Probably the best song about Boda-bodas (motorbike taxis)

From Maurice Kirya’s new album Misubbaawa - available here.

Thanks for this Jo in Kampala!

Ernest asks…

“What’s worse than seeing the driver in the speeding taxi you are trapped in whip out his mobile phone and start a conversation?”

My worst was the guy driving me from Entebbe to Kampala who decided to show me a Ugandan music video on the PORTABLE DVD PLAYER INSTALLED IN THE FRONT OF HIS CAR.

Taxi Driver: “Oh watch this bit its really good”

Me (in my head): “No!! Watch the fucking road you maniac!!”

Me (actually): “Er, yeah… that’s nice…”

My favourite Ugandan music video I saw about 5 times on a long bus journey a few years ago. The lyrics went something like “O mama I married a Mzungu (White person), please forgive me, he doesn’t know our ways, he doesn’t eat matooke (mashed banana), but I love him anyway,” complete with idiotic Mzungu in the video committing lots of social faux-pas. I would kill for a copy of that.

I also saw a good one in the Amen supermarket the other day which appeared to be showing the life of a Nigerian living in England. There were 3 scenes.

1. Man rapping as walking down a London street being a parking inspector
2. Man rapping as being the toilet attendant in a London club
3. Man rapping as being pushed into police car

Anecdotally, African immigrants do seem to make up a disproportionate percentage of London parking inspectors and toilet attendants. I’d say approximately 99%. Probably because everybody hates parking inspectors and nobody wants to be a toilet attendant. No wonder the guy is getting arrested by the end.

2009 Mercury Music Prize Winner

is Speech Debelle.

I called it (kind of).

Oboe'n'bass Hip-hop Jazz

I'm addicted to this new Speech Debelle Single (is it even new? At some point, I'm not quite sure when, I went from being a music-collector-geek to an economics-collector-geek, and I haven't quite gotten over it yet).

She's nominated for this year's Mercury Music Prize (a nice way of keeping a bit up to date with new music for people who don't have time to follow new music properly because they spend all their time reading economics), and there's a Guardian interview here.

99 Problems but the metrics ain't one

The genius Berkeley phd students behind "Stronger" and "I can't get no dissertation" have a new video up. I'm tempted to apply to go study at Berkeley purely so I can try get in the next one.

Karaoke and Corruption

This morning had the potential to go quite badly. Hungover (Karaoke at Global Camp on Fridays is truly awesome. Ended the night with the whole bar singing "We are the World"), I was stopped by the police not once but twice for having the wrong licence plate. First time I haggled them down to $20. Second time I was pissed off, and as it's a Saturday I thought, sod it, I have time to kill so I'll argue with the guy. And guess what it worked! I shouted at him long enough that he just let me go, and this after I'd already seen a Sudanese guy pay him $20. I'm more Sudanese than the Sudanese!

And as I drove off in glory, Top of the Pops (cancelled in 2006 in the UK) comes on the BBC World Service with Michael Jackson. Score!

Paraplegic Congolese funk veterans Update #124

A couple of links from TH:

"If you're only going to buy one album by a gang of paraplegic Congolese funk veterans this year, this should be it."

And "Uninformed mentions of South Sudan #231" from Francis Fukuyama no less:

"...colonialism imposed a set of irrational borders on their colonies. South Sudan fought a 30-year civil war with the regime in Khartoum only because a long-dead British administrator in Cairo didn't want to offend Egypt by giving it to Uganda, where it more naturally belonged."

No mention of Southern Sudan being three times the size of Uganda? And that the two largest tribes have no more connection with Uganda than they do with the northern Sudanese?

And which 30-year civil war was that? 1955-1972 or 1983-2005?

And finally, Charlie Brooker makes me proud to be British:

"Being British is actually about feeling aggressed, mistrustful, overlooked, isolated, powerless, and petrified of "losing my identity". Britishness incorporates a propensity to look around me with jealous eyes, fuming over imaginary sums of money being doled out to child-molesting asylum-seekers by corrupt PC politicians who've lost touch with the common man"