TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Arlo Maverick on Building the Music Scene + Ory Okollah on Becoming an Activist

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Wednesday 6pm Mountain Time
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Untapped Alberta

This Friday at the Arts Barns in Old Strathcona, check out Untapped Alberta, a showcase of remarkable local musical talent. Two of the featured performances will be by jazz-soul-R&B artist Krystle Dos Santos and the sensational hip hop group Politic Live.

On Monday, Politic Live leader Arlo Maverick spoke with me by telephone about the politics of community-building for African-Canadian musicians. But he began by telling me about the gig itself.

Ory Okolloh

Ory Okolloh, Harvard-trained lawyer, Kenyan government transparency activist and blogger of the site called Mzalendo which provides “an unprecedented look at the doings of Kenya's parliament--information once unavailable to Kenyan citizens.”

Her site tracks the performance of Kenya’s parliamentarians by using a vote tracker and offer articles and opinion pieces. She also blogs on Kenyan Pundit.com. Tonight, from a speech she delivered in June 2007 at the TED conference in Monterey, California, Okolloh discusses what catalysed her crusade for open governance in Kenya.

THE PAN-AFRIKANIST’S LIBRARY

It's time for another installment of our semi-regular feature on The Terrordome called The Pan-Afrikanist’s Library, in which I ask people from here and people from afar, jus’ folks and famous folks, about their favourite books by writers from any nation of the Afrikan Planet.

Today’s entry in the library is courtesy of Michael Muhammad Knight, the author of the novel The Taqwacores and the nonfiction work The Five Percenters: Islam, Hip Hop and the Gods of New York City. He spoke with me by telephone on March 24, 2009 to discuss Amiri Baraka's "Somebody Blew Up America."




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