Chris Smith’s blog

Livingstone, Zambia

Funny where procrastinating will get you. I’ve recently discovered the weird, wild, world of African MP3 blogs–old and new, afrobeat, high-life, and juju, from Angolan electronica to heavy West African funk. That’s how I came across Amanaz, a psych-rock band from northern Zambia, circa 1973. As far as I can tell they only put out one album, called Africa, but it’s a hell of an album. The sound is all fuzzed-out guitars and stoned-sounding lyrics–an African cousin of Cream, as the press release so aptly puts it. Interestingly, they weren’t as sui generis as the idea of an “African Cream” might sound today. They were part of a scene: there’s a recognized Zam-rock sound, with lots of the bands (like The W.I.T.C.H.) hailing from the copperbelt, an area most visitors to Zambia don’t visit (I never got anywhere near there, alas). Unfortunately, it’s impossible to find out much more about them online. Thirty-five years is a long time; who knows where they are now?

A few months after I first heard Amanaz, I found a reissue of Africa while grazing in Amoeba in the Upper Haight–it’s an lp, and it has that satisfying heft of 180-gram vinyl when you plop it down on the turntable. The lps are part of a really limited run, and hand-numbered; mine reads 445/450. Needless to say, it sounds fantastic.

For a taste, check out “Khala My Friend,” hosted on the Gorilla vs. Bear blog.

Everybody knows that DNA doesn’t lie, right? That’s what CSI has taught us: Just “follow the evidence,” as Gus Grissom says, and you’ll find your perp. Well, what if the statistics we use to convict suspects (those one-in-a-million odds we hear in the courtroom) are off by orders of magnitude? What if some DNA “matches” are nowhere near as airtight as we’ve come to believe? Bicka Barlow, a San Francisco defense attorney, is asking just these questions–and the government is stonewalling her. I explore these questions in “DNA’s Identity Crisis,” a story that took me months to report and write, in the latest issue of San Francisco magazine.

Plus: “Anatomy of a DNA Match: Why finding a criminal through DNA testing is a much dicier process than you’d think.”

Last week, Mother Jones ran an old photo of mine, one I made in 2002 of a Zimbabwean immigrant (or economic refugee, if you prefer) in his apartment in downtown Johannesburg.

As their nation slipped into chaos under the rule of longtime dictator Robert Mugabe, millions of Zimbabweans flooded into neighboring South Africa in search of work. Many ended up in Johannesburg, Southern Africa’s de facto capital, scratching out a living on the streets and sharing rooms in decaying apartment blocks in the city’s rundown core.

I made this photo in 2002, and things have only gone downhill since then, the years marked by spiraling inflation, stolen elections, and state-sponsored thuggery against the democratic opposition. Even if current power-sharing negotiations manage to loosen Mugabe’s grip on the country, Zimbabwe will need to be rebuilt, more or less, from the ground up.