Blood & Creativity

I’m lucky enough to come from an interesting family. I’m not even talking about my extended family. They’re cool too, but no: I’m talking nuclear. We don’t blow our trumpet a lot because we don’t really believe in it: we just each enjoy doing what we each do.

That said, we like to support each other and in that vein, I’m shouting out three members of my family (we are legion though: expect a shoutout more here and there over time).

Metropolis (of Foreign Beggars)

My brother Ebow was always the most talented amongst us.

He’s been obsessed with music since he was 7 and besides rapping, he can sing, act and play a bunch of instruments, including drums, keys… even the trombone (freak).

He is always, always putting in work, making music or touring with his award-winning underground hiphop group, Foreign Beggars. Besides that, under the moniker Yorke Beats (after my grandmother, Marian Elliot-Yorke) he’s a beatmaker with his girlfriend, the beautiful and equally talented DJ Chesca.

Here’s his latest video:

Efua Dorkenoo OBE

According to Wikipedia, my mother “… is a Ghanaian  campaigner against female genital cutting [or female genital mutilation, depending on which side of that argument you're on: long story]. She was one of the founders of FORWARD – The Foundation for Women’s Health, Research and Development. It began with a wider women’s health agenda, but later concentrated on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) because of the opportunity the organisation gave for pushing the issue in the West.She is perhaps best known for writing “Cutting the Rose – Female genital mutilation: the practice and its prevention.”

I don’t know who put that up but I should update it sometime to add the fact that her book was named one of Africa’s Top 100 Books of the 20th Century, that she went on to work for the World Health Organisation, that she was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to the fight for women’s rights (alongside Gloria Steinem) by Equality Now, who have since employed her as a Director for Advocacy.

All that and she finds time to be the best mother on earth.

Kasapoley

I don’t really know exactly when it happened but my sister became a critic. This is important because we don’t have that many real critics here. Most don’t back their words with action. Or they simply write what they have been paid to write.

Kuks was always the most outspoken and most frank of us all. When she started blogging about a couple of months back, little did I know that she would soon overtake me both in terms of content and followers.

Unlike some critics I’ve come across who write freely and conform in public, Kukuwah doesn’t just speak her mind: she bravely lives it, and refuses to be constrained by either the conservative forces in our society or by the ignorant.

The insecure mistake it for arrogance and rudeness, but talk to her and they find themselves burned by the fierceness of a young intellect unsatisfied with mediocrity and hungry for new knowledge and new ways of doing things.

Her blog is Kasapoley.

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