Latest news with #Rastafarian
TimesLIVE
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
Five minutes with hip hop duo Cold Chinese Food on their music debut
Johannesburg underground hip hop duo Cold Chinese Food are looking to make their mark in the music scene with their debut album Vital Ital. The duo, Sam Turpin and Illa N, are longtime friends and music collaborators with strong musical and political family ties. Sam is the son of anti-apartheid activist and photographer Gisèle Wulfsohn with Illa N's parents being of the Rastafarian culture and avid music collectors. This has influenced their music and views on the global community as well as culture, which can be heard in their 13-track album with themes that combine elements from multiple genres such as jazz, rock, Afrobeat, fusion and experimental, yet heavily influenced by hip hop. 'It's poetry to funk-inspired hip hop. Other people have used the phrases 'alternative' and 'left of centre', which is cool. But I like to send sonic messages, so I lean more towards 'musical poetry inspired by the world', Sam, 29, told TshisaLIVE. What can people expect from your debut album? Cold Chinese Food is a journey — expect a solid hip hop offering that bends in and out of style and flavour. It's about travelling, eating, loving and overcoming the difficulties we face as we grow in life. It's the soundtrack to the past eight years of my life. How long did it take to make and what was the journey to the release of this project? When it came time to start the Cold Chinese Food album, I knew I had to write my life experiences in a particular way. This started in 2017 and so it's almost eight years in the making. We also started work on The Charles Géne Suite collective and so the experiences we have together informed a lot of what you will hear. It's a pan-African reflection of life as an artist in the 21st Century. Think of it as a travel documentary you get to listen to through music. We just want to show you a bit of our lives. What inspired the theme and title of your debut album? Vital Ital refers to the healthy eating practice of people who follow Rastafari. It espouses health as well and leans more towards vegetarianism and an appreciation of the earth. I think this can be important for everyone and it inspired me. Food is also a way into a culture, with music, and I wanted to pay homage to the culinary and musical habits of so many beautiful cultures we are privileged to live alongside. It's the simple things in life. How do you approach the creative process when writing and producing new music? As Sam, it's not formal at all. Ideas usually come to me on their own, even if I'm sleeping or doing something. I've learnt not to ignore those ideas and I put them down in one form or another so maybe a song can emerge. I let the idea take me where it wants to until my spirit tells me it's enough for people to hear. It's good because it doesn't feel like work, but the price is it can strike whenever and I have to follow it. Which artists do you draw inspiration from? All the greats. This album is heavily inspired by the jazz and hip hop legends, some of them being Fela Kuti, Slum Village, Hugh Masekela, Nujabes, Manu Dibango and OutKast, but in a true neo-African style. I would like to work with Baloji one day. Either in music or film, he is certainly an inspiration.
Travel Weekly
20-07-2025
- Travel Weekly
Community tourism elevates St. Lucia locals, experiences
We revved up our engines and peeled away from the dusty roadside shack where we'd signed our waivers, helmets snugly fitted on our heads. In the morning heat, with a breeze kicking up, we dove straight into the banana fields: acres upon acres of towering green, slicing the bold, blue horizon. This all-terrain vehicle ride was more than an adrenaline adventure. It was a dive into St. Lucia's heart. I was on the Irie Valley Ride with Eastern Exotic ATV Tours, a half-day excursion that blends back-road thrills with cultural immersion. Our vehicles climbed muddy mountain trails slick with rain, the scent of guava sweetening the air. At the summit, where bulbous blossoms drooped low and the island unfurled below us, the buzz of the ATVs gave way to something softer. The Irie Valley Ride takes travelers through banana plantations and guava orchards. Photo Credit: Meagan Drillinger We'd arrived at a Rastafarian community nestled in the Mabouya Valley. From a hillside perch, a Rasta elder greeted us with freshly baked coconut bread and stories about the lifestyle and community-based living. This experience was just one piece of a much larger movement sweeping across St. Lucia: an effort to root tourism in the people, not just the place. This is the new St. Lucia. Or, rather, the St. Lucia that has always been there, based on community, culture and sustainability. Now, through new initiatives and immersive experiences, travelers are being invited in. The rise of community tourism In 2025, St. Lucia's Community Tourism Agency has gone full throttle. With the motto "See, Do, Stay," the agency is empowering micro, small, and medium-size enterprises (MSMEs) across the island to build and profit from tourism experiences. These aren't generic tours. They're sea moss farming demonstrations, cassava-baking workshops, women-led agritourism initiatives and community-based kayaking expeditions. They're built by locals, for locals and shared with travelers who want a deeper connection. Through grants, low-interest loans, training programs, infrastructure support and marketing assistance, the Community Tourism Agency gives local entrepreneurs the tools to elevate their businesses and reach international visitors. The bay in front of Ti Kaye Resort & Spa is a top snorkel spot. Photo Credit: Meagan Drillinger Projects worth exploring Let's start with the ATV tour, which is one of the agency's latest success stories. This locally owned venture takes guests through the agricultural heart of the Mabouya Valley, culminating in visits with Rastafarian community members and organic farmers. It layers cultural storytelling with ecological insight, offering an inside look into a way of life that is tied to the land. Then there is the Morne Fortune view point (Morne Layby). One of Castries' most beautiful lookouts is getting a glow-up. The popular photo stop for visitors heading along the west coast has been revitalized with improved walkways, new artisan vendor stalls and interpretation panels that share the site's history, including the colonial past and its role in the island's independence movement. The goal is to make it a meaningful pause in the journey, more than just a quick scenic stop. Along the western coast, the fishing village of Anse La Raye is getting a gentle nudge into the nautical tourism space. With the support of the tourism agency, the village's jetty has been upgraded to safely welcome more daytrippers and boaters. Mooring buoys have been installed to attract smaller boats. These upgrades are designed to disperse tourism away from the north and give smaller communities a chance to thrive economically. Then there is Helen's Daughters, a powerful nonprofit that puts women at the forefront of agriculture. Through farm-to-table tours, hands-on harvesting, cooking workshops and women-led market visits, Helen's Daughters connects travelers with the grassroots of St. Lucian food production. Visitors can spend a day with Helen herself, learning how to grow crops, listening to her stories, planting their own seedlings and then whipping up their own spice blends. Every experience directly supports the livelihoods of local women. Ti Kaye sits on a cliff overlooking the Caribbean. Photo Credit: Meagan Drillinger Where to stay (responsibly) For a socially responsible boutique hotel on St. Lucia, Ti Kaye Resort & Spa matches the spirit of these grassroots experiences. Perched dramatically above Anse Cochon on the western coast, this adults-only retreat is quiet, romantic and emphasizes sustainable practices. Ti Kaye goes beyond green practices by committing to its people. Staff benefit from healthcare subsidies and education support for themselves and their children, and many have been with the resort for over a decade. Guests are treated to a true sense of place, from the Kai Koko Spa's island-sourced ingredients to the Creole-inflected menus that spotlight local farmers and fishers. The private plunge pools, secluded beach and wood-fired pizza oven don't hurt the resort's appeal, either.
New Statesman
14-07-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
What Conservatives get wrong about London
Photo by'Everywhere you go you hear different languages being spoken and it's like a mixing pot. I'm sure I shouldn't use that term, but it's good though… Immigration's a good thing!' Which woke, liberal lefty could possibly have come up with such praise of London's rampant multiculturalism? Who could face standing up for a capital city in which 41 per cent of residents were born abroad? The answer is Susan Hall, leader of the Conservatives in the London Assembly and the party's 2024 candidate of London mayor. Back when I interviewed her in 2023, Hall had countless criticisms of Sadiq Khan, but she was full of praise for the vibrant diversity of the city she was hoping to lead. True, she had a tendency to 'like' questionable posts on social media (an Enoch Powell meme with the caption 'it's never too late to get London back'), but she was keen to stress that tackling illegal immigration should not mean attacking the capital's longstanding reputation as a hub for people from all over the world to make their home. Hall has had a change of heart in the intervening years. Earlier this month she signed up to the advisory board Restore Britain, a new political movement run by erstwhile Reform MP Rupert Lowe. As well as promising to 'carpet-bomb the cancer of wokery', Restore Britain wants 'net negative immigration', achieved in part by doubling the departure of legal immigrants from the UK. It is not (yet) calling for mass deportations, but it does declare that 'millions of foreign nationals who cannot speak English… should go home'. Quite how that fits with celebrating the 'mixing pot' of languages Hall so recently enthused about is unclear. I mention Hall not to single her out personally, but because the apparent shift in her views is part of something bigger. It's fashionable in certain circles today to decry how 'London has fallen', thanks in large part to soaring immigration. The immigration-sceptic journalist David Goodhart was at it in the Evening Standard last month, arguing that 'Rapid demographic change has transformed London'. Days later the academic-turned-Reform-activist Matthew Goodwin got in on the action on Twitter, calling London 'a city in visible decline with deteriorating standards and no real sense of identity or belonging'. This week, Isabel Oakeshott (partner of Reform deputy leader Richard Tice) wrote in the Telegraph that she knew she'd made the right decision to emigrate from Britain to Dubai because she recently saw a stoned Rastafarian on the Embankment. This was apparently a shock to her – clearly she never hung out in Camden in the nineties. As well as being quite blurry on the distinction between people who have crossed the Channel in small boats and those here with valid visas, those indulging in this trend like to hint at – or explicitly make – the link between rising immigration and rising crime, from fare-dodging and rough-sleeping to phone theft and shoplifting. This is great for rhetoric, but light on facts. Fare-dodging, while both visible and infuriating (hence the success of Robert Jenrick's viral video confronting evaders) is at 3.4 per cent both lower in London than many global cities (it's three times higher in New York, for example) and is falling rather than rising. Plus there's no evidence this is linked to immigration, just as there isn't with shoplifting, which is more likely to be driven by the cost of living crisis. And the capital is still safer than, say, Manchester, which gets none of the same vitriol. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe It's true that foreign nationals are overrepresented in the London homelessness statistics, but not by much (St Mungo's estimates they make up 48 per cent of the rough-sleeping population, compared to 41 per cent of the capital's population as a whole), and the Home Office must take some responsibility, given the lack of accommodation during the multi-year waits for asylum processing and the fact claimants are forbidden from working during this time. And, as my colleague Anoosh Chakelian has outlined this week, the argument that immigrants unfairly sucking up Britain's social housing is also patently false: '48 per cent of London's social housing is occupied by foreign-born heads of household (the person who fills in the Census form). Hardly surprising, given 49 per cent of the capital's households include someone born overseas'. (Born overseas – like Robert Jenrick's wife was. Or Nigel Farage's ex-wife. Or Boris Johnson himself.) London is of course beset with reasons people might wish to avoid it. It's loud and crowded and everything is too bloody expensive, from the £8 pints to the £1,900 monthly rent of a one-bed flat in Zone 2. The housing crisis is acute here in part due to rising numbers, but mostly due to decades of failure to build enough houses. Nightlife is struggling, due not to immigrants but in large part to their absence (the more than 80,000 EU hospitality workers who left in 2021 alone have left a massive gap). And don't even get me started on the Nimbys who move to places like Soho than try to get every pub and bar within a 500m radius shut down so they can go to bed at 9pm on a Friday night. If anyone should be firmly encouraged to leave the capital, surely they should be top of the list. But it's also, as it always was, a city of chaos and joy and spontaneity. The fashionable bewailing of a London long gone reveals a distinct lack of familiarity with the city the authors claim to despise. As the punk-rock singer Frank Turner once put it in his lament for the closed Astoria music venue 'singalongs go on but they're singing different songs in rooms that we don't know on the other side of the city'. Things change, but there is all kinds of fun to be had by those who can be bothered to find it, much of it staffed and provided by the sort of people Restore Britain think should emigrate. You can get £15 tickets on the day for a wealth of West End shows – then, if you know where to look, find the secret wine bars serving until 3am. The restaurants and food carts will take you on a culinary trip to anywhere in the world. If that's this all sounds too expensive and elitist, the city remains a haven for those looking for entertainment on the cheap; free museums, free parks (Goodhart and the like rarely mention that London is the second greenest city in the world), street performances and pop-up events. Head to the redeveloped oasis of Kings Cross this summer and you can sit, cost-free, on the steps of the canal and enjoy the open-air cinema screening Wimbledon, Wicked and Paddington in Peru. Speaking of Paddington every additional 'London has fallen' diatribe reminds me of the equally unfounded zombie myth that the capital is 'unfriendly', when its diversity is exactly why it has been such a beacon to all-comers for centuries. Goodhart writes in his piece that 'Many parts of the capital would fail my integration 'bus stop' test — can you share a joke at a bus stop with a stranger from a different ethnicity about something you have both heard on national media?' If such a test ever existed elsewhere in the country, it is something I have never encountered in my three-plus decades in the capital. Most Londoners would balk at an unsolicited bus stop chat not because they are foreigners who have shamefully failed to integrate, but because infringing on someone's precious quiet time mid-travel is a profoundly rude and un-London thing to do. That is not how residents here show their camaraderie with their neighbours, and the narrative that this is a deficiency tends to be pushed by people who don't like it much and therefore fail to understand one of its key charms. As Mrs Brown tells our ursine Peruvian immigrant: 'In London everyone is different, and that means anyone can fit in.' 2023-era Susan Hall would surely approve. [See more: The OBR is always wrong] Related
Black America Web
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
Supreme Court To Hear Rastafarian Lawsuit Over Shaved Locs
Source: JOSPIN MWISHA / Getty The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear the case of Damon Landor, a devout Rastafarian whose dreadlocks were forcibly shaved by prison guards in Louisiana, despite a clear legal precedent protecting his religious right to wear them. According to the lawsuit, Landor, who had vowed not to cut his hair for nearly two decades as part of his faith, entered the Louisiana prison system in 2020 to serve a five-month sentence for a drug-related offense. At the time when he began his sentence, his locs fell nearly to his knees. After serving all but three weeks of his five-month sentence, Landor was transferred to the Raymond Laborde Correction Center. He claims the violation occurred at that facility. Landor states that he entered with a copy of a court ruling that made it clear that practicing Rastafarians should be given a religious accommodation allowing them to keep their dreadlocks. But a prison officer dismissed his concerns, and Landor was handcuffed to a chair while two officers reportedly shaved his head after throwing the documents in the trash. 'When I was strapped down and shaved, it felt like I was raped,' Landor said in a statement. 'And the guards, they just didn't care. They will treat you any kind of way. They knew better than to cut my hair, but they did it anyway.' Upon his release, Landor filed a lawsuit raising various claims, including the one at issue at the Supreme Court, which he brought under a federal law called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, seeking damages for the trauma and violation he endured. Source: JOSPIN MWISHA / Getty Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill said in court papers that the state does not contest that Landor was mistreated and noted that the prison system has already changed its grooming policy to ensure that other Rastafarian prisoners do not face similar situations. At the heart of the case is whether individuals suing under RLUIPA can recover monetary damages. Currently, there's a similar law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, that allows for monetary compensation for damages, and Landor's attorneys point out that both statutes contain 'identical language.' In a 2020 decision, the Supreme Court affirmed that money damages were permissible under the RFRA. Landor's lawyers argue that precedent should apply here as well. Nevertheless, both a federal judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of the state, barring Landor from collecting damages. Now, the highest court in the country will weigh in. The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in its next term, which begins in October and concludes in June 2026. For Landor and many other incarcerated individuals who practice minority religions, the outcome could determine whether justice is just in name or inclusive of reparations. SEE ALSO: Jamaica Supreme Court Rules School Can Ban Dreadlocks Black Men Sue To Keep Beards And Locks SEE ALSO Supreme Court To Hear Rastafarian Lawsuit Over Shaved Locs was originally published on
Hypebeast
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hypebeast
JAH JAH Reveals SS26 Collection and adidas Megaride S2 at Paris Fashion Week
Summary JAH JAHrecently unveiled itsSpring/Summer 2026collection atParis Fashion Week. Originally founded as an Afro-vegan dining and cultural space in Paris, the brand continues to expand its vision — grounded in Rastafarian and Pan-African ideologies — into fashion. Their designs serve as a powerful visual instrument of memory and cultural storytelling. A standout moment from the runway was the reveal of JAH JAH's upcoming collaboration withadidas Originals: the Megaride S2 sneaker, slated for release in Spring 2026. The shoe features a yellow, green and red gradient base —honoring the Ethiopian flag — overlaid with a black grid-like pattern. Designed as both statement and staple, the sneaker adds a finishing touch to any look. Titled 'A Silent March,' the collection is presented by self-taught designer Daquisiline Gomis, who describes the pieces as part of an 'insurrectional aesthetic' — where silhouettes become manifestos and garments act as flags. Drawing inspiration from the tailored suits worn across West Africa, the collection reimagines them as 'dignified armor,' with strong, structured tailoring that celebrates the body's form. Other looks incorporate flowing silhouettes, patterned textiles and rich textures that offer visual and tactile depth. Honoring Rastafarian prophets and cultural leaders, the collection visually interprets diasporic narratives. Jamaican crochet patterns are transformed into structured, tailored craftsmanship — subtly embedded into garments as accents that elevate the aesthetic. Bold patchwork and vibrant color palettes blend refined and rugged textures, rooted in the designer's Jamaican heritage. Striking greens, yellows and reds serve as homage to home, fusing cultural legacy with artistic execution.
