Cassandra Wilson @ The Shrine tonight

Jazz songstress Cassandra Wilson is holding her after-Summer Stage-party at the Shrine in Harlem tonight. Come hang out if you got nothing better to do. Shoot, there’s no cover charge so what you got to lose? . See you tonight, if not you all have a great week-end . Below is a clip of Cassandra doing a cover of Bob Marley’s Redemption song.

This Vanity Africa Affair

So you’ve heard the buzz about the Vanity Fair July 07 issue about Africa guest edited by Bono, and you’ve seen the many covers of the issue graced by those celebrities most invested in the African cause. Fine, but were you curious enough to get a copy? I know I did and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Surprised because I don’t recall when I last purchased or even read Vanity Fair (is that bad :-/), therefore I didn’t know what to expect. So I grabbed the one featuring Don Cheadle and Iman (which I dubbed “The Don & The Diva” ) a couple of days ago at Virgin in Union Square. I noticed that there many more copies still available of the one with Brad Pitt and Archbishop Desmond Tutu compared to the other ones. In any case, the articles are very informative and discuss a lot of the issues affecting the African continent (HIV/AIDS, government corruption, Darfur etc.) as well as the positives (Literature, artists, rising personalities etc.), all of it presented with a lot of optimism and hope. Some of the pieces in the magazine also feature the work of African journalists which I thought was a nice touch. My favorite article written by a Sebastian Junger was about the involvement of China (purely for economic interest it seems) in Africa (their indirect involvement in Darfur by selling weapons to the Sudanese government in return for oil among other things), mind blowing that one. I urge each and everyone with an interest in ‘all things African’ to get their hands on one!