara Laye, Ayei Kwei Armah, Nadine Gordimer, Buchi Emecheta, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, Nuruddin Farah, the West African Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and a litany of names are bound to hit the eardrums at the mention of African literature. What is not so known on…

Artists & Reviews

Book Review: Alex Haley’s Root, an Author’s Odyssey

December 1, 2020 admin2Alex, Book, Haley, Review0 comment

Book Author: Adam Henig Whenever I think of Alex Haley, my mind goes to two of his books, The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots. That’s because of the profound impact these two books have had on me as an African and millions of others around the world. My first encounter with Roots was in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in the mid 80s. As a student from Liberia, I had gone to the Ivory Coast for vacation. Ivory Coast being a French speaking country, I watched the French translation of the…

Looking back, Baroe says the pandemic gave her some time to perfect her craft – and the album. “I had to put stop to it due to the Outbreak of the Pandemic; but I also used the time to restructure and improve.” Born in Liberia, Princess moved to Ghana with family in 2005. Her love and passion has helped her through some trying times. “I have been blessed with an amazing vocal and being in Ghana helped me a lot.

Artists & Reviews

Liberian Singer Princess Barrolle to release long awaited album

November 7, 2020 admin2Liberia, Musician, Princess Barrolle0 comment

Staff Report ACCRA – Princess Barrolle, the Liberian-born Afro-Beat/Reggae,and Soul singer are upbeat about the launch of her upcoming album, Desire, a project two years in the making that showcases her vocal range as a solid artist and performer. Based in Accra, Ghana for the past few years, Princess, popularly known as Baroe, with previous hits Dream, Intruder, the “Prove Your Love” collaboration with CIC and “Hold Me”, has been busy over the past two years writing and producing songs for Desire, which was held back due to the Covid-19…

Calloway was the first African-American musician to sell a million records from a single song. In 1993, Calloway received the National Medal of Arts from the United States Congress. He posthumously received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. His song "Minnie the Moocher" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2019. He is also inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame and the International Jazz Hall of Fame.10.

Artists & Reviews

Cab Calloway and Marcus Garvey, Part One

October 17, 2020 admin2Band, Cab Calloway, Garvey, Liberia0 comment

Dag Walker In the 1920 and 30s, Harlem, Manhattan, was hopping, but for some, Liberia was hoping. The music scene was on fire, as was the imagination of one man who hoped to change the future of Black America, to lead the people back to Africa. Cab Calloway led the band; Marcus Garvey led the charge to Liberia. Folks were jitterbugging: across the Cotton Club dance floor; folks were steaming shipboard across the Atlantic Ocean. Two leaders, one destined for musical fame, the other destined for disgrace and imprisonment.…

Artists & Reviews

Two Young Liberian Poets in the Literary Spotlight

October 16, 2020October 16, 2020 admin2Liberia, Literature0 comment

A week or two ago I came across a headline that reads as followed: Young Liberian Poet Wins International Award in Literature. That young Liberian poet is Eduardo De Bosco. A young Liberian determined to burst out of the literary obscurity of Liberia. There is another young Liberian, Karn Jeremy Karn whose poetry chapbook has been accepted for publication by the editors of the New Generation of African Poets. This is certainly good news out of Liberia, a nation whose literary tradition goes as far back as the founding of…

That re-enchantment, in the mood of our age, now appears as a form of sentimentalism. In selecting Gluck, we are not just honouring a craft; we are privileging a literature whose job is to resist redemption or enchantment. It is not to save us, but to expose the fact (as her best collections, Ararat, Meadowlands, and The Wild Iris, remind us) that we are entirely at the mercy of our own passions; even a God would give up ordering them.

Artists & Reviews

Nobel to Gluck privileges a literature whose job is to resist redemption or enchantment

October 12, 2020 admin2Literature, Louise Gluck, Nobel0 comment

Written by Pratap Bhanu Mehta The Nobel Prize for Literature has an air of imperious idiosyncrasy about it. There is often an evident, willed parochialism about the history and human experience, genre and geography, from which great literature emerges. The Committee will often stretch its imagination to discover some new avant garde in Europe, a choice so niche and strange that it only underscores the Committee’s provincialism. There is always the philosophical canard that any citation carries: Great literature must have universal appeal or relate to themes of universal significance.…

In 1908 his first one-man exhibition of religious paintings in the United States was held at the American Art Galleries in New York. Two years later, Tanner was elected a member of the National Academy of Design. In 1923 he was made an honorary chevalier of the Order of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest honor, and in 1927 he became a full academician of the National Academy of Design, the first African American to receive that honor. In his later years, Tanner was a symbol of hope and inspiration for African-American leaders and young black artists, many of whom visited him in Paris. On May 25, 1937, Tanner died at his home in Paris.2.

Artists & Reviews

Henry Ossawa Tanner a brilliant and acclaimed African American Painter

September 19, 2020 admin2Great, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Painter0 comment

By Dag Walker Where I grew up in a small town in the Rocky Mountains a few years after the end of World War Two, there were no bookstores, no music stores, and no such thing as an art gallery or museum. It was a fine life for a boy, a life of fishing and mountain climbing and fist fighting with the neighborhood bully. There was little of the life of the mind, though, aside from the occasional book to be found, paperbacks, spines broken, pages torn out,…

Nvasekie N. Konneh is a writer, and nine year veteran of the United States Navy. He is the author of two books of poetry, Going To War for America, The Love of Liberty Brought Us Together and The Land of My Father’s Birth, memoir of the Liberian civil wars. Nvasekie Konneh can be reached at 267 826 3952 or through email @ nvaskon1@gmail.com

Artists & Reviews

The Land of My Father’s Birth, a review

September 18, 2020September 18, 2020 admin20 comment

By Hawa Donzo My name is Hawa and I currently reside in Western Australia with my family. Originally, my family and I are of Liberian decent, although my older sister and I were both born in Guinea, Conakry. Having spent the last few years tracing my family’s Mandingo history and asking uncomfortable questions, Nvasekie’s novel The Land of My Father’s Birth has shed a beaming light on my findings. The first and second parts of this book really helped to round-up my understanding and overall knowledge of life in Liberia as a…

Contemporary South African poet Koleka Putuma lovingly recounts memories of happiness and childhood innocence in her poem Black Joy, published in the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Anthology (Vol.6) in 2017. The refreshing text makes a point to change the narrative of an African childhood, which is too often associated with pain, struggle and suffering as Putuma focuses on describing a time of peace, playfulness and family. “Isn’t it funny? / that when they ask about black childhood / all they are interested in is our pain / as if the joy-parts were accidental,” she writes. There is a common tendency to erase positivity when discussing the black experience, particularly in Africa. This poem acts as a symbol of all the good that simply never makes the literary cut.

Artists & Reviews

7 Poems That Perfectly Depict The Beauty Of The Black Experience

August 31, 2020 admin2Black Voices, Literature, poetry0 comment

BY SAGAL MOHAMMED From literary giants such as Audre Lorde to emerging Sudanese-American poet Dalia Elhassan, we travel the diaspora to discover poetry that shows the strength, resilience and poise of the black experience. Beauty, resilience, pain and identity are just a few common themes used to articulate the black experience in literature. For centuries, poetry has acted as an artistic release for the black community to express our authentic take on the world. Felicitously put by American writer Audre Lorde, “Poetry is the way we help give name to the…

Artists & Reviews

If Saclepea Could Speak: book excerpt, —from “The Land of My Father’s Birth”

July 29, 2020July 29, 2020 admin2Book Excerpt, Liberia, Nvasekie konneh0 comment

“Until my recent visit, my last time of visiting Saclepea, my birthplace, was November 1989, just a month before the war started. As the rumor became a reality, my folks fled the town, with some coming to Monrovia and others going to Guinea and Ivory Coast. Most of them left, thinking that things would be over soon and they would return home. Since then, many have not made it back. Some like my father, Ngoamilleh Konneh, died longing for the home they couldn’t go back to. Some went back to…