Because I had already introduced the Sixto Rodriguez story to students in my Honors colloquium Detroit: Arts City, I mentioned him when working with those students to create a map of the city's points of interest. They were developing a map for the BSU delegation that traveled to Detroit for the annual meeting of the AAG, and I wondered aloud whether there might be some kind of monument to visit. It took the students less than a minute to find the building where he had worked in anonymity for decades.
For years, my friend and colleague from South Africa had been telling me about the 2012 film Searching Sugar Man. When I finally got around to it, both my spouse and I were big fans. I ordered a Sixto Rodriguez CD before we even finished the film. The trailer is full of spoilers, but the story is riveting, even if you know how it ends.
A very nice introduction to his music is the orchestral performance of Crucify Your Mind on Late Night. As David Letterman remarks, the story is fascinating and impossible and true, all at the same time.
I recently realized that I had included Egyptian musician Seun Kuti in my Africa regional class, but had not remembered to mention him in this class, where his story is even more appropriate.
I found myself returning to his story because we are doing some work on economic geography that relates to the outsized role of IMF on the continent.
As NPR journalist Anastasia Tsioulcas reports, he "is the youngest son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. He began playing with his father's band Egypt 80 at age 8 — and took it over upon his father's death just six years later."
Please read the text that accompanied her "First Listen" audio story -- it describes many of the tracks (including one entitled IMF) and has links to related music, including some from his father. For the IMF video, I recommend enabling the closed captions on YouTube, even though the song is in English. Note that the captions skip the part where Kuti renames the "Monetary Fund" part of IMF to a more commonly used meaning of MF.
Lagniappe
When I was attending a meeting in my hometown (Washington, DC) with students from Brazil circa 2010, the walk from a hotel we could afford to the university hosting the meeting had us passing a lot of landmarks. When we passed the White House my students craned their necks in hopes of glimpsing then-president Obama. They were disappointed when I told them an arriving motorcade of 6 vehicles was probably a cabinet secretary, and that we would be nowhere near the place if if were the president.
But I digress: the relevant landmark was the World Bank (which is the conjoined twin of IMF). My otherwise lovely and polite students seemed ready to spit on the building. I have to admit being a bit impressed, but it should not be surprising. Educated people in the Global South recognize the damage that WB/IMF have done in the name of "development."
My presentation Sovereign Debt and the Erosion of Sovereignty tells the deep back story. I first gave this presentation in 2001, and sadly I have only needed to update some of the details -- the basic story has not changed at all. It is particularly poignant that Kuti is from Egypt -- the story begins there, when his father was still young.
Because this film is important, I showed the trailer to students in The Planet Sings seminar.
Before two minutes had passed, I realized that I need to share the entire film. Because it exceeds the length of a single class session, we are now spending much of this week with this film. As of this writing, we have watched the first half of this remarkable story.
I have managed not to divulge the spoiler that comes in the second half, when the kids from Cateura (on the outskirts of Asunción) make a surprising connection with musicians in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, we have seen the unfolding of a tale that is remarkable -- and relevant -- in several ways. The first protagonist is an environmental educator who pivots to a music education, illustrating the value of humanities education, even in extremely limited circumstances. Just as many middle-income communities in the United States were busy gutting music education in the pursuit of lower taxes, he was working with industrious and ingenious neighbors to build an orchestra with literal garbage.
Connections
The "Planet Sings" course and broader project have led me to involve music in my teaching in much the same way I have involved coffee over the past two decades. That is, I am now using geography to learn about music and music as a way to learn about geography.
This means that watching this film with students caused me to pursue a lot of geographic tangents. For example, we discussed the antipodal example of nearby Formosa, Argentina (the exact opposite of Taiwan's home island of Formosa) and the distinctive linguistic situation of Paraguay.
Another example is chimarrão. Because Landfill Harmonic is set in the Paraguay, many people are seen drinking the tea known as yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis). This tradition is shared with neighbors in Argentina and southernmost Brazil. It is sometimes described as a gaucho tradition. Between the two halves of the film, a friend posted this online -- the sign reads "Entry Prohibited without Chimarrão."
Image: Bruna Silva Mendes
In Brazil, it is known as Chimarrão and because of internal migration, I first learned about it in 1996 many hundreds of miles to the north, in Porto Velho. I have enjoyed it during most of my visits to Brazil, north and south, including my 2019 return to PVH.
Photo: Dr. Miguel Nenevé
Bigger Picture
In addition to some interesting details of cultural geography, the story brings to mind some important ideas about geography writ large. Specifically, the teacher Favio Chávez impresses me as a MOBAL in the parlance of geographer Harm de Blij. Our department was fortunate to host Dr. de Blij (du-BLAY) for visits in 2006 and 2009. During the second visit, he was the distinguished Class of 1942 lecturer, and his comments emerged from his book The Power of Place. My brief review explains how I think of this term, in the context of the book itself.
During his second visit, Dr. de Blij was among the first to visit EarthView. He is the rather professorial chap in the back-left, wearing a red tie.
Lagniappe
See the 2022 post Musica: Paraguay on my main blog for further thoughts.
In our house, we appreciate good food as much as we do good music. We were delighted to hear Cuban-American restaurateur Patricia Estorino connect the two during her recent interview on the GBH radio program The Culture Show. As she says, the older she gets, the more she realizes that EVERYTHING is connected. (It was the last segment on the October 9 program; jump to 42:00 for a bit of music and then her conversation with journalist Jared Bowen.)
We are looking forward to visiting Gustazo Cuban Kitchen and Bar -- either in Cambridge or in Waltham. Hearing this interview reminds me of another excellent Cuban eatery in our region -- Café Reyes in Worcester. Unlike Gustazo, I have already been to Café Reyes (though not recently) and can report first-hand that it has both wonderful food and beautiful visual arts.
Note: Gustazo is for dinner; Reyes for breakfast and lunch. Both offer catering. I was contemplating all of this while making breakfast this morning and listening to Havana Meets Kingston, which was recently recommended by a student in this class. I was not paying close attention until I heard the tune Chan Chan in Dub -- a reggae take on one of my very favorite songs.
The image above -- although AI art is not something I usually like to use -- is as good a place as any to start this discussion. It is, of course, a reference to the last time the current POTUS interacted with Puerto Rico. More recently, he and his ilk are reacting with shock that a Puerto Rican will be performing at the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show. They are treating it as a foreign invasion, in part because the artist known as Bad Bunny has otherwise avoided performing in the United States this year, even though he is a citizen. Like many of us, he is concerned about the unlawful abduction of people of color by masked government agents.
For some basic PR geography, see "Yo Soy Boricua, Pa Que Tu Lo Sepas" (Movie Trailer)
Of course, this is not Mr. Bunny's first rodeo. He appeared twice during the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show with headliners Shakira and J. Lo. That game was held in Miami and featured a vibrant Puerto Rican flag, with plenty of U.S. flags as well. As of this writing, the YouTube video of this show has had 330 million views. The nation and the NFL seem to have done just fine.
Bad Bunny established Good Bunny Foundation in 2018 to broaden access to the arts and sports among Puerto Rican children and youth. Those who discredit him either do not know this or they do not care.
Because this Honors course is a speaking-intensive seminar, I not only bring music to the course -- I invite (require) students to do the same. In the Fall 2025 semester, the first assignment of this kind had students exploring the Putumayo catalog (see my May 2025 Dan Storper memoriam post for some of the story of this important label).
The students rose to the occasion -- each sharing a different song, most of which are available on YouTube. Two dozen students brought music from almost as many countries and share stories about the artists and the geography of their origins. All of the music is so enjoyable that I have collected the videos in this playlist.
Polyrhythmic batuku (or batuka) is both a form of music and dance and a form of resistance and memory. I was fortunate to visit a gathering of women in Cidade Velha as they practiced batuka drumming/singing/dancing during my January 2024 travel course.
Notice I did not use the word "performance" because this was a private moment in a community of women, and some visitors were fortunate to gather around the edges of the space in which they were gathered.
It had been a couple of years earlier that I learned of Madonna's performance with members of that same community. As much as I enjoy Madonna's work generally, I must admit I was skeptical about this video. But I learned about it from a Cape Verdean -- my kriolu language professor -- and so I accept it for what it appears to be: a visitor from outside being welcomed by Cape Verdeans, as I have been. That's morabeza.
There is much more to be said about this music in general and this video in particular. For now, I am posting it in a way to facilitate sharing it with students in at least three different courses I am teaching in the fall: Detroit, Africa, and world music. It is relevant to all three!
Batuku session in Cidade Velha, 2024 Photo by JH-B / Context in Cabo Verde Photos
Lagniappe
Read the Batuku-Finason article by my friend Gláucia for a rich description of this oldest of Cabo Verdean musical forms, several local videos, and Charles Darwin's experience with this music. Yes, that Charles Darwin!
