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Karamo Susso, the talented young kora player from The Gambia, is putting on a free show at 19 Broadway in Fairfax (Marin County) on Thursday August 5, from 8 pm to 2 am.

I believe there will be djembé and other percussion and a few guest appearances. This should be a fun show.

If that’s not enough, some of the best ice cream in the Bay Area is right around the corner at the Fairfax Scoop. Highly recommended.

For more African music listings, visit the San Francisco Bay Area African Music Calendar.

Update: I originally posted that this show was on Friday, not Thursday. Hope this didn’t cause too much confusion.

Not all electricity is created equal. If you live in Vermont or Idaho, most of the power you use comes from hydropower and emits few pollutants. If you’re a resident of Washington, DC, your power comes completely from burning coal, which is much dirtier.

How does your electricity compare? You can get the answer from EPA’s Power Profiler website. It says it takes 5 minutes, but it only took me about 5 seconds. All you do is enter your website, and choose your power company.

The electric power I buy is less polluting than average:

That’s because more of my power comes from renewables (like wind and solar), hydro, and natural gas (which emits fewer conventional pollutants like nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide than coal, but still releases a lot of CO₂, which causes global warming).

The website is part of a recent update to the agency’s eGRID program, which I’ve used a bit in projects examining the emissions related to water use. Most people don’t think about it, but water use accounts for a great deal of energy use. More about that later.

A series of photos from the Boston Globe’s always-compelling online photo series, the “Big Picture”, showing the oil disaster in Dalian, China. The photo below shows the rescue of a cleanup worker who fell into oil-covered water while attempting to repair a pump. Truly heartbreaking. If estimates by the Chinese government are to be believed, the spill is less than 1% the size of the BP spill in the Gulf. (See this list of oil spills and their estimated volumes on Wikipedia.)

From the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program: a new database detailing over 60 different “enabling technologies” for handwashing. I really could have used this when I was a Peace Corps Water and Sanitation Extension Agent in West Africa a decade ago.

An enabling technology is an external or environmental factor that influences an individual’s opportunity to perform a behavior, regardless of their ability and motivation to act. Often overlooked in the design of handwashing initiatives, enabling technologies have been shown to facilitate handwashing behavior in several studies.

The World Bank-administered Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) developed a database to provide practitioners with information on the various types of enabling technologies, including purpose, benefits, key product features and specifications, pictures or illustrations, and contacts for further information

Washing hands with soap at critical times – after contact with feces and before handling food – could reduce diarrheal rates by up to 47 percent (Curtis and Cairncross, 2003). However, rates of handwashing with soap remain low throughout the developing world and large-scale promotion of handwashing behavior change is a challenge

For more information on enabling technologies, click here, contact Jacqueline Devine, wsp@worldbank.org , or visit www.wsp.org/scalinguphandwashing.

The San-Francisco-based artist Fely Tchaco, originally from Cote d’Ivoire, has an upcoming show. Even if her music were lousy (it’s not), I suspect she still attracts a crowd. Here is her myspace page, and official website. Also, here’s an SF Chronicle podcast featuring Fely from 2005.

Lots more concert listings at the San Francisco Bay Area African Music Calendar.

August 8 2010 7:00PM to 11:30PM
Don Quixote’s International Music Hall
6275 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018

About the artist:

Feye Felicite Tchaco affectionately known as “Fely” is a music sensation in Cote d’Ivoire . (The Ivory Coast , West Africa ) She began to sing, dance, and paint early in her childhood. Her father encouraged her to pursue painting, but young Fely was more interested in the adventure of entertainment. Soon she was escaping from home to sing with bands. Her first album ‘Amour Perdu’ (Lost Love) released in 1996 in Abidjan was an instant success and it immediately launched her career as singer and dancer.

Her second album ‘Aude a l’Amour’ (Ode to Love) recorded and released in Santa Monica, California in 1998 received rave reviews and enthusiastic reception in Cote d’Ivoire where the album was a huge success. As her popularity became evident, she toured West Africa and France performing for delighted fans. Her third album ‘De Zere Gnan’, (Homage to our Forefathers ) was recorded with World-Class musicians from Africa, United States , and Brazil . Fely sings in French, English, and various African popular Dialects.

Despite the variety of languages, the emotional power of her music transcends cultural borders. She has developed her own distinctive sound by pooling her various musical strengths in the mix of African rhythm, Latin, and Jazz.  Her new album ‘Awareness’ is receiving a strong response already; Fely’s Talent and ability to sing the many genres is resonating on the global music scene. 

Congress finally passed a financial reform bill, and BP finally stanched the gush of oil in the Gulf.

Of course, the experts say the bill was watered down, and there’s a chance the well could pop another leak.

Is this the beginning of the dreaded slippery slope to European-style socialist democracy? Sign me up! Perhaps we can capitalize on the momentum to get our troops home from the Middle East, reform the health care system, curb gun violence, and get corporate money out of politics.

The group Etran Finatawa is coming from Mali, West Africa for two shows at Yoshi’s in Oakland on Wednesday, July 21. If you’ve heard Tinariwen or the late, great Ali Farka Touré, you know how infectious this music can be. More info and tickets here.

Banning Eyre of Afropop Worldwide has a review of their recent album Tarkat Tajje (Let’s Go!) here:

The band formed in 2004, and this their 3^rd release finds them at ease and in excellent form, and thoughtful.  The song texts are rooted in local concerns—drought, deforestation, the education of children.  But now, seeing themselves as ambassadors to the world, the songwriters try to apply their ideas on a global scale, addressing “those who are leading the world.”  This is a music of tremendous sincerity and directness.  Translated to words on a page, the songs may appear a little simplistic, even naïve.  But experienced simply as sound and sentiment, they are clear, dry-eyed, and profoundly affecting.

See more music listings on the Bay Area African Music Calendar.

So many great African shows coming up. Check out the San Francisco Bay Area African Music Calendar for more. I’ve really gotten into the sound of Zimbabwean music lately. Last year’s show by Mawungira Enharira totally blew me away with their incredible charisma, rhythm, and soul. And I was totally charmed by kids in the Maru-a-Pula Marimba Ensemble from neighboring Botswana.

This upcoming show at the Freight looks great. The musicians are also teaching a set of workshops. No musical experience necessary!

Renold & Caution Shonhai, Erica Azim
Sunday, August 08, 8:00 pm (doors open at 7:00 pm)
renowned mbira playing brothers of Zimbabwe
$18.50 advance / $19.50 at door
Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse
2020 Addison Street
Berkeley CA 94704
510-644-2020
www.freightandsalvage.org

Mbira music has been used by the Shona people of Zimbabwe in religious and secular ceremonies for over a millennium. The instrument, made of two dozen metal keys mounted on a wood soundboard inside a resonating calabash gourd and played with the thumbs, produces music that combines entrancing melodies with invigorating polyphony and polyrhythms.

Renold and Caution Shonhai are brothers who play the ancient Shona mbira in traditional Zimbabwean ceremonies. Caution, the older of the two, is a traditional healer and herbalist, and is also the medium of their great-grandfather’s spirit, allowing him to play in the wonderful style of this great mbira player. The Shonhai brothers respect and follow the Shona traditions that their family has followed, generation after generation. They are also fluent in English, and enjoy sharing their music (mbira, singing, drumming, hosho rattles), dance, and culture.

Berkeley’s Erica Azim fell in love with Shona mbira music when she first heard it at the age of 16. In 1974, she became one of the first Americans to study mbira in Zimbabwe, and her teachers have included many of Zimbabwe’s top mbira masters past and present, including Forward Kwenda, with whom she has appeared on the Freight stage. Erica currently records, performs, and leads mbira workshops throughout the U.S. and directs the non-profit organization MBIRA, which provides financial support to Zimbabwean mbira players and instrument makers.

Renold & Caution will be teaching a workshop on Traditional Zimbabwean Songs w/ Renold & Caution Shonhai on Sunday, August 15, 1:30-3:00. Erica will be teaching Introduction to Zimbabwean Mbira, also on Sunday, August 15, 3:30-5:30 pm.

Visit Mbira.org for information on Renold & Caution and Erica.

Water pollution from grazing cattle is the subject of an article in the Journal of Water and Health by researchers at UC Davis titled, “Reducing the impact of summer cattle grazing on water quality in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California: a proposal.” Despite the fact that the journal is a publication is from the United Nation’s World Health Organization, the articles are not free, although I obtained a copy from the author Robert Derlet, MD. Here is the abstract. Read to the last sentence to get to their proposal.

The Sierra Nevada Mountain range serves as an important source of drinking water for the State of California. However, summer cattle grazing on federal lands affects the overall water quality yield from this essential watershed as cattle manure is washed into the lakes and streams or directly deposited into these bodies of water.

This organic pollution introduces harmful microorganisms and also provides nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus which increase algae growth causing eutrophication of otherwise naturally oligotrophic mountain lakes and streams. Disinfection and filtration of this water by municipal water districts after it flows downstream will become increasingly costly. This will be compounded by increasing surface water temperatures and the potential for toxins release by cyanobacteria blooms.

With increasing demands for clean water for a state population approaching 40 million, steps need to be implemented to mitigate the impact of cattle on the Sierra Nevada watershed. Compared to lower elevations, high elevation grazing has the greatest impact on the watershed because of fragile unforgiving ecosystems. The societal costs from non-point pollution exceed the benefit achieved through grazing of relatively few cattle at the higher elevations.

We propose limiting summer cattle grazing on public lands to lower elevations, with a final goal of allowing summer grazing on public lands only below 1,500 m elevation in the Central and Northern Sierra and 2,000 m elevation in the Southern Sierra.

This is the kind of public policy we need, based on peer-reviewed science and sound economics. The first author Dr. Derlet is a practicing medical doctor who became concerned about the impacts that grazing cattle have on the fragile land and water of the high Sierras. The Sacramento Bee ran a good article on the paper’s findings in April, Livestock waste found to foul Sierra waters:

As director of the emergency room at the UC Davis Medical Center, Robert Derlet always wondered what made people sick.

 Each summer, on hiking trips into the high Sierra, he brought that curiosity along, asking himself: Where do you get infections in the wilderness? The most obvious possibility, he believed, was the water.

 Now, after 10 years of fieldwork and 4,500 miles of backpacking, Derlet knows for sure. What he has learned – after analyzing hundreds of samples dipped from backcountry lakes and streams – is that parts of the high Sierra are not nearly as pristine as they look.

Nowhere is the water dirtier, he discovered, than on U.S. Forest Service land, including wilderness areas, where beef cattle and commercial pack stock – horses and mules – graze during the summer months. There, bacterial contamination was easily high enough to sicken hikers with Giardia, E. coli and other diseases. In places, slimy, pea-green algae also blossomed in the bacteria-laden water.

At issue is the tradition of cheap grazing permits from the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Many think that the costs to the environment and the public exceed the benefits of cheap summer grazing for a handful of large cattlemen.

When I corresponded with Dr. Derlet, he told me, “I have a 1 hr + lecture on “Water Quality in California: A case for adding new National Parks in the Sierra Nevada” I am willing to drive to the Bay Area to give this talk if you can get a minimum of 20 people to listen.” Anyone have any ideas for an organization with a lecture series that would be interested?