STEP INTO THE GAP is an exciting new venture for CAFOD and YMT that offers a joined up programme for leadership development during a Gap Year. This is Blog # 5 of the YMT/CAFOD Team experience in Liberia, Africa.

Football atheism in a land of believers:

Here in Liberia – in this land where everyone believes in something and literally everyone loves football – you get a similar bemused reaction saying you don’t support a Premiership football team that you would if you said you don’t believe in God. One devout worshipper has even embarked on the hopeless task of trying to convert me: promising to email me once a week on our return to England with reasons to support Arsenal.

Yesterday we went along to the final of the African Cup of Nations at the Relda Cinema: a dark cavernous shell of a building that was almost destroyed during the war – everything was looted from inside, including the entire upstairs. All that is left are the red theatre-style seats, most of which don’t fold up, some of which have the springs poking through, and here and there, there is no seat at all. To our surprise there were two games projected onto the huge back wall: the final between Ghana and Egypt and a game between Arsenal and Manchester United.

As people with little to no interest in football, to Michael and I it was like watching a load of brightly coloured ants running around a billiard table. I’d sooner have turned my chair around and watched the audience, who broke up the tediousness with constant screams of support and excitement.

Surprisingly everyone’s attention seemed to be on the English Premiership match rather than the African final: there’s globalisation for you! When there was nothing much happening a man a few seats down simply stood up and shouted delightedly at the screen: “Football, Football!” The enthusiasm of everyone here hasn’t quite succeeded in breaking through my own indifference to the game but I have been impressed to see what a unifying and motivating force football is in Liberia.

I don’t know if there was an official statement released to this effect, but everyone tells you that football in Liberia is “a unifying force”. During our stay, the County Meet – a football tournament between Liberia’s 15 counties – came to a climax, and the final was to be contested between Nimba and Grand Gedeh counties – the two main antagonists in the county’s 14-year civil crisis. Nimba won 2-0, but there was no crowd trouble: county officials shook hands on the pitch before and after the game and fans joined together in one big post-match party. Unlike our Premier League’s over-paid stars, professional footballers in Liberia earn around $40 Liberian per game, so anyone playing football at any level in Liberia can only leave the country to be a success.

Teku Nahn, who toured the UK with the Millennium Stars football team as a teenager in 1999, was top scorer in Liberia with 16 goals before Christmas last year. Callers to radio phone-ins clamoured for his inclusion in the national team. He was invited for a three-month try-out with Cape Town FC in South Africa, which he thinks went very well. He scored in his first game and impressed the coaching staff with his skills and hard work. Now he is waiting for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa to be over before finding out whether they will offer him a contract.

If Teku makes it to South Africa it will be a success for the whole Millennium Stars club – a narrow bridge to success that others may be able to follow him across. For those left behind, the focus is shifting from their own dreams to the dreams of others. Now in their fourteenth year – they are engaged in a consultation with team members to transform the football club into a community organisation to be role models to local children and help them develop their talents in music, singing, sport, and especially football.

Click here for more information on the YMT/CAFOD gap year programme.

Various Artists

Original Soundtrack

Time to celebrate a brand new, exceptional addition to the zombie genre with
Canadian director Bruce LaBruce’s latest oeuvre. Renouncing the most obvious
cliches, LaBruce lets his protagonist - gay punk zombie Otto – ramble and
roam the streets of Berlin until he finds himself cast for a low budget
flick. With a keen eye for style, the director picks and mixes references
from classic horror, silent movies and Modernity into a strident, yet poetic
film. In this, Otto; Or, Up With Dead People continues the tradition of the
political pornographer’s previous successes, The Raspberry Reich and Hustler
White.

Spoilt for choice: Otto features more than 50 international tracks and
sounds! After careful selection, Crippled Dick Hot Wax now presents the
movie’s official soundtrack (featuring 14 tracks and available on CD
(digipak) or limited double vinyl), promising to take us on a truly crazy
acoustic rollercoaster ride. Yet despite the artists’ glaring differences,
the result is a surprisingly coherent, compact and homogeneous compilation.
Weaving classical, electronic, drone, avantgarde, pop and punk/disco into a
well-balanced whole, the soundtrack introduces cinema and music lovers alike
to the weirdly wonderful world of Bruce LaBruce. 

Irmin Schmidt + Inner Space Production

Original Soundtrack

KAMASUTRA – an unreleased soundtrack from 1968
by Irmin Schmidt and The Inner Space

Better late than never? A good four decades after its making, a rare gem is up for release: the soundtrack to Kobi Jaeger’s erotic and educational epic KAMASUTRA – consummation of love composed and recorded by Irmin Schmidt & The Inner Space. A precursor to krautrock pioneers CAN, Schmidt’s 1968 recording assembles Can’s original line-up – Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit and Malcolm Mooney – who later went on to craft the band’s seminal debut, Monster Movie.

The film KAMASUTRA – consummation of love switches between India and Germany and stars Bruno Dietrich and Barbara Schöne. A prime example of late 1960s German erotica and the so-called sexual revolution, it liberated the subject of sex from dingy red light cinemas and whisked it away to the exotic Far East, to the realm that – more than a millennium earlier – had spawned the erotic teachings of the KAMASUTRA. Fast-forward to the present day and you will find the film’s well-intentioned, in parts pedagogical approach bristling with (un)intentional comedy.

Many bands and composers from the late 1960s were intrigued by eastern philosophy and influenced by oriental sounds. Besides several laid-back, percussive instrumentals laced with flutes and sitars, the soundtrack also features two vocal tracks: ‘I’m Hiding My Nightingale’ (sung by Margarete Juvan), ‘There Was A Man’ (sung by Malcolm Mooney).

KAMASUTRA – consummation of love is available as a CD digipack and limited gatefold vinyl (both by Crippled Dick Hot Wax) as well as a digital release (via Finetunes).

Namosh

Keep It For Later
After a stretch of flamboyant shows, Namosh took a brief respite from the 
stage to focus on his new recordings. 
And the result is well worth the wait: his second long player, ‘Keep It For 
Later’, about to be unleashed on the (un)suspecting public, is a beautiful 
whirlwind of a record, although a touch softer than its precursor. Here, 
Namosh twirls dreamlike, synthie-generated sound sequences into rhythmic 
bass lines, percussion and vocals, further enriched by the cello, brass and 
jazz guitar provided by a few select peers. Mixed by Thomas Stern (Crime & 
The City Solution, Einstürzende Neubauten), the album also boasts a rare 
collaboration with composer Peter Thomas (Jerry Cotton, Raumpatrouillie 
Orion) and Namosh’s first ever mainstream croon-fest: ‘Pleurer et Rire’ (Cry 
and Laugh). 

It was six years ago that the – then 21-year-old – Namosh E. Arslan first 
wowed the crowds with ‘Picked Up Floozy’. A rousing club hit for the early 
millennium, the pumping electro track – carried by Namosh’s smooth, yet 
curiously choppy vocals – still fills dancefloors around the world. In a 
poll by Q magazine, the Icelandic queen of cool, Björk, voted Namosh’s ‘Cold 
Cream’ her favourite song. 

A tour de force and force of nature, Namosh’s live sets are leagues apart 
from the latest mainstream offerings. „His musical spectrum might be broad, 
but anyone who’s ever had the chance to see Namosh live will know that 
there’s a lot more to this man than the music.” (FAZ) 
Other media labels for the one-man performance phenomenon include: „German 
Wunderkind“, „crazy performance by a German/Kurdish star in the making“ or 
“Berliner by choice, Kurdish by nature”. 

So, let’s not „Keep It For Later“: Namosh’s new album – released on CD, in a 
digital format and as a limited double vinyl edition – will be available 
from late October 2009.

http://www.myspace.com/crippleddickhotwax

CRIPPLED DICK