News in brief

Photo exhibition at Goethe

Jacob Barua, a Kenyan-Pole, opened his first solo photography exhibition in Kenya on Thursday, January 23, at Goethe-Institute in Nairobi.

“The Vision Tunnel” consists of photographs and a video installation. It covers life, death and history as witnessed by the manhole covers of Nairobi. 

Barua explains it’s conception:

“It all happened unexpectedly. There I was, tumbling down a flight of stairs, hands fluttering, trying to get a grip on something, but there wasn’t anything. A flailing Icarus traversing space and time, briefly immune to Newton’s ponderous laws of gravity. The thud of my skull on a hard object brought my short-lived flight of lightness to an abrupt stop. Red raw liquid spewed from my head in a rivulet onto an unexplored, alien surface. What was this? Where was I? So was this how it was all to end? On a sewer cover, of all possible places? How undignified; how mundane; how un-heroic…”

The display will continue until Sunday, February 23.

I’d rather jog than write memoirs

Mick Jagger, the lead vocalist and founder member of English rock band the Rolling Stones, says he is too busy producing movies to write his memoir.

“If someone wants to know what I did in 1965, they can look it up on Wikipedia without even spending any money,” he said.

Despite the success of bandmate Keith Richards’ Life, the 70-year-old Rolling Stone stated he would “rather be doing something new” than revisiting his diaries from decades past, Britain’s The Guardian reported.

“I’d rather be making new films, making new music, be touring,” Jagger recently told the Hollywood Reporter. “I think the rock ‘n’ roll memoir is a glutted market.” 

50 years of Kenyan music

Alliance Française (Nairobi) is hosting a photography exhibition that pays tribute to musicians who have shaped the various genres of music in Kenya and who influenced our social psyche over the past five decades.

The pictures in “50 Years of Kenyan Music”, which will end on Sunday, February 9,  are a culmination of research and archiving carried out by Ketebul Music over seven years as part of their Retracing Kenyan Music series.

The show is produced with the support of the Kenya Music Week. It made its debut at the 10th annual Kenya Music Week that took place at the Sarit Centre Expo Hall in December, last year, as part of the Kenya@50 Celebrations. Besides, it plans to tour the Country for the next one year.

Compiled by Carlos Mureithi @CarlosMureithi