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Dutch museum exhibition showing Beyoncé dressed as Queen Nefertiti stirs Egyptian outrage

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An exhibition by a Dutch museum where American singer, Beyoncé was seen dressed as Ancient Egyptian Queen, Nefertiti has caused serious outrage in the North African country.

The “Kemet” exhibition at Leiden’s Rijksmuseum van Oudheden National Museum of Antiquities has enraged Egypt, which had previously banned the museum’s archaeologists from carrying out excavations in the country following an earlier controversy.

Egypt’s Antiquities Service in a statement, said the museum was “falsifying history” with its “Afrocentric approach which seeks to appropriate Egyptian culture.”

An Egyptian Professor at University of Amsterdam, Dr Ali Hamdan, a specialist in political geography with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa, said:

“From what I can see, it has been sort of viewed in a very particular light by the government back in Egypt. I think it’s important for us to say it kind of move away from this more Eurocentric perspective through which Egypt’s history has been viewed.”

The museum, in its defence, said the exhihition which was meant to be an empowering celebration of “Egypt in hip-hop, jazz, soul and funk” has instead become a culture war.

It also lamented the barrage of criticisms and attacks it had been getting through comments on social media that were “racist or offensive in nature” after the row blew up in Egypt.

“The exhibition explores music by black artists including record album covers, photographs and contemporary artworks,” the curator of the exhibition, Daniel Soliman, who claims to be an egyptologist, said.

“There are walls of album covers showing the influence of ancient Egypt on artists including Tina Turner, Earth Wind and Fire and Miles Davis, and a special interactive video installation.

“It’s not only about kind of African Americans taking Egyptian culture, it’s about a very wealthy commercial project that is to say Hollywood and other kind of related industries doing that.

“So the perception is that there are these wealthy Hollywood elites who are kind of taking advantage of Egyptian culture and kind of rewriting how they view their own identity right. So there are a lot of layers to this I think that are worth keeping in mind,” Soliman said.

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Collabo with Burna Boy enabled me buy house for my mum— Mozambican DJ Tarico

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Mozambican disc jockey and sound-producer, DJ Tarico, has credited Nigeria’s Afrobeats sensation, Burna Boy, with his sudden wealth which enabled him buy a house for his mother.

DJ Tarico attributed a collaboration with the Grammy Awards winning “African Giant” as the turning point in his story and said he would forever be grateful to the Nigerian star.

Speaking with the BBC African Voice on Saturday, DH Tarico said when he came up
with a particularly energetic beat one day, he couldn’t have predicted how it would change his life and that of his two friends.

He said one of his friends, Nelson Tivane, a songwriter and vocalist, came up with the lyric “Yaba Buluku” which was “inspired by the sound of coins jangling in a pocket”, while the other friend, Preck, “belted out that lyric with his gravelly, powerful voice,” with the song becoming an instant hit in their country.

“After we concluded the song, we went to a rural zone and we put a car with a big sound there, and we connected the song on the car and we saw many people dancing and ask ‘who is the owner of this song?’ Then we knew this song was going to be big!” Tarico recalls.

He said he was surprised that
none other than Burna Boy, realised the strength of “Yaba Buluku” and jumped on the remix, a move which had a massive impact on Tarico, Tivane and Preck.

“We were travelling all over Africa. Too many big artists were asking us for features. People started to know our face outside of Mozambique. We became internationals.

“And money! I bought a car, land and a house for my mother.”

The trio who now call themselves “Yaba Buluku Boyz”, have dropped their debut album, “Donsa”, on Friday, and are hoping to ride on the success of the collaboration to reach greatet heights in Africa and globally.

“Donsa”, according to DJ Tarico, “is high-energy, danceable amapiano, and features big African names including Ghana’s dancehall King Shatta Wale, Timaya from Nigeria and Harmonize from Tanzania,” he said.

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African men run away from single mothers— Joselyn Dumas

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Veteran Ghanaian actress and media personality, Joselyn Dumas, has lamented the fact that most African men shy away from getting married to single mothers due to the added responsibilities they will be saddled with.

The actress who made the assertion in her recent podcast, “Keeping it Real with Joselyn Dumas, The Perfect Picture”, opened up on the challenges of many single mothers who are struggling to find a partner because of societal biases.

In the podcast, Dumas who shared a personal story of a male friend whom she said refused to settle down with a lady because she had a child.

According to her, the friend named Anthony, firmly stated that it wasn’t his thing to be with a ‘born one’ or ‘born two’.

“He said B1, B2, I’m not in and I said to myself, ‘this is the reason why a lot of single mothers are single with their children.

“Now his reason was, why am I going to raise somebody’s child? That’s not my bloodline. He doesn’t have my DNA in him. Why am I now going to help someone’s bloodline grow? What about mine?” she said.

Dumas who is a single mother, noted that Anthony’s mindset is a “reflection of the views of a larger majority of people who don’t want to have meaningful relationship with single mothers.”

She also criticised what she termed as the double standard in society’s views on raising non-biological children, arguing that it should not be seen differently from adoption.

“I have a child but these men won’t even ask you, they don’t even care why you have a child. You’ve had seven miscarriages when you got married. You meet a guy, you were dating and you got pregnant, are you going to abort the baby because you aren’t married?

“He doesn’t want the child, are you going to throw the child away? No! You can raise the child. It takes a village to raise the child, so even if you don’t have a job, you will get support. This is part of the sacrifice you have to make regardless of what has happened,” she said.

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