Author Archives: Yuusuf Caruso

About Yuusuf Caruso

African Studies Librarian

Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi, 1952-2019

by Yuusuf Caruso on

Columbia University’s African Studies Virtual Library on “Tuku”

African Arguments (UK): “Rest in power: Oliver Mtukudzi…,” by Rumbidzai Dube, January 25, 2019.

Afropop Worldwide (USA): “Remembering Oliver Mtukudzi,” by Banning Eyre. January 24, 2019 ; “Oliver Mtukudzi dies at 66,” January 23, 2019.

CNN Online News: “Oliver ‘Tuku’ Mtukudzi: Healing a wounded nation through music.” (January 2013)

Mail & Guardian (South Africa): “Through upheaval and instability, we always had Oliver Mtukudzi,” January 24, 2019

Music.org.za: Mtukudzi, Oliver (Tuku), 2003 (Making Music Productions, South Africa)

National Public Radio (USA): “‘Left Alone’: Oliver Mtukudzi sees music as therapy.” (July 24, 2013)

BBC World Service, via YouTube.com: Oliver Mtukudzi’s “Neria,” September 2009.

YouTube.com: “Oliver Mtukudzi & Ladysmith Black Mambazo–“Neria”, June 2018 ; “Neria”, October 2009 ; “Todii,” February 2012 ; “Wasakara”, May 2011 ; “Ndakuvara”, September 2009 ; “Chiri Nani,” August 2009 ; “Ngoromera”, May 2009.

Mtukudzi in Columbia’s Library Catalog:

Oliver Mtukudzi : living Tuku music in Zimbabwe
Author: Kyker, Jennifer, 1979- Published: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2016]

Tuku backstage : the first tell-all biography of the music, life and secrets of Oliver Mtukudzi
Author: Mutamba, Shepherd Published: Harare : Mhotsi Uruka, 2015.

Acoustic Africa [sound recording] : in concert
Published: Doische, Belgium : Contre Jour, p2011.

The culture of AIDS in Africa : hope and healing in music and the arts
Published: New York : Oxford University Press, c2011. –See also: E-Book version

Keeping the embers alive : musicians of Zimbabwe.
Author: Capp, Myrna Published: Trenton, NJ : Africa World Press, 2006.

Sounds of change : social and political features of music in Africa.
Published: Stockholm: Swedish Development Cooperation Agency, [2004]

African odyssey [sound recording]
Published: [S.l.] : Putumayo, p2001.

The Rough guide to the music of Zimbabwe [sound recording]
Published: London : World Music Network, pc1996.

Jit [videorecording]
Published: [Chicago, IL] : Home Vision, 1993.

Neria [videorecording]
Published: [Lexington, Ky. : Amazon.com.kydc., 2010?]

Mbira music [videorecording] : spirit of the people
Published: Princeton, NJ : Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 2006.

Africa [sound recording] : 50 years of music : 50 years of independence = Afrique : 50 ans de musique : 50 ans d’indepéndances
Published: [Paris?] : Discograph, p2010.

See also: “Music of Zimbabwe” [Subject]

100th Anniversary of Birth of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela & Barack Obama’s 2018 Mandela Lecture

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For 20 years, one popular feature of Columbia University Libraries’ virtual library for
“African Studies Internet Resources” has been and continues to be a list of web links to reliable information about famous people of African descent, past and present.  This month marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the much celebrated South African, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.  A list of annotated links on Mandela are posted on library web pages for “African Biography on the Internet” -and- “South Africa–Culture, History, & Languages”.  Included in this updated list are web sites or pages in honor of this year’s 100th anniversary and on “Mandela Day”, which is observed in South Africa every year on July 18th….as well as a link to the full text transcript of the16th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture delivered on July 17, 2018 by former US President Barack Obama, at the Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg, sponsored by The Nelson Mandela Foundation.

See Columbia’s library holdings: About Nelson Mandela and Mandela, the author;
About Barack Obama and Obama, the author

Columbia Acquires “Annual Departmental Reports Relating to Nigeria and the British Cameroons, 1887-1962”

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Columbia University Libraries’ has just acquired a searchable online version of the British Colonial Office’s “Annual Departmental Reports Relating to Nigeria and the British Cameroons, 1887-1962.”  

As part of their series “British Online Archives”, Microform Academic Publishers is making available a digitized version of the microfilmed administrative records on colonial Nigeria and Cameroon. The collection is “..divided between ten headings: Administration, Finance, Judicial and Police, Natural Resources, Social Services, Transport and Public Works, Communications and Post Office Savings, Commerce, Miscellaneous, and reports relating to the British Cameroons.”

This collection is also available on microfilm through interlibrary loan for all Columbia affiliates from The Center for Research Libraries (Chicago), see: http://catalog.crl.edu/record=b1922197~S1

Please send comments to Dr. Yuusuf Caruso, African Studies Librarian, Columbia University, at: caruso@columbia.edu

African Studies WWW-Virtual Library Celebrates its 20th Anniversary

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Columbia University sponsors the most detailed, comprehensive guide on “African Studies Internet Resources” available anywhere.  Frequently updated, this resource is celebrating its 20th anniversary during the academic year 2017-2018 as the official WWW-Virtual Library for African Studies.

Open access electronic resources from Africa are organized by region and country. All materials are arranged to encourage an awareness of authorship, type of information, and subject. The selection criteria for the collection is research-oriented, but it also provides access to other web sites with different or broader missions.

The site includes links to: Africana library catalogs and archives ; African art and archaeology ; African languages ; African literature ; African studies programs and Universities in Africa ; Business and economic information on Africa ; Climate and environment in Africa ; Electronic newspapers from Africa ; Energy in Africa ; Films from and about Africa  ; Health information on Africa ; Human rights in Africa ; Maps of Africa ;  Religion in Africa ; and much more.

Another demonstration of its scope and precision are selected links to breaking and current news analysis from and about every country on the continent.  Some examples are selections on Democratic Republic of Congo (2018) ; Nigeria (2018-2019) ; Kenya (2017-2018) ; and Zimbabwe (2017-2018), where recent political crises and elections since mid-2017 have drawn wide international attention.

 

Colonial Law in Africa — New Online Primary Resource at Columbia

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Columbia University Libraries has acquired a new online primary resource:

Colonial Law in Africa: African Government Gazettes, 1808-1919 and 1920-1945

An extensive collection of “digitized” legal records on British colonial African territories, covering the 19th and 20th centuries, selected from the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and part of the “British Online Archives” series from Microform Academic Publishers.

Columbia faculty, students, and other library patrons with borrowing privileges, can now access the first two parts of this collection of government gazettes and legal notices which are relevant to research on the impact of the Napoleonic Wars, the Boer War, the First World War, the abolition of the legal status of slavery, the transfer of Southern Rhodesia from the British South Africa Company to formal colonial rule, the impact of the Treaty of Versailles on Tanganyika and Zanzibar, and on British colonial policies during the Second World War throughout Africa.

Part I: 1808-1919

Part II: 1920-1945

*NOTE: This collection complements the British colonial “African Blue Books, 1821-1953.” ; as well as, “Retrospective Government Gazettes” of South Africa, 1910-1993

“Imagining the World: Unexplored Global Collections at Columbia”

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Imagining the World 7Opening the week of April 4, 2016, in the Chang Octagon of The Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, a new exhibition will offer researchers an opportunity to view a sampling of the rare and the unusual in Columbia’s Global Studies collections.  The items on display until June 24, range in date from 1454 CE to 2014 CE, in a variety of formats, including books, manuscripts, maps, photos, posters, scrolls, sheet music, stamps, and typescripts, and encompassing more than 19 languages or scripts:  Arabic, Czech, English, French, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Latin, Malayalam, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Sanskrit, Spanish, Tamil, Ukrainian, Urdu, and Wolof.  This small exhibit represents only a fraction of what is collected by the Libraries to support global studies research and teaching.

A reception to celebrate the exhibition, with refreshments and keynote speaker Avinoam Shalem, Riggio Professor of the History of the Arts of Islam, will be held in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library on Tuesday, April 19, 2016, 5:30-7:00 pm

 

Trial Access to British Online Archives–African Blue Books, 1821-1953

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British Online Archives: African Blue Books, 1821-1953
http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/resolve?clio11610507

Beginning October 21, 2015, researchers at Columbia University Libraries can take advantage of a month-long, trial access to an important source for the economic and political history of the colonial era in the former British colonial territories of Africa: “The Blue Book was a key item of considerable standing in 19th century colonial administration. With a particular focus on the latter nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the focus of these Blue Books is upon economic development; imports, exports and each territory’s balance sheets are a recurring theme throughout. Ecclesiastical records, public works and population statistics are also common themes.”

Please forward comments and evaluation remarks to Yuusuf Caruso (caruso@columbia.edu).

The trial will run though November 19, 2015.

News and Views on President Obama’s 2015 Trip to Kenya and Ethiopia

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For a short list of “open access” articles and essays reflecting a wide range of approaches to the first visit by a sitting American president to both Kenya and Ethiopia and the first speech by an American president to be made at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, see the selections on offer from Columbia University Libraries’ “African Studies Virtual Library.”  There are also links to other aspects of recent US foreign policies toward Africa.

British records on “Apartheid South Africa” boosts primary resources on South Africa

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Columbia faculty and students can now access the full text of digitized selected documents from the British National Archives on South Africa during the “apartheid” era.  The “Archives Direct” collection on South Africa from Adam Matthew includes files from the Foreign, Colonial, Dominion and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices spanning the period 1948 to 1980; divided into three sections: 1948-1966, 1967-1975, and 1976-1980.  For more details, see:  Nature and scope of the collection.

This new digital resource complements other “primary resource” materials relating to 20th century South Africa and the southern Africa region available to researchers at Columbia, including: Aluka–The Struggle for Liberation in Southern Africa ;  South African Government Gazettes–1910-1993 and 1994 to the Present ; Digital National Security Archive: South Africa: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1962-1989 ; The Gay J. MacDougall South Africa and Namibia Papers ; and, The Papers of The Committee for Health in Southern Africa.

For earlier historical periods, researchers at Columbia can search other “online” sources in Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966 ; Nineteenth Century Collections: Europe and Africa ; and, World Newspaper Archive–African newspapers before 1923.

A “subject” search in CLIO, using the terms “South Africa Sources”, will provide a greater sense of the “primary resource” offerings on South Africa at Columbia in print, microform, and electronic formats.

Government Gazettes of South Africa, 1910 to the present

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Columbia University Libraries now subscribes, courtesy of Sabinet,  to digitized full text versions of South African government gazettes, from 1910 to the present.  All current Columbia faculty and students can access and search the three online collections (on or off campus).

Retrospective Gazettes of South Africa, 1910-1993
http://clio.columbia.edu/databases/10425697

Government Gazettes of South Africa, January 1994 to present
http://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/10425708

Provincial Gazettes of South Africa, September 1995 to present
http://clio.columbia.edu/databases/10472679