Annansi Chronicles

Dover Street (African) Market by Duro Olowu

Nigerian/Jamaican designer Duro Olowu has been busy. Since wooing fashion royalty with his “stunning fluid dresses”, and winning the 2005 New Designer of the Year award at the British Fashion Awards, he has continued to take his Africa-influenced designs mainstream. Now comes news of a new Duro Olowu boutique in the ultra fashionable Dover Street Market, owned by Commes des Garcons’ Rei Kawakubo. Olowu joins cult brands like Number (N)ine, Undercover, and Visvim, and popular brands like Givenchy, Lanvin, and Thom Browne in one of the most creative fashion spaces in London. The Duro Olowu boutique is sure to be a hit when Olowu makes his debut this February 12th at London Fashion Week.
Anyone willing to sponsor a ticket for me to attend?

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Afrobeat’s Tony Allen joins Gorillaz’s Damon Albarn’s new music project

The Good, The Bad and The Queen is the name of the new supergroup which legendary Nigerian drummer/Afrobeat icon Tony Allen is currently in. Most known as the beat behind Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat sound, Allen has been busy making a name for himself in both the world music and popular music worlds. As a child growing up in Ghana/Liberia Fela Kuti’s music was a staple of any party I went to and Tony Allen’s excellent drumming helped bridge Fela’s sound between traditional African and 70′s soul music (James Brown, Marvin Gaye etc.). Now showing his range and ability to update his African sound, Tony Allen has joined with Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillazz), Paul Simonon (bassist for The Clash), Simon Tong (guitarist for The Verve), and Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton ( producer for Gorillaz, Danger Doom, Gnarls Barkley, etc ) for the new supergroup.

The project was born in 2004 when Albarn and Tong travelled to Lagos, Nigeria to record with Tony Allen, recording an album’s worth of material with local musicians in the process. The band’s website features some video clips of the group rehearsing, as well as the an initial single from the CD (“Herculean”), which is available for free download. The self-titled album is due out January 2007.

Indie Rock group and Nigerian frontman begin tour

Having won the Short List with his band TV on the Radio in 2004, Nigerian renaissance man Tunde Adebimpe is about to have another great year. His 2004 album, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, earned his band praise from artists as diverse as Morrissey, Mos Def and Trent Reznor. But this was not Adebimpe’s first time in the spotlight. His first brush with fame came with his lead role in the 2001 romantic comedy Jump Tomorrow. Jump Tomorrow starred Adebimpe as George, a young Nigerian man on the verge of being in an arranged marriage who suddenly questions his situation after an encounter with a stunning Latin woman, who is also about to be married. The film won several awards and was a critics’ favorite. Following Jump Tomorrow, the NYU film school graduate landed himself a stint at MTV (Celebrity Deathmatch) and got directorial accolades for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ debut video “Pin”TV”. His friendship with roommate Dave Sitek, who was also producing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the time, led to the formation of TV on the Radio. In 2001 they released their debut cd titled Young Liars on the Touch and Go label. But it was 2004′s Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes that catapulted the trio (with band mate Kyp Malone as an addition) to stardom.

Since their debut, Adebimpe and TV on the Radio have left indie label Touch and Go for the majors at Interscope (also home of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Their new cd, tentatively titled Return to Cookie Mountain, is “a collection of hypnotic, shape-shifting tunes” that has already earned raves from David Bowie whom they have also been collaborating with. You can see the Nigerian Brooklynite on tour in the US as he promotes the new TV on the Radio album due out this summer.

Check out Tunde Adebimpe with TV on the Radio in the video for their song “Staring at the Sun” from their album Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes.

Nokia picks the Face of Africa for 2006

On April 22 the Nokia Face of Africa 2006 contest will have its final casting in Johannesburg, South Africa. Having covered 12 cities since February, the contest is in its eighth year of selecting a unique model who will reign as the Face of Africa. In countries such as Ghana, Rwanda, Namibia and Nigeria, a scouting team has already chosen a semi-finalist. The winner of the continent-wide search will be chosen on August 13 in Sun City in Johannesburg.

Though the contest has been long running, with Nokia backing the efforts, the winner of the contest will gain more exposure than the winners of the past. Only one model so far has turned her win into an international modeling career, though others continue to work as models. Since winning the contest in 1998 at the age of seventeen, Nigerian model Oluchi Onweagba was awarded a three-year contract by Elite Models Management. Oluchi (as she’s known in the modeling world) has since graced the covers of Italian Vogue, I-D, Elle, Untold, and Surface and has been featured in Nylon, Marie Claire, Allure, and Vogue while working with the who’s-who of the fashion world.

The Nokia Face of Africa 2006 contest is being filmed by South Africa’s M-Net channel for its African lifestyle program Studio 53 and will dedicate three programs in July to the search for Nokia Face of Africa 2006.

China and Africa relations on a fast track

Since 2003, China has overtaken Japan as the second largest consumer of petroleum after the United States. In the search for oil to fuel it famous production cycle, China has begun pumping billions of dollars into Africa with most of the money focused on oil producing nations like Sudan, and Nigeria. The LA Times reports that “China’s demand for resources has driven up prices, propelling significant GDP gains in many countries. China has educated thousands of African university students, and it sends Africa hundreds of doctors and advisors each year. Chinese firms are building roads, rehabilitating infrastructure and bringing cellphone service to places that land lines never reached”. While the infrastructural benefits of this relationship is generally positive a BBC article points out how “Chinese firms are a little less ethically constrained than their Western counterparts” which can encourage human rights violations by African governments.

Duro Olowu site launches (sort of)

For serious fashionistas owning a Duro Olowu dress is a true status symbol. Since winning the British Fashion Awards in November and being “discovered” by Vogue’s Sally Singer and Julie Gilhart, of Barneys, the Nigerian designer can’t seem to keep his dresses on the racks at Barneys and other high-end retailers. Models, actresses, and socialites can’t seem to get enough of his Empire-waisted, kimono-sleeved dresses. Offered in various limited edition combinations of vintage and modern ethnic prints, the 1970′s Nigerian and Jamaican-inspired dresses are ultra wearable and highly original. If you can’t get to his shop OG2 on Portobello Road in London,, check out the new site for stockists and get yours before it sells out again.

Paper Magazine’s Beautiful People 2006

Paper Magazine released their Beautiful People 2006 list. The list features 23-year-old Harvard grad Uzodinma Iweala as one of talents to watch. The Nigerian-born writer has been receiving tons of accolades for his first novel Beasts of No Nation. From the NY Times to Entertainment Weekly to GQ, Iweala’s book is making quite an impact.

“Beasts of No Nation leaves the reader with one resonant, beautiful sentence that captures everything the author has set out to say. That sentence deserves to be read in the full context of this universal soldier’s story” – Janet Maslin – The New York Times

Beasts of No Nation tells the story of Agu, a young boy in an unidentified West African country who is conscripted into a rag-tag group of fighters in his nation’s civil war after fleeing his home—this before he witnesses his father’s murder at the hands of militants. The split between his harrowing reality and recollections of his former life underscores the darkness enveloping a young boy’s coming-of-age against the savage backdrop of war.

For many of us Africans the topic hits close to home and Iweala’s writing has brought it to the mainstream media.