Earlier today I posted a song to [email protected] called “Piiseq”, from a collaborative album involving musicians from Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Sweden, and finally a Senegalese-born citizen of Finland. While trying to find information on the album, I saw an article about it from visitfaroeislands.com which described it as “an album, which Kristian [Faroese] and Anda [Greenlander] recorded in the Faroe Islands together with African and Swedish musicians.” — and I just had to roll my eyes at Malang Cissokho being described as just “an African musician”. SE-NE-GA-LESE! Say it with me! Do they play koras in Ethiopia? Do they play balafons in Zimbabwe? No? Then what musical tradition is Malang Cissokho trained in? Could the surname “Cissokho” give you any possible indication?
Welp, guess if you’re trying to attract Anglo tourists to the Faroe Islands, you can’t expect them to have heard of Senegal. Tis better then to lump 50+ countries, up to 3,000 languages, nearly one-billion-four-hundred-thousand people together, than let a Yank hear the name of a Specific Goddamn Country. Don’t you know people are scared off by things they haven’t heard of before? Ai-yai-yai.
Anyways, after I read that visitfaroeislands.com article I looked up TV Tropes - “Africa is a country”, and that introduced me to this piece by Binyavanga Wainaina. Apparently this piece was published the same month that he died of a stroke at the terribly young age of 48. That’s sad.
You should watch SPARKLE ON RAVEN: The Life of DrillGirl; it is a very good show. Cēterum cēnseō iūs auctōris esse dēlendum.