Articles - Blogger news

"Kylebaker" tweeted on Thursday morning: "Die Antwoord has been sweeping the net as of late. They came out of nowhere." "Sweeping" is an understatement. The Cape Town based "zef rap-rave crew", true to their website (dieantwoord.com, a big, flashy fullscreen one) byline which claims that they are "taking over the interweb", bashed and cursed their way into the ether this week with a brand of (un)pop(ular music) that is at once dystopic and celebratory. If you are South African it will make you feel both proud and faintly nauseous. As you puff yourself up while feeling deflated (on Facebook, Kevin Krawez says: "There is something about this group. It is like watching a train wreck, you cannot turn away."), the rest of the world is applauding Die Antwoord. One witness to Die Antwoord's Enter the Ninja video (which features Jack Parow aka Leon Botha, a DJ with progeria) on the BoingBoing website says: " So good I wanna learn Afrikaans, to better enjoy those crazy lyrics." Another comment reads: " I am both terrified and highly pleased by this. It's utterly confusing to my sensibilities, yet I cannot say that I am not entertained by it."
Go to their Facebook page and it becomes clear that Die Antwoord is infinitely desirable: more than 5000 fans in two days and an invitation to visit Minneapolis (and Kiev, Prague, Springfield, Milan, Ottawa ...).

If we were talking art in the language of the critic, Die Antwoord would be called "important" because they are different and new. Taxijam, an outfit that films bands performing in taxis defines them as "a lovable, mongrel-like entity made in South Africa, the love-child of many diverse cultures, black, white, coloured and alien, all pumped into one wild and crazy journey down the crooked path to enlightenment."

Die Antwoord crew is Ninja, Yo-landi Vi$$er and DJ Hi-Tek. They are hard to miss.

Evoke it
The World Bank Institute, the learning and knowledge arm of the World Bank Group, and alternate reality game master Jane McGonigal have created Evoke, a project designed to connect young people in Africa to their counterparts in the the developed world. They aim to "empower young people all over the world, and especially in Africa, to start tackling the world's toughest problems: poverty, hunger, sustainable energy, water security, conflict, disaster relief, health care, education, human rights" using online gaming as a tool. The motto of the game is "If you have a problem, and you can't solve it alone, EVOKE it" an action which the project defines as  a call to "look for creative solutions ... use whatever resources we have ... get as many people involved as possible ... take risks ... come up with ideas that have never been tried before." The game launches on March 3. Visit urgentevoke.com to reserve a spot.