Da Factory Club
Welcome to another Friday’s cocktail of raw talent exhibition of art pieces and cultural works both in progress and as showceses. As usual your number one end of the week art galore lived up to its unique billing as one stop open podium to ALL forms of art as well as expression and exploration of different issues. Karibuni!!!

The 8th February – This special edition of Da Factory Club organized by Kenya Performing Arts Group got underway on the quite appropriate theme of ‘moving on’ because of the current state of matters as well as the presence of guest artists sponsored by K-PAG who had a special message to share with fellow artists. True to its principled mantra of being an open podium were artists express themselves Da Factory Club lived up to this billing despite welcome challenges.

The second Da Factory Club 2008 featured artists of the Hot Sun Foundation from Kibera who entralled the audience with their different art works based on their first hand experiences of the post-election violence. Based on different empathically fueled themes of homelessness, loss of loved ones, effects of violence, reprisal of their human and democratic rights, and senseless plunder; they were able to move the audience with their story. It is for the awesome fact that while murder and plunder went on around them and yet they still got motivation to MOVE ON and create pieces of art that K-PAG decided to sponsor them with workshops plus an open podium in Da Factory Club to showcase their work and perform alongside them. The Hot Sun Foundation Artists showed the whole world their determination, resilience and discipline that art should be approached with. As usual other artists also managed to prove their mettle where they were joined by those that offered critics and comment on the different showcasses.

It is 15th February 2008 and the third edition of Da Factory Club is held at the Kenya Cultural Centre, Kenya National Theatre in Nairobi. Almost all categories of art were explored albeit a heavy preference to music followed by dance, poetry, theatre and visual arts. Among the participants were Radi Culture Group, Pro’ of Jicho Four, Roy Ogolla, Simple Nelly, G.gspice, Riverside acrobats, Olith Ratego, Kenya Performing Arts Group and various artists from Fanaka arts, Jicho Four and Culture Spill.

22nd February 2008 – Da Factory Club was graced by the Grapevine crew from the Kenya Broadcasting Cooperation who made a coverage of 45 minutes long which was also compounded by massive attendance of over 100 people. Visitors (15 students and 2 teachers) from International School of Tanzania witnessed and enjoyed the showcasses. Among the participants were: Odongi Ohangla (music, percussion), Riverside acrobats, Mochez (dance), Pitchu (poem), Abel (poem), Macha (rap), Dr. Optii (rap), Cliff (rap & poem), Wambogo (poem), Black Diamond dancers, K.A.D.E. (dance), Grace (dance) and Kenya Performing Arts Group with several artistic creation of dance and theatre. The M.C. was Roy Ogolla, number one fan of Da Factory Club. This was encouraging as more resident artists are slowly starting to appreciate Da Factory Club as their thing and therefore investing their creativity, time and energy in it.

In view of the milestone set in this edition it would temporarily suffice to say that much has been achieved within the short-term scope aspired.

Da Factory Club – Every Friday at the Kenya Cultural Centre in Nairobi from 2 p.m. ALL WELCOME!!!

In today’s Newspaper The Standard 18-4-08

Racism’s resonance evident in attacks on Obama

Whether by calculation or unhappy coincidence, Hillary Clinton and Republicans who have attacked Barack Obama for elitism have struck a chord in a long-standing symphony of racial codes.

It is a rebuke that gets magnified by historic beliefs about what blacks are and what they have no right to be.

Clinton is no racist, and Obama has made some real missteps, including his recent remark that “bitter” smalltown Americans facing economic hardship and government indifference “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them”.

Perhaps he was being more sociological than political, and more sympathetic than condescending. But when his opponents branded him an elitist and an outsider, his race made it easier to drive a wedge between him and the white, rural voters he has courted with success. As a black man, he was supposedly looking down from a place he didn’t belong and looking in from a distance he could not cross.

This could not happen as dramatically were it not for embedded racial attitudes. ‘Elitist’ is another word for ‘arrogant’, which is another word for ‘uppity’, that old calumny applied to blacks who stood up for themselves.

At the bottom of the American psyche, race is still about power, and blacks who move up risk triggering discomfort among some whites. I’ve met black men who, when stopped by white police officers at night, think the best protection is to act dumb and deferential.

Furthermore, casting Obama as “out of touch” plays harmoniously with the traditional notion of blacks as “others” at the edge of the mainstream, separate from the whole.

Despite his ability to articulate the frustration and yearning of broad segments of Americans, his “otherness” has been hightlighted effectively by right-wingers who harp on his Kenyan father and spread false rumours that he’s a clandestine Muslim.

In a country so changed that a bi-racial man who is considered black has a shot at the presidency, the subterranean biases are much less discernible now than when Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. They are subtle, unacknowledged and unacceptable in polite company. But they lurk below, lending resonance to the criticisms of Obama.

Black professionals know the double standard. They are often labelled negatively for traits deemed positive in whites: A white is assertive, a black is aggressive; a white is resolute, a black is pushy, a white is candid, a black is abrasive; a white is independent, a black is not a team player. Prejudice is a shape shifter, adapting to acceptable forms.

So although Obama’s brilliance defies the stubborn stereotype of blacks as unintelligent, there is a companion to that image - doubts about blacks’ true capabilities - that may heighten concerns about his inexperience. Through the racial lens, a defect can be enlarged into a disability. He is “not ready”, a phrase employed often when blacks are up for promotion.

When Clinton mocked Obama for the supposed emptiness of his eloquence, the chiding had a faint historical echo from Thomas Jefferson’s musings in Notes on the State of Virginia that “in music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time,” but “one could scarecely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of (the Greek poet) Euclid.”

This slander that blacks had more show than substance was handed down through later generations as a body-mind dichotomy, with physical and mental prowess as opposites. Overt ‘compliments’ - they’ve got rhythm, they can dance, they can jump - were paired with the silent assumption of inferior intellect.

Clinton surely had no racial intent, but none is needed for a racial effect. In a society long steeped in stereotypes, such comments reverberate. The incessant loop of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. Obama’s pastor of many years, cursing America and repeating old consiracy theories has revived fears of black anger among whites whose threshold of tolerance for such rage has always been low.

No matter that Obama seems anything but angry. A few sentences from his pastor are enough to incite such anxieties.

The nation is testing how its racial attitudes have evolved. As the campaign continues, Americans are likely to be pleased and dissappointed with themselves.

K-PAG Mix is a training programme by K-PAG specially designed for people with disabilities of different forms. The training entails theatre and dance as an aspect of the performing arts in which the performers are professionally and competently trained to use these forms of art in expression day to day life, social advocacy and civil education. They have chosen not to be victims of circumstances for their own good and the good of others around them. With the support of esteemed sponsors, it has been possible to undergo one year of training thus they have staged one raw performance after two months of training ‘unfinished statement’ and now in their own story have come up with a production entitled: deep dim

DEEP DIM

This is a performance that reflects the issues of day to day living that affect the society and are given undue oversight

Controversy, fear, pity, laughter, tears, is just everyday phenomena….. But what are they? Or then again what are they about?

The cast contains of people with and without disabilities who have worked together in the making of this piece. It is always astonishing to note that some of them cannot hear the music or respond to impulses in their state of disabilities and thus create a new language of art

K-PAG Mix has the pleasure to invite you to this out of this world performance.

Date: 26th April 2008

Charges: 200/=

The tickets are available in K-PAG offices check http://www.brain-fusion.info/kpag/contact.