Hisha Sorel
Senior Member
- Dec 27, 2017
- 192
- 140
I still remember watching Kendrick Lamar and SZA music video “All the stars” and how it made me feel about blackness, beauty, mysticism, and power.
Until then, I had not yet seen a positive portrayal of African-ness. Compared to its European counterpart, African culture, scenery, and its people have never been romanticised.
Medieval lifestyle, Victorian shabbiness, Edwardian fashion, and many other quirks of the west have all been transformed by modern photographers, painters, and videographers into desirable fads—used by western and non-western artist alike.
Yet huts, kitenge clothing, face paints, African hairstyles, lifestyle, and dark skin colour have only attracted the interest of tourists, war, and poverty imagery.
African aesthetics has never been romanticised until recently. Beforehand, music sub-genre such as bongo flava would not have dared to feature anything that could have been described as African. Black women as vixen and local setting for a music video were only adopted due to budget limitations.
Securing an Asian or white person, even non-professionals, made the video highly regarded. In fact, this in mid 2000s, artist such as Juma nature and Mr. Nice even used tourists—with their works being met with praises because of it. Asian women were equally hard to secure, so for young artist, women of mixed race were a sought-after as an alternative.
This trend worsened with increased access to higher budgets since artist were now able to travel to South Africa where the population of white and Asian women is higher.
Diamond platinumz and WCB team were one of the first artists in Tanzania to fully adopt this trend. The most notable video demonstrating this is “mdogo mdogo” where Diamond Platinumz portrayed as an African-native seeking an approval of white feudal family to marry their white daughter.
The video light and costumes maintained the established photography aesthetics of portraying white women as pure through a style of lighting that create growing effect on their skin—masking any features. The video adopts a romanticised medieval period borrowed from western films.
The power dynamic is perhaps well communicated in a scene where a white love interest rides diamond on a white horse-back. In this scene Diamond looks weaker and even subservient yet I must testify that I highly doubt it that this was the objective of the video beyond exhibiting diamond platinumz capacity to cast a white woman on his video.
The trend of casting white vixens proceeded into works such “Nitampata wapi” with diamond platinumz acting as a host to a white or mixed woman; meanwhile in hallelujah, women of mixed races were used. The central premise of all these videos; whether it was Rich Mavoko, Davido, or Harmonize; were to present the vixen as an essence of beauty. In their works these artists made it clear that they consider blackness to not meet their definition of beauty or success.
Yet as of recently, this trend begun to change with more videos featuring only black vixens and in settings representing Africa. It is hard to overstate the contribution of white directors into motivating African artist into recognising the beauty of their homes and people.
In one interview, South African director the Godfather was astonished by the reluctance of Tanzanian artist to shoot video in their own homes considering its beauty. Works such as “All the stars” made by Dave Meyers captured this opinion greatly.
Meyers used strong colours to add beauty to his setting and subject. As light is used to mask skin features of white models, dark tone of subjects is exaggerated while the subject embellished with variety of ornaments hence bringing out the beauty of their blackness.
Features that would have been haphazardly presented by previous directors are carefully displayed hence presenting them in positive light in-turn influencing the judgement of the viewer.
This style of music videos has now become a staple in Nigeria and south African music scene with works of Yemi Alade and Mafikizolo using it to great effect.
WCB recent works seem to suggest an end to an era of white washing African culture. Three works signifies this change: Sukari by Zuchu, Shusha by Diamond platinumz ft Baba Levo, and Bado sana by Lava Lava ft Diamond platinumz. All these works mixed bright colours and African aesthetics to communicate beauty, festive, and power.
This a positive direction for African music as music has significant influence in self-perception and esteem. Presentation of blackness as positive, powerful, and beautiful may help in reducing body image problem which is a significant cause of skin breaching and weave wearing among black women.
Edit: correction: the race of the producer "Godfather" has been omitted as it was incorrectly assumed after only reading his interview.
Until then, I had not yet seen a positive portrayal of African-ness. Compared to its European counterpart, African culture, scenery, and its people have never been romanticised.
Medieval lifestyle, Victorian shabbiness, Edwardian fashion, and many other quirks of the west have all been transformed by modern photographers, painters, and videographers into desirable fads—used by western and non-western artist alike.
Yet huts, kitenge clothing, face paints, African hairstyles, lifestyle, and dark skin colour have only attracted the interest of tourists, war, and poverty imagery.
African aesthetics has never been romanticised until recently. Beforehand, music sub-genre such as bongo flava would not have dared to feature anything that could have been described as African. Black women as vixen and local setting for a music video were only adopted due to budget limitations.
Securing an Asian or white person, even non-professionals, made the video highly regarded. In fact, this in mid 2000s, artist such as Juma nature and Mr. Nice even used tourists—with their works being met with praises because of it. Asian women were equally hard to secure, so for young artist, women of mixed race were a sought-after as an alternative.
This trend worsened with increased access to higher budgets since artist were now able to travel to South Africa where the population of white and Asian women is higher.
Diamond platinumz and WCB team were one of the first artists in Tanzania to fully adopt this trend. The most notable video demonstrating this is “mdogo mdogo” where Diamond Platinumz portrayed as an African-native seeking an approval of white feudal family to marry their white daughter.
The video light and costumes maintained the established photography aesthetics of portraying white women as pure through a style of lighting that create growing effect on their skin—masking any features. The video adopts a romanticised medieval period borrowed from western films.
The power dynamic is perhaps well communicated in a scene where a white love interest rides diamond on a white horse-back. In this scene Diamond looks weaker and even subservient yet I must testify that I highly doubt it that this was the objective of the video beyond exhibiting diamond platinumz capacity to cast a white woman on his video.
The trend of casting white vixens proceeded into works such “Nitampata wapi” with diamond platinumz acting as a host to a white or mixed woman; meanwhile in hallelujah, women of mixed races were used. The central premise of all these videos; whether it was Rich Mavoko, Davido, or Harmonize; were to present the vixen as an essence of beauty. In their works these artists made it clear that they consider blackness to not meet their definition of beauty or success.
Yet as of recently, this trend begun to change with more videos featuring only black vixens and in settings representing Africa. It is hard to overstate the contribution of white directors into motivating African artist into recognising the beauty of their homes and people.
In one interview, South African director the Godfather was astonished by the reluctance of Tanzanian artist to shoot video in their own homes considering its beauty. Works such as “All the stars” made by Dave Meyers captured this opinion greatly.
Meyers used strong colours to add beauty to his setting and subject. As light is used to mask skin features of white models, dark tone of subjects is exaggerated while the subject embellished with variety of ornaments hence bringing out the beauty of their blackness.
Features that would have been haphazardly presented by previous directors are carefully displayed hence presenting them in positive light in-turn influencing the judgement of the viewer.
This style of music videos has now become a staple in Nigeria and south African music scene with works of Yemi Alade and Mafikizolo using it to great effect.
WCB recent works seem to suggest an end to an era of white washing African culture. Three works signifies this change: Sukari by Zuchu, Shusha by Diamond platinumz ft Baba Levo, and Bado sana by Lava Lava ft Diamond platinumz. All these works mixed bright colours and African aesthetics to communicate beauty, festive, and power.
This a positive direction for African music as music has significant influence in self-perception and esteem. Presentation of blackness as positive, powerful, and beautiful may help in reducing body image problem which is a significant cause of skin breaching and weave wearing among black women.
Edit: correction: the race of the producer "Godfather" has been omitted as it was incorrectly assumed after only reading his interview.
