Last Wednesday, the youth-focused US news website Mic.com posted a video to Facebook that quickly clocked up more than 10 million views.
Titled 23 Ways You Could Be Killed If You Are Black in America, the film features singers Alicia Keys, Beyoncé, Bono, Pharrell Williams, Rihanna and many others. No one sings or performs in the stark, black-and-white video. Instead, the stars flatly state the circumstances and reasons, many of them shockingly innocuous, surrounding the shootings of African-Americans by law-enforcement officers in the United States.
“Walking home with a friend,” says R&B singer Janelle Monáe, before we see a photo of Greg Gunn, who was killed in February in Montgomery, Alabama.
“Calling for help after an accident,” says rapper ASAP Rocky.
“Walking away from police,” says Common.
“Walking toward police,” says Queen Latifah.
The timing of the release of the video was no accident – July 13 marked the third anniversary of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood-watch coordinator who shot and killed 17-year-old high-school student Trayvon Martin – another casualty the video pays tribute to – at a gated community in Sanford, Florida.
Zimmerman’s acquittal was also a factor in the coining of the #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) hashtag on social media, and the subsequent, increasingly high-profile activist movement of the same name, which was founded by black community workers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi in the summer of 2013.
BLM has raised public awareness through staged “die-ins” – at which participants lie prostrate in public spaces – and hundreds of protests and marches across the US.
The role of popular musicians and other celebrities in the promotion of BLM has become more prominent of late.
Kendrick Lamar's Alright, the 2015 song he described as a "chant of hope", has become the key anthem of the movement. Protesters can be heard singing its quirky and hooky chorus ("Do you hear me, do you feel me? We gon' be all right") en masse at demonstrations.
As well as the evocative lyrics and Lamar’s electrifying performance, the track’s power derives from producer Pharrell Williams’s rich and extraordinarily inventive arrangements. The accompanying video was a further talking point: Lamar raps on top of a trashed police car covered in graffiti.
‘Silence is our enemy’
Monáe aligned herself with BLM fairly early on. She took part in one of the movement's marches in Philadelphia in August last year, and led fellow artists from her Wondaland Records label on the protest single Hell You Talmbout that same month.
A decidedly Afrocentric call-and-response affair, the song, available on the Wondaland Records SoundCloud account, shouts the names of black victims of shootings by police officers.
“We recorded it to challenge the indifference, disregard and negligence of all who remain quiet about this issue,” Monáe wrote in an Instagram post.
“Silence is our enemy. Sound is our weapon.”
Beyoncé weighs in
Much more visible, though, is Beyoncé's latest album Lemonade, which was launched on Tidal, the streaming service she co-owns with her rapper husband Jay Z and other stars.
Released in April, Lemonade clearly joins the dots between the black civil-rights movements of the past and present. This is Bey channelling the sentiments, though not the sounds, of James Brown's 1968 single Say It Loud – I'm Black And I'm Proud, and Billie Holiday's haunting 1939 evocation of southern state lynchings, Strange Fruit. Lemonade's accompanying promotional film, which was screened on HBO, features moving footage of the mothers of Mike Brown (shot dead at the age of 18 by police in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014) and Trayvon Martin. Both women are seen weeping while holding the last photos taken of their sons.
The film has been nominated for four Emmy awards, including Outstanding Variety Special and Outstanding Picture Editing. The imagery it contains, which hammers home the stark realities of injustice and loss, is difficult to see as anything other than powerful and necessary.
Beyoncé laid the groundwork for Lemonade in February, with her show-stopping performance of the album track Formation as part of the Super Bowl half-time show. With its state-of-the-art sonics and booming sub-bass, the song is a powerful ode to black womanhood, and recalls stereotypes. "I like my baby hair, with baby hair and afros / I like my negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils."
International response
The Black Lives Matter movement has also inspired artists outside of the US. Last week, British hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks posted on Facebook a music video for the punchy, incisive SLBK, in response to Black Lives Matter marches in London, Berlin and Amsterdam last week.
Galvanised by the BLM protests across the Atlantic, the young rappers, from Brighton, used SLBK to comment on the poverty and gang violence affecting black youths in the United Kingdom.
Music-streaming website 8.tracks.com currently offers 20 Black Lives Matter playlists.
Songs such as D'Angelo's Prince-like gem The Charade ("All we wanted was a chance to talk / 'Stead we got outlined in chalk"); J Cole's ballad Be Free; and Lauryn Hill's Black Rage (an audacious reworking of The Sound of Music's My Favourite Things), have also been adopted as anthems by BLM followers.
But to paraphrase a 1964 civil-rights anthem by soul great Sam Cooke, one senses that, if “a change is gonna come”, it needs to be soon, and peaceful. This is a point underlined by events in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Sunday, where gunman Gavin Long shot dead three police officers before being shot and killed himself.
artslife@thenational.ae
The five pillars of Islam
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Floward
Based: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Founders: Abdulaziz Al Loughani and Mohamed Al Arifi
Sector: E-commerce
Total funding: About $200 million
Investors: Aljazira Capital, Rainwater Partners, STV and Impact46
Number of employees: 1,200
'Morbius'
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Stars: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona
Rating: 2/5
UAE central contracts
Full time contracts
Rohan Mustafa, Ahmed Raza, Mohammed Usman, Chirag Suri, Mohammed Boota, Sultan Ahmed, Zahoor Khan, Junaid Siddique, Waheed Ahmed, Zawar Farid
Part time contracts
Aryan Lakra, Ansh Tandon, Karthik Meiyappan, Rahul Bhatia, Alishan Sharafu, CP Rizwaan, Basil Hameed, Matiullah, Fahad Nawaz, Sanchit Sharma
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Klipit
Started: 2022
Founders: Venkat Reddy, Mohammed Al Bulooki, Bilal Merchant, Asif Ahmed, Ovais Merchant
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: Digital receipts, finance, blockchain
Funding: $4 million
Investors: Privately/self-funded
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
If you go:
The flights: Etihad, Emirates, British Airways and Virgin all fly from the UAE to London from Dh2,700 return, including taxes
The tours: The Tour for Muggles usually runs several times a day, lasts about two-and-a-half hours and costs £14 (Dh67)
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is on now at the Palace Theatre. Tickets need booking significantly in advance
Entrance to the Harry Potter exhibition at the House of MinaLima is free
The hotel: The grand, 1909-built Strand Palace Hotel is in a handy location near the Theatre District and several of the key Harry Potter filming and inspiration sites. The family rooms are spacious, with sofa beds that can accommodate children, and wooden shutters that keep out the light at night. Rooms cost from £170 (Dh808).
The specs: 2017 Porsche 718 Cayman
Price, base / as tested Dh222,500 / Dh296,870
Engine 2.0L, flat four-cylinder
Transmission Seven-speed PDK
Power 300hp @ 6,500rpm
Torque 380hp @ 1,950rpm
Fuel economy, combined 6.9L / 100km
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Xpanceo
Started: 2018
Founders: Roman Axelrod, Valentyn Volkov
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: Smart contact lenses, augmented/virtual reality
Funding: $40 million
Investor: Opportunity Venture (Asia)
Company Profile
Company name: Namara
Started: June 2022
Founder: Mohammed Alnamara
Based: Dubai
Sector: Microfinance
Current number of staff: 16
Investment stage: Series A
Investors: Family offices
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Profile of Udrive
Date started: March 2016
Founder: Hasib Khan
Based: Dubai
Employees: 40
Amount raised (to date): $3.25m – $750,000 seed funding in 2017 and a Seed+ round of $2.5m last year. Raised $1.3m from Eureeca investors in January 2021 as part of a Series A round with a $5m target.
U19 WORLD CUP, WEST INDIES
UAE group fixtures (all in St Kitts)
Saturday 15 January: v Canada
Thursday 20 January: v England
Saturday 22 January: v Bangladesh
UAE squad
Alishan Sharafu (captain), Shival Bawa, Jash Giyanani, Sailles Jaishankar, Nilansh Keswani, Aayan Khan, Punya Mehra, Ali Naseer, Ronak Panoly, Dhruv Parashar, Vinayak Raghavan, Soorya Sathish, Aryansh Sharma, Adithya Shetty, Kai Smith
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
The Roundup : No Way Out
Director: Lee Sang-yong
Stars: Don Lee, Lee Jun-hyuk, Munetaka Aoki
Rating: 3/5
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Revibe
Started: 2022
Founders: Hamza Iraqui and Abdessamad Ben Zakour
Based: UAE
Industry: Refurbished electronics
Funds raised so far: $10m
Investors: Flat6Labs, Resonance and various others
Kill
Director: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
Starring: Lakshya, Tanya Maniktala, Ashish Vidyarthi, Harsh Chhaya, Raghav Juyal
Rating: 4.5/5
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre flat-six twin-turbocharged
Transmission: eight-speed PDK automatic
Power: 445bhp
Torque: 530Nm
Price: Dh474,600
On Sale: Now
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Company name: baraka
Started: July 2020
Founders: Feras Jalbout and Kunal Taneja
Based: Dubai and Bahrain
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: $150,000
Current staff: 12
Stage: Pre-seed capital raising of $1 million
Investors: Class 5 Global, FJ Labs, IMO Ventures, The Community Fund, VentureSouq, Fox Ventures, Dr Abdulla Elyas (private investment)
The five pillars of Islam
World Test Championship table
1 India 71 per cent
2 New Zealand 70 per cent
3 Australia 69.2 per cent
4 England 64.1 per cent
5 Pakistan 43.3 per cent
6 West Indies 33.3 per cent
7 South Africa 30 per cent
8 Sri Lanka 16.7 per cent
9 Bangladesh 0
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Qureos
Based: UAE
Launch year: 2021
Number of employees: 33
Sector: Software and technology
Funding: $3 million
Votes
Total votes: 1.8 million
Ashraf Ghani: 923,592 votes
Abdullah Abdullah: 720,841 votes