PRI's The World » Alex Gallafent

NYC Designers Create ‘Drone-Proof’ Clothing

Alex Gallafent — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:40:36 +0000

New York-based designers Adam Harvey and Johanna Bloomfield have created a range of clothing to counter surveillance by thermal imaging.

They hope that their pieces of silver-lined outerwear, including a hoodie and a burqa, will draw attention to a growing culture of surveillance at home and abroad.

The World’s Alex Gallafent checked it out.

Amina Cachalia, Veteran of South Africa’s Freedom Struggle, Dies at 82

Alex Gallafent — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:35:10 +0000

Amina Cachalia, who’s died in Johannesberg at the age of 82, was a veteran of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid.

Cachalia, an Indian South African, was a close friend to Nelson Mandela for more than sixty years.

Just as my father used to say, if you don’t fight injustice it’s like death, in a sense. You accept death. – Amina Cachalia

Cécile McLorin Salvant’s American Songbook

Alex Gallafent — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:00:05 +0000

Cécile McLorin Salvant operates very much within jazz standard territory–she often sings classics such as ‘I Didn’t Know What Time it Was’ by Rodgers and Hart.

And Salvant has a classic jazz voice–she’s got what someone once told me every jazz singer needs: a voice with a core of steel wrapped up in soft cotton wool.

In fact, when you listen to Salvant perform, it sounds like she grew up singing this kind of stuff.

Not so.

“When I hear all these people talking about how jazz is a very American art form and it’s very much of our people, those are all things that are true,” she says.

“But I really started singing and performing and doing gigs when I was in France.”

Salvant headed to music conservatory there after high school; she was born and raised in Miami.

She went to France planning to study classical singing but, on a whim, she met up with the school’s jazz teacher–and he set her on a different path.

“As American as it is, I really started singing and learning about the music from French people,” she says.

“And learning about the love and the passion that people can have for this music from the French audience.”

The French, it should be said, are reverent when it comes to jazz. From the moment the music reached Paris, it was seen as a refined, avant garde art form.

And there was an assumption in France than Salvant was part of a storied lineage.

“In France I used to be told, well since you’re black and you’re American, that’s why you can sing this music.”

“And I was, like, that’s not why. I was not at all raised in an African-American family culture. My my dad is Haitian, mom is French-Guadeloupean, and in Miami, on top of that, we had more of a Caribbean vibe. It was a lot of different things.

Cécile McLorin Salvant recorded her first album when she was 19.

Now 23, she’s about to release a second, titled Woman Child.

And, whether it’s French people expecting that she be all-African American, or Americans expecting her to sound like a Haitian-French-Caribbean hybrid, it’s an opportunity to meet or challenge those expectations.

“Which is good,” she adds. “I’m going to take advantage of it, you know”

In recent performances, she’s used her jazz outsider license to explore elements of the music’s history, elements that are often quietly put away at the back of the closet.

“There’s a song that Valaida snow used to sing. And she used to sing a song called ‘You Bring Out The Savage In Me’. How do you sing that? You’re black in the 30s, people expect that; it’s funny, to me it’s just, like, ‘wow’.”

Woman Child will also feature a song with music by Salvant herself, a setting of a poem in French by the Haitian writer Ida Faubert–it translates as ‘My Forehead Hidden on Your Lap’.

Cécile McLorin Salvant performs at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series this Saturday in New York.

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Working the Oil Fields of Africa

Alex Gallafent — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:50:10 +0000

The attack on a remote gas facility in Algeria has focused new attention on the acceleration of oil and gas production across the African continent.

The growing demand for Africa’s natural resources means work for experienced energy industry experts, including many from the US and Canada.

The World’s Alex Gallafent spoke with two men currently earning their living in Ghana and Algeria.

Son of Cuban Exiles, Richard Blanco, Recites Inauguration Poem

Alex Gallafent — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:00:22 +0000

Maya Angelou was the first African-American to write a poem for a presidential inauguration.

She delivered her poem at President Clinton’s ceremony in 1993.

On Monday it was the turn of Richard Blanco, the first openly gay poet and the first Cuban-American to receive the honor.

The World’s Alex Gallafent has this report.

A photo gallery of “my life in photos,” if anyone wants to have a look. fb.me/2zg2L4kOe

— Richard Blanco (@rblancopoet) January 17, 2013

Richard Blanco’s “America” poem @pritheworld: poetryfoundation.org/poem/245318

— Monica Campbell (@monica_campbell) January 21, 2013

Lance Armstrong, Lying, and Human Nature

Alex Gallafent — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 14:00:28 +0000

In the wake of Lance Armstrong’s televised admission of doping, The World’s Alex Gallafent makes the connection between doping in sport, the banking crisis, and the lies we all tell ourselves.

Correction: In the audio, contributor Dan Ariely is incorrectly identified as a professor at MIT, where he formerly worked. Ariely is now at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

What Malian Expats Think About US Involvement in the Region

Alex Gallafent — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:40:30 +0000

Malians in the US are watching and talking about the events unfolding back home and there is no shortage of opinions, especially when it comes to US involvement.

The World’s Alex Gallafent spoke with some expats in Harlem in New York City.

Stephane Wrembel: ‘Midnight in Paris’, Django, and the Call of the Desert

Alex Gallafent — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:00:31 +0000

Stephane Wrembel studied guitar in, among other places, Roma camps outside Paris.

He wrote the distinctly Django Reinhardt-like theme for Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.”

But he disdains the term ‘Gypsy Jazz’, and woe betide anyone who says he’s just following in Reinhardt’s footsteps.

The World’s Alex Gallafent has our Global Hit.

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One Scandinavian Nation Remembers Johnny Cash’s Prison Concert

Alex Gallafent — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:10:01 +0000

Around 45 years ago, Johnny Cash was shaking up the music world. He was recording his first concert behind bars in Folsom State Prison.

But Cash also traveled outside the US to perform for prisoners and for the Geo Quiz, we are looking for a Scandinavian country where he sang for inmates in 1972. He opened the show with “A Boy Named Sue.”

Sweden is the answer to the Geo Quiz. Cash performed at the Österåker Prison, which is about 18 miles north of Stockholm, and some of the people who were present for the show have been remembering it.

Johnny Cash at the Österåker Prison

Johnny Cash at the San Quentin Prison

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How an Earthquake-Affected Haitian Teenager is Rebuilding Life in US

Alex Gallafent — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:50:58 +0000

In 2010 we profiled a Haitian teenager who’d arrived in the US in the wake of the major earthquake that devastated her country. Now, on the eve of the earthquake’s 3rd anniversary, The World’s Alex Gallafent speaks with Jardonna Constant again to find out how she’s been building a new life in the United States.

Rapid progress

When we met for the first time Constant spoke, in French, about the dramatic shift in her life:

“After the earthquake I started going to school under a tent,” she recalled. “Then, without any warning, my aunt called me to tell me I was coming to the States. She was sending for me.”

Now Constant speaks in fluent, accented English.

“Yes,” she says. “Because when you come here young you learn very quickly.”

Over the last couple of years, Jardonna has been on something of a tear. Back in 2010, it wasn’t clear what the future would hold. She was living with her aunt in Brooklyn (the borough is home to many Haitians) and she held only a tourist visa. Since there was little chance of her returning to Haiti, there was a concern that she might end up living here undocumented.

By the end of that year, though, she’d already taken a big step forward by winning a place at a Manhattan high school that specializes in helping immigrant kids catch up. Constant graduated in June. Her aunt became her legal guardian here in the US, too, leading to arguably the most consequential change in her status: a green card.

‘After the quake’

Darnell Benoit has known Jardonna since she arrived in 2010. Benoit runs the Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project here in New York, a community group for young immigrants from Haiti.

“I’m so excited for her,” she says “because the thing she wanted the most she got, because I know it’s really hard to be here undocumented.”

After the earthquake, Benoit was seeing new Haitian kids turn up at Flanbwayan every day. Things have quietened down a bit, but everything in Haiti is still, as she puts it ‘after the quake’. Newcomers are still arriving, moving in with family members who are already here; not all of them do as well as Constant.

“We see many other young people that are in her situation and that [progress] didn’t happen. So she’s special, basically.”

One of the things Benoit’s youth organization does is to encourage Haitian teenagers to look beyond the confines of the community. The community is necessary, but not sufficient. Jardonna Constant has already flown the nest: in September she began community college in Queen’s. Thanks to her green card, she’s eligible for financial aid. Right now, she’s studying international relations.

Choosing a career

“I wanted to be a diplomat,” she says. “[But] when I told my parents, my aunt, my dad everyone, that I was going to choose the major international relations, they told me diplomacy is not for me.”

Constant’s parents in Haiti want her to pursue a career that will provide sure work, and enable her to make a financial contribution to the family. She speaks French, Creole, English, and a good amount of Spanish. She loves the idea of traveling and translating for a living. But she’ll be changing her major next semester.

“The diplomacy has turned into nursing, so I’m really confused.”

It’s a challenge, but hardly greater than any of the challenges Jardonna Constant’s had to face already. Darnell Benoit is confident about her prospects.

“The beginning’s always tough, you know. Once she’s done with the school and … as she gets older, I think she has a very, very bright future ahead.”

High School Interrupted: a Haitian in New York (2010)

The London Underground is 150 Years Old

Alex Gallafent — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:30:03 +0000

The London Underground is celebrating its 150th birthday.

The iconic subway system was the first of its kind in the world, and remains a symbol of the British capital.

The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.

The London subway system in 1908 (Photo: Wiki Commons)

Delhi Rape Provokes Discussion Among Indian-born Women in the US

Alex Gallafent — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:00:28 +0000

The horrific attack on the young woman and her companion in Delhi was the kind of news you couldn’t avoid talking about: it was simply too big for that, said Aswini Anburajan.

“It naturally arose, I think, in a lot of families,” she said, “and we were all just home for the holidays.”

In conversations with her family, Anburajan brought up an aspect of the story she’d found infuriating: comments from Indian lawmakers about the young rape victim. The comments reinforced her view of India as a thoroughbred patriarchy.

“Like, ‘why is she out at 10pm at night?’, ‘girls have to cover up more’, ‘the women are just party girls’. It really tied into something that I have been hearing my whole life.”

Anburajan moved to the US from India when she was four, but she says her parents carried with them a sensibility that women shouldn’t be free, sexually or even economically.

She recently wrote an opinion piece about the subject for the site Buzzfeed, where she works as the director of partner development.

“There’s an issue of gender equality,” she said, “and it’s subtle. It’s not about they don’t have the right to vote, or they have to cover up in public. It’s societal and it’s ingrained.”

Even among the men in her own family, Anburajan said, there was a sense that sexual violence simply happens and that women need to be better protected, by men.

“That’s what it comes down to, right? They need to be ‘in their proper place’, they need to be ‘protected’, and, when the time is right, that protection goes from the parents to the husband.”

To get a sense of whether Anbujaran’s view is a common one among Indian-Americans (or Indians currently living in the United States), I went to Jackson Heights. It’s a South Asian neighborhood in Queens, New York.

I stopped to talk with a woman named Kiran who has lived here with her son for more than 20 years. She also thought that India needs to find new ways to think about women, sex and relationships.

“They should give information about sex and everything,” she said.

“But there is some shyness and they can’t talk very freely with their children. It’s different here. Here it is free, everything. Boy[s] and girl[s], they go outside, what[ever] they do, [their parents] don’t care. If you are 16 years [old] you can do whatever you want with your girlfriend. It is not easy in India.”

But Aswini Anburajan countered that it’s not all free and easy here in the US either. She knows of Indian Americans completely unable to level with their parents about how they’re living their lives.

“How ludicrous is it that I know someone who is a psychiatrist who won’t admit to her parents that she’s living with her boyfriend? It’s crazy.”

Still, Anburajan is optimistic. Change in India comes slowly; it’s often chaotic. But, she said, it always comes from the ground up. Women are playing a central part in driving India’s economy forward. Many of them are moving back and forth between India and the US, picking up degrees at American colleges before returning home to find work.

A young Indian woman named Tuhina, walking in Jackson Heights with a friend, said that “in India they respect what is said in the West a lot; the influence is very high.”

Tuhina is a chemical engineer–she just completed her graduate degree in upstate New York. Yes, she said, the Indian government’s next steps are in the international spotlight. But for her the real shift in attitudes will come in a more organic way.

“The way I look at it is the bonds between bonds between sisters and family,” she said. “That’s much more influential than what you see on TV. So if I tell my sister something she’s going to be more influenced by it than [by] a friend who is living in India.”

Tuhina added that things are already different in her own home city, Mumbai.

“The relationship dynamics, it’s changing,” she said, “It’s changing a lot, and I’m very happy about that.”

Mumbai is a global city, more so than Delhi: It already gets a lot of cultural churn from all over the world. Tuhina and many of the other voices now speaking out come from educated, urban backgrounds. The larger challenge for India, then, will be to include all of the country’s women–and men–in whatever changes may be on the way.

A New York Quiz for New Year’s Day

Alex Gallafent — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 13:40:05 +0000

On this New Year’s Day Geo Quiz, follow my clues to find three things in New York City that play off the word “new.”

Clue #1: Name a cultural movement that swept Europe and beyond in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Clue #2: Name a articular type of smoked salmon that was historically made using salmon from the Gaspé Peninsula in eastern Canada.

Clue #3: Name a place called “NU” or in full, “The Detinu Snoitan.” This is the one place in New York where you’re guaranteed to see resolutions throughout 2013.

The answer to Clue #1 is art nouveau. You can find a guide to art nouveau in New York City through David Cobb Craig’s blog and from the BBC.

If you know your fish, you will know that Clue #2 points you to Gaspe Nova smoked salmon. This salmon is described as “mild and succulent” on the Russ & Daughters website, where you can order the fish by the pound.

And of course the resolutions will be passed by the United Nations, which is “Detinu Snoitan” and “NU” backwards (Clue 3).

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Remembering Thunderbirds Creator Gerry Anderson

Alex Gallafent — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 13:10:32 +0000

The British TV-producer, Gerry Anderson died recently.

Anderson created a series of shows for kids in the 1960s, including Thunderbirds.

He wasn’t that well-known in the US, but, as The World’s Alex Gallafent reports, his influence reached these shores in the form of the movie “Team America: World Police.”

German Couple Take Self-Portrait Every Christmas Eve Documenting Changes in Life and Country

Alex Gallafent — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 14:40:10 +0000

Anna and Richard Wagner in 1900.

From 1900 until 1945 a married couple in Germany took a self-portrait on Christmas Eve.

The series of photographs charts dramatic changes in their life, and in their country.

The World’s Alex Gallafent has more.

Anna and Richard Wagner in 1912.

Anna and Richard Wagner in 1915.

Anna and Richard Wagner in 1927.

Anna and Richard Wagner in 1942.