Category Archives: Blog

Whenever my dance professor and I are in Mali, we gather in the mornings on the roof of our home with master drummers and celebrated dancers to learn and record rhythms and dances. It’s always a humbling and inspiring affair–not to mention an exhausting workout for the mind, body, and spirit. Until I first danced in Mali, I never knew that sweat could literally fill buckets. It’s always a relief when we’re chased inside by the overpowering heat of the noonday sun. “In Malian culture,” my dance teacher likes to remind me, “the ideal is always to burn with passion on the inside, and remain cool on the outside.”

Multiple news outlets–such as Al-Jazeera and the Daily Star–are reporting that an Israeli air strike has killed a Hezbollah field commander and several others in a strike on Syria’s Golan Heights…

Love and justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change.
Without collective change, no change matters.

— angel Kyodo Williams

In the video above, Zen Buddhist teacher angel Kyodo Williams, author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace (which was hailed as “an act of love” by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker and “a classic” by Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield), speaks on the interplay of inner awareness and social change…

The American Dialect Society selected the hashtag #blacklivesmatter as the 2014 Word of the Year…

Jiya jale, jaan jale
My heart burns, my soul burns
Nainon tale dhuaan chale dhuaan chale
From the eyes, smoke arises
Raat bhar dhuaan chale
All night long, smoke arises
Jaanoon na jaanoon na jaanoon na sakhi ri
I don’t know why, my friend…

Here’s a link to today’s NYTimes article about the upcoming Festival on the Niger in Mali–which showcases music, dance, masks, and puppets from around the region. The festival’s theme this year is: “cultural diversity and national unity.”

Khaira Arby is the reigning queen of song in Timbuktu, Mali. She’s been writing and singing in the indigenous languages of her Sahara Desert region — Sonrhai, Tamaschek, Bambara, Arabic — for decades…Perhaps Arby’s greatest social impact in a conservative Islamic milieu has been her advocacy on behalf of women. She divorced a controlling husband to pursue a career in music. (She’s since remarried.)…As a singer, she’s opened the door to a generation of artistic women who now follow in her footsteps… — NPR

Becoming Another: The Power of Masks
Rubin Museum of Art
March 13, 2015 – February 8, 2016

Becoming Another illuminates the common threads and distinct differences in mask traditions from Northern India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Mongolia, Siberia, Japan, and the North-West Coast tribes of North America. Featuring masks used in shamanistic practices, communal rituals, and theatrical performances, this exhibition speaks to the human impulse to transform one’s identity.

Abderrahmane Sissako’s breath-taking film about life outside of Timbuktu was just nominated for an Oscar…

When I was doing research on Malcolm X’s 1961 speech at Brown University, I came across this video about the recently discovered “lost tape” of his talk. In the video above, the student who found the tape explains how Richard Holbrooke, then editor-in-chief of the Brown Daily Herald, helped bring Malcolm X to Brown (as a Brown alumna and Javanese gamelan player, I get a kick out of the gamelan music used in the video). In his speech at Brown, Malcolm emphasized the virtues of Islam and how it had saved his life. “We are taught, as Muslims,” he told the crowd, “never to be the aggressor, never to look for trouble, to always seek peace.”

While retracing the footsteps of Malcolm X in Sudan for an academic article coming out this month in a Special Issue of the Journal of Africana Religions (“The Meaning of Malcolm X for Africana Religions: Fifty Years On”), I visited this house where Malcolm X had lunch in 1959. As you can see from the photo above, the house is already half-demolished–soon, it will be completely destroyed to make room for a wider road. I’m very grateful that I had the chance to see it, before it disappears…