Following a panel discussion - 'Bitch, bint, and maid: exploring sexist language in the dictionary' hosted by Oxford University Press to mark this year's International Women's Day, we got together with Eleanor Maier, Executive Editor on the Oxford English Dictionary, and Professor Helen Taylor, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Exeter, to carry on the conversation. The conversation was hosted by Ella Percival, Head of Communications for OUP's Academic Division and all-around dictionaries enthusiast.
 
Eleanor Maier is a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary. She is responsible for the dictionary’s revision group who revise, update, and expand OED content to make sure entries give the clearest, most accurate account of a word's meaning, history, and development.

Helen Taylor is Emeritus Professor of English, University of Exeter, Honorary Fellow of the British Association of American Studies, and Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow 2016-18. She has taught English and American Literature at the universities of Bristol, West of England, Warwick and Exeter (where she was Head of the School of English). She has published widely on English and American literature and culture, and has directed and curated many literary festivals. She was the first Director of the Liverpool Literary Festival. Publications include Scarlett's Women: Gone With the Wind and its Female Fans, The Daphne du Maurier Companion, and Circling Dixie: Contemporary Southern Culture through a Transatlantic Lens. Her latest book is Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our Lives.

Ella Percival is Head of Communications for OUP’s academic publishing. She has worked closely with the Oxford Languages team over a number of years and has observed first-hand the way in which issues of language and gender can be incredibly emotive and spark wide-ranging debate with the general public.

© Oxford University Press

Sexism and language in the dictionary and beyond

For our latest Island Time episode, we introduce French-born & Berlin-based Boris Paillard a.k.a. @djmixanthrope, who has been shaking up dancefloors from Canada to Ghana since 2015 with african, afro-diasporic and afro-caribbean songs & sounds. After working for Akwaaba Music in Accra, he started the monthly event series “African Beats & Pieces” in Berlin in 2017, inviting passionate DJs and underground live acts to explore specific musical themes.

This mix focuses on the music made & sung by women on the continent, whose powerful voices are too seldom heard. It features many hidden gems found during sleepless clicking nights on YouTube, one of Mixanthrope’s favourite digital digging grounds.

Tracklist

00:00 · Hadiza Mangou ft. Kaidan Gaskia - Dan Adam (Niger)
03:30 · Nana S Bibata - Stop Coronavirus (Burkina Faso)
05:47 · Linda Ayupuka - Ndaana Eera Ymah (Ghana)
08:24 · Djélika Diawara - Kamalemba (Mali)
10:48 · Koro La Diva - Yayoroba Yoroba (Mali)
13:15 · Hamsou Garba - La Guireto (Niger)
16:07 · Lady G - Sê hômi démin (Benin)
18:33 · Kaltuun Bacado - Gabdhaha Laguma Dheele (Somalia)
20:49 · Halimo Gobaad - Iga Jooji (Somalia)
23:11 · Natou - Maka (Burkina Faso)
25:15 · Ensaf Madani - الحوبا - جديد الاغاني السودانية (Sudan)
27:12 · Ensaf Fathi - إنصاف فتحي الزهي برنامج قهوتنا (Sudan)
30:18 · Fati Mariko - Dunia (Niger)
33:32 · Maïmouna Soumbounou - Dakan (Mali)
38:58 · Marizo - Amour Condiment (Guinea-Conakry)
42:59 · Meizah ft. Dedake - Manekiteky (Madagascar)
47:33 · Bitsat Seyoum - Tewmaneh (Ethiopia)
52:31 · Waayaha Cusub - Dhiilada (Somalia)

Island Time Radio:  Mix 34 with Mixanthrope

Dr. Thema describes why and how we abandon ourselves. She then provides motivation and methods for learning not to leave ourselves behind.

Episode #125 Addressing Self Abandonment

This rare LP by Yusufu Olatunji, the great master of Yoruba Sakara music from Nigeria, is available for Flac and MP3 download on my blog: 
https://music-republic-world-traditional.blogspot.com/2022/11/nigeria-nigeria-yusufu-olatunji-his.html

Vol. 24 – Zareco ORSL 1717

Nigeria – Yusufu Olatunji – Yoruba Sakara music

Kalita are proud to unveil the second volume in their ‘Borga Revolution!’ compilation series, focussing on the phenomenon of ‘Burger Highlife’, a crossover of West African melodies with synthesizers, disco and boogie that took over Ghanaian airwaves during the 1980’s and beyond.

Featuring both highly sought-after recordings by artists including Atta Frimpong and D.J. Lawyer Okyere, as well as seminal performances by greats such as Pat Thomas, A.B. Crentsil and Alan Cosmos, Kalita once again come to the rescue of audiophiles, DJs and music-lovers alike with ‘Borga Revolution! – Volume 2’. Spread over a double-LP housed in a gatefold sleeve. Accompanied by a 12-page booklet featuring extensive interview-based liner notes on each artist and never-before-seen archival photos.

The 1970s had witnessed an increased Western airtime and physical presence in Ghana introducing funk, soul and disco sounds to the region. By the turn of the decade the country was also enduring economic turmoil, with rising poverty, military dictatorships and long periods of enforced curfews (amongst other factors) making it impossible for artists to survive.

As a result, many Ghanaian artists with a broader outlook began to pursue their careers in the West, moving to both Europe and America in search of stardom. It was here that Ghanaian musicians developed a digitised version of highlife music which fully embraced Western contemporary music styles and newly introduced technology such as the DX7 synthesizer and various drum machines.

It is in this context in which the evolution of Ghanaian dance music and the emergence of ‘burger highlife’ was born. With the ‘Borga Revolution!’ series Kalita endeavour to tell this story, with prominent and lesser-known musicians’ accounts and documentary evidence providing a comprehensive understanding of this shift to the digital age.

Borga Revolution! Ghanaian Dance Music In The Digital Age, 1983​​​-​​​1996 (Volume 2)

Obae

Buy Here!

C2. Pat Thomas - Obae

From bright Nigerian highlife horns to Ethiopian fuzz-tone guitar riffs, this Rough Guide presents a broad selection of rare African dance grooves. Hard to find but easy to dance to.

Free tracks, videos and more information at www.worldmusic.net/africanraregroove

The concept of ‘Rare Groove’ has come a long way since its origins in the 1980s London club scene, where DJs would try to out-do each other with soul and funk obscurities. These days the blogosphere is full of enthusiasts sharing their latest vintage vinyl finds, with African music providing rich pickings. But there is a largely untapped resource of independent labels in Africa, America and Europe releasing fabulous sounds that deserve a much wider audience. This collection pulls together a variety of African grooves music from Mozambican marrabenta to Nigerian highlife.

Gentleman Mike Ejeagha and his protégé Celestine Ukwu are both known for morally instructive songs in the Igbo language of south-eastern Nigeria. ‘Ikpechakwa A-Akem Kpee’ starts with a clarion call of horns and quickly settles into an old-school highlife groove. Ukwu is a bit more laid back, with a fabulously languid horn section. Osayomore Joseph is known as ‘Ambassador’ for popularising the Edo language through music. ‘Oyeye’, with its ringing guitar and rasping brass was one of his first hits in the early 1970s.

Orchestra Marrabenta Star De Moçambique takes its name from an urban music style from Maputo, speeding up the rural majika rhythm and adding pulsing horns. Ayalèw Mèsfin started singing with Ethiopian Police Orchestra before developing his own rock’n’roll-influenced sound full of moody fuzz-guitar riffs, keyboard stabs and horn punches. Analogue synths meet old school East African Rumba in ‘Kai Kai’ by Yam Yam, a previously unreleased track featuring the talents of Congolese émigrés Les Mangalepa, now based in Nairobi, and British producer Guy Morley. International Orchestra Safari Sound, formed in Tanzania in 1985, developed a style known as ndekule, which refers to both a traditional war dance and a species of snake. ‘Homa Imenizidia’, with lyrics about an overpowering fever, certainly has a serpentine grace! 

West Nkosi’s sax jive style provides a stepping stone between penny-whistle kwela and mbaqanga, the township music unforgettably dubbed ‘The Indestructible Beat’. ‘Malombo’s ‘Mbaqanga Blues’ is an edgier proposition featuring multi-instrumentalist Phillip Tabane and Gabriel Thobejane on percussion.

Super Cayor De Dakar described their brand of Afro-Latin music salsa-mbalax. The 1996 version of ‘Dégoo’ included here is more immediate than later recordings, with a sublime combination of keyboards and horns. Saleta Phiri was one of the first two musicians to receive ‘The Malawi Honours Of The Achievers Award’. His songs speak of the hardships of life in the volatile township of Ndirande. On ‘Ndolo’, Cameroonian polymath Francis Bebey combines pygmy flute, a rattle-bag of percussion and a gently funky bass-line with intriguingly contrasting vocal styles, though the theme is given away in the final line: ‘I’m singing my love for you’.


Gentleman Mike Ejeagha & His Premiers Dance Band: Ikepechakwa A - Akem Kpee

Ina Ran - Haruna Isola

Fela's London Scene

Fight to Finish

Ojo Orinayo's Album

Revelations ft Katimi

A selection of lost sounds from a Somali archive, a teaser for the upcoming compilation "Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa." Out Now! 

Travel with us to the Al Curuuba hotel in Mogadishu, the dusty streets of Hargeisa, and the shores of the Gulf of Tadjoura in Djibouti. 

We hope you enjoy!

Get it here: https://ostinato-records.lnk.to/sweetasbrokendates

★★★★ 
-- The Guardian

"A mega mixtape of Somali classics."
-- BBC

"Sparkles with superior voices, superb musicians and both familiar & refreshingly new sounds." 
-- Wall Street Journal

"This record is a miracle. A legacy of the past that blurs the trauma of the present." 
-- Le Monde

"Perhaps the most beautiful music in the world, finally rediscovered."
-- Radio Nova Paris

Read/Listen more here: 

— BBC bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05btd5h
— Wall Street Journal on.wsj.com/2wTYAzQ 
— Al Jazeera http://bit.ly/2vfgc4g
— Yahoo / AFP https://yhoo.it/2w2ofFe
— OkayAfrica http://bit.ly/2uNaGsn | http://bit.ly/2f0kaLB
— Music in Africa http://bit.ly/2hfMx9n
— Quartz Africa http://bit.ly/2hfWTpC
— Radio Nova Paris http://bit.ly/2ubY3U7
— Thump Germany http://bit.ly/2vkS708

Watch the TED talk about the project: http://bit.ly/2vleB1g

BUY NOW!

Somali Sounds from Mogadishu to Djibouti (Selected by Nicolas Sheikholeslami & Vik Sohonie)

https://www.nts.live/shows/guests/episodes/south-african-jazz-part-2-26th-april-2020

South African Jazz Vol 2 260420

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Sexism and language in the dictionary and beyond

Oxford Academic (OUP)

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