We’ll begin
With a spin
Traveling in
The world of my creation
What we’ll see
Will defy
Explanation

If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Wanta change the world?
There’s nothing
To it

There is no
Life I know
To compare with
Pure imagination
Living there
You’ll be free
If you truly wish to be

If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Wanta change the world?
There’s nothing
To it

There is no
Life I know
To compare with
Pure imagination
Living there
You’ll be free
If you truly
Wish to be

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]
love love …this song…of course…him too…so cute

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[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]
Reality used to be a friend of mine
Reality used to be a friend of mine
Maybe “why?” is the question that’s on you mind
But reality used to be a friend of mine
Reality used to be a friend of mine.
Reality used to be a friend of mine
Please don’t ask me ’cause I don’t know why,
but reality used to be a friend of mine.

I used to be friends with reality
She used to be a pal real close to me
But she tried to hide from me what was in store
Tried to house me but a house has doors
I was insane and the picture was crazy
So the relevance here seems to be a bit hazy
But I tried to explain this in the simplest terms
But she let the cross burn and it was my turn to say,
“The roses are red, and violets are blue,j
and things are gonna stay that way, too”
And I was the nut to believe all of this
I figured life would just hand me bliss
Now I have to worry about certain doom
Or will I be here tomorrow afternoon
Now ask me about the future.

—–

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBuqkhxHgEk]

La Saga IAM feat Wu Tang Clan (omg omg I miss IAM too)

More serisoulsy I have nothing really to say about Hip Hop but maybe you can read this very excellent as usual article from Ethan on how the RZA can teach us about xenophilea.

Explaining the significance of the knug fu flicks to Ashbrook, RZA mentions that his universe, growing up in Staten Island and Brooklyn, was a pretty limited one. Kung fu films offered a picture of life in a different place, a world where people of color were badass:

When we watch TV in those days in America, there wasn’t a lot of channels… TV programming was limited. When you see a martial arts film, you had a chance to see a time in history that wasn’t just what the western world was showing us. And especially as a young black man, you know, most of the black figures you’d see were some kind of slaves, some kind of pimps, not the sort of heroes who would inspire you. But through the martial arts films, I was seeing great heroes that inspired me, in the past, hundreds or thousands of years ago. It gave me another perception of history… It gave me a whole interest in finding out what was going on in that period of time, not only in Asia, what about in Africa, Australia?

It takes some work to find opportunities for intercultural encounter and xenophilia in kung fu films, but it’s clear that RZA was looking for something beyond the intellectual influences he was encountering in his own community. RZA and many of the Wu Tang were involved with The Nation of Gods and Earths, an offshoot of the Nation of Islam sometimes referred to as “the Five Percenters”, which offers a complex, syncretic worldview with emphasis on numerology and other esoterica. He’s subsequently found inspiration in Islam, Christianity, Taoism and in chess. While I found that the snippets of philosophy RZA offered in an hour-long interview alternated between profound and goofy, I’ve got nothing but respect for a mind that found a path from kung fu flicks to religious study via hiphop.

I hate myself for missing the Raboussa interview in Tana last year ( we were supposed to meet him with r1lita then missed him the totally lost his phone and so on…) Read this excellent post from our very best Malagasy Hip Hop is not dead btw no one went to the Afon-dasy gig last time?More on Malagasy hip hop from the excellent hhdago blog.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WjZ8-MpJSc]

Satria énao de Raboussa

still looking for the very best video from Raboussa (btw loooooooove the Sary sy Feo productions, we should write a post on them)

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ai-je demandé a Pissoa un dimanche matin a Montréal et après-modi a Johannesburgh (la veinarde).En 2 clicks elle m'envoit sur le blog d'Hery-the-boss* qui avait déja posé cette question :Inona no misakana anao tsy hi-blaogy? (qu'est-ce qui vous empêche de bloguer?). En une simple phrase DotMG lui répondit : parce que personne ne me lirait. BAM! Et voila! Je suis totalement au diapason avec cette affirmation (et peut-être me plaindre un peu) car nous avons un vrai problème au niveau du manque de commentateurs aux FBC avec des gamins tellement motivés qu'ils publient parfois deux fois par semaine.

La plus grande motivation derrière la création d'un blog est finalement le désir de se faire lire et de recevoir en retour des annotations sur les récits qui parfois nécessitent temps et énergie. Et surtout si vous êtes basé a Majunga, vous pourrez y rajouter les 40 frustrantes minutes pour charger une seule image en ligne. Dans tous les cas, le plus grand souci est d'attirer l'attention de la communauté. Quand on a soumis l'idée de réunir tous les fils RSS des blogs Malagasy sans aucune distinction de races et de langues sur  Malagasy Miray, l'idée derrière fut de donner un peu plus de visibilité a chacun et de créer des ponts entre les cultures (créoles ou nordiques), ce que les forums ne font pas vraiment. Ces voeux pieux évidemment sont très durs a tenir rien qu'en prenant pour exemple la communauté malgache. La plupart rédigeant en malgache ou en français et occultant la langue du web dans leur mission de promouvoir note culture, allez un petit effort, on blogue un tipeu en anglais please.

Mais qu'est-ce que les forums ont de plus que les blogs? Un peu plus de réponses a la question "comment-designer-un-logo-pour-le-barcamp". Mais il y a tellement de catégories tellement bien classifiés que la plupart du temps un peu de spamming pourrait vous faire faire excommunier par le très  méchant moderateur. Et dieu si sait si je ne le hais point celui-la. Les blogs sont peut-être un peu moins pratique pour allumer le feu des débats. Mais si comme moi et la dizaine de généreux bloggers avec un grand coeur, vous aurez déja maîtrisé l'art de polémiquer dans la section commentaire des blogs. Ceux-ci laissent quand même un peu plus de champs a l'Expression individuelle et nous permettent d'illustrer celle-ci par tellement de médias tels que les vidéos et les podcasts. Hery nous a publié un article sur le Social Networking et ses limites. Et j'aurais aimé que vous sachiez lire le malgache pour comprendre le comportement virtuel malgache face a une plus grande audience. Certains iraient se laisser penser que cela s'assimile a du Social Marketing qui a pour objectif de manipuler l'audience vers un projet-produit particulier.Notez mes efforts pour vous introduire le Social media dans les règles de l'art et avec une certaine emphase sur ce que les organisations a but non lucrative peuvent y gagner.

Les Forums sont très populaires chez les internautes malgaches, sociabiliser tout en étant profondément engagé dans sa communauté est une de leur principale motivation d'y rester et de ne pas vouloir quitter cet abri. J'aimerais aussi parler de mes petites appréhensions par raport aux usagers des forums. Nous y trouvons en eux des sources plus crédibles lors des crises politiques que sur les médias traditionnels qui sont pour la plupart des outils pour le gouvernement ou l'opposition pour créer psychose ou tout simplement manipuler l'actualité. Mashada a été un réceptacle très profitable durant la crise qui a parcouru le kenya en décebre 2007. Mais le cyber-activisme interessé des expatriés m'écoeure tout particulièrement. Le fossé technologique (due principalement a la différence de connectivité) empêche d'utiliser le web autrement que pour ses fonctions basiques (mail, info) de Madagascar ce qui laissele champs libre aux élucubrations de la diaspora.Celle-ci ayant pris la place de "représentante" de l'opinion malgache comme lors de la crise de 2002. D'ailleurs avons-nousdes bloggers poitiques ? ou bien contentons-nous encore de poursuivre le tabou et de se défouler dans la section commentaire?

Why won't forumists blog?

I asked Pissoa on a sunday morning in Montreal and afternoon in Johannesburg  (guess who is the luckiest). In 2 clicks she sent me to Hery-the-boss* blog post about the same topic : Inona no misakana anao tsy hi-blaogy? (what is keeping you from blogging?). In one simple sentence DotMG made the sincerest answer : because nobody would read me. BAM! There you go ! I can totally rely to this declaration (and vent a little) since we're struggling to get commentors on Foko Blogs even with the kids posting more than twice a week.

Because the main motivation to start a blog is to share and receive feedback on the stories you spend times and energy to publish. And if you are based in Majunga, you can add the very frustrating 40-minute unique picture loading. In both cases, I think the biggest obstacle is getting a community's interest. When submitting the idea of reuniting all the Malagasy bloggers RSS feeds on a common page at Malagasy Miray weither they were based in Alaska or writing in fluent Creole,the main idea behind this was to give more visibilty and to bridge between cultures (even if we are all deeply in love with the island) what forums fail to do. These pious wishes have their limitations when you take the Malagasy communities for exemple. Most of the users write in Malagasy and French making the concept of "promoting our culture" very hard to realize with english ruling the web.

What do forums have that blogs don't? More chances to find answers to the question "how-to-vectorize-a-beautiful-barcamp-logo".  But there are too many categories so stricly classified you sometimes get excommunicate for a simple spamming (a lot I admit). And maybe I am the only one but : I sooo hate the moderator dude ! What blogs don't have, even if there are multiple authors, is the variety of topics and the easiness to start debates. But if you are like me and the dizain of very generous bloggers I know well, you already mastered the power of commenting.What blog offers is the power to express yourself and illustrate your ideas and projects by very simple tools such as videos, podcasts,etc.Hery (again) just posted a very interesting post on Social Networks and asking (again) but its limits. At this point I wish you can read Malagasy to get Malagasy feelings on…. well…expression yourself on a wider audience. He warns about the tendencies to turn into Social Marketing when manipulating your audience to get their attention for a product or a great cause.(Maybe you've noticed my posts to introduce social media and the wonders non-profits can benefit from it in french por favor).

Forums of course are very popular among Malagasy internet users and networking with the desire to stay commited to this community is one of the reason forumists find hard time to leave this haven. And finally I have to admit my little scares of forum users. When there are social and political crisis, we always fetch the latest news on sites like Mashada where everyone has done a tremendous job covering the Kenyan crisis and filling the void the governement instated black-out has put on mainstream media. We all know about wanadoo (now moov.mg) during the 2002 Malagasy post-election crisis and the "cyber-activism" of the expatriates and well…the diaspora. This also brings us to the "digital divide" echues when connecitivity in Madagascar is still very hard to get and users only afford to connect for mails and …read forums. Again a lack of support on the commeting sections can very very very easily discourage a true activist even with tri-lingual capacities to share his perception of the society. 

I hate to tell this but today I perceive forums as instruments for political propaganda more than a space of cultural, social and knowledge sharing.  By the way do we have political bloggers ? or is this topic still very much banned on the post title and very discussed on the commenting section?

*Hery is the creator of the Serasera network. A community of more than 20 000 bloggers based in Madagascar but also in different parts of the world. Their socialization and conviviality are the strengh of the Namana Serasera when their members easily bond and plan outdoor activities such as trips (Roma, Majunga…) and also tree planting or fundraisings (for Infancy for example).

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