"Par-tay!"

This is a nice wholesome video I remember fondly from my misspent youth. If you've seen it before, prepare for some nostalgia. If you haven't, prepare to be shocked. Either way, it's brilliant.

Indatwa

Yesterday was the International Women's day, which usually means there are a number of interesting events (plus some boring stuff) at the library. Ah yes, I was at the library again; the hub of cultural activities in this town. I watched an all-female band called Kraa perform, but I didn't dare take any photos because I was sitting dead-centre in the front row. It would have been disruptive just getting my phone out of my pants. (In case you're new here; all these photos were taken with my mobile phone.) However, I do have some photos of the african dance troupe Indatwa. They were kind enough to perform dances indigenous to Rwanda and Burundi.

This was apparently a girls' dance, although I'm pretty sure there's a guy with long hair in there too. He seemed to have a prominent role in the arrangements, so I can only assume that he's a choreographer/teacher.

At the end, two of the girls had a dance-off! Cute and awesome!

This children's dance had the most action and dialogue of all the dances that the troupe performed. It certainly seemed like a fun dance. Kind of reminded me of Mora Träsk's Tigerjakt, a children's song about hunting tigers. I'm not sure that's what this song is about (maybe I just didn't listen to the announcer), but I'm picturing a tribe teaching their young ones to hunt by using song and dance, the ultimate teaching tool! I use it all the time to teach programming. Jokes aside, I'm pretty sure passing on wisdom is what culture and religion is all about. Feel free to flame me all the same.

Library

If there's one thing I like about Sweden, it's the libraries. They all cooperate really well, for example by lending books to each other if the book you want to borrow isn't available in your library. This only surprises me since the rest of the country seems so disorganized. The only competent people work at libraries.

I digress. I was at the library a few days ago because my younger brother had a gig there. After he was done playing, I went upstairs and watched some capoiera. Apparently, there's a capoeira club in my town, and they had invited the caopoeira club from a neighbouring town to participate in the show.

I recorded this with a digital camera with no mic, so no sound in this clip. That's unfortunate, because the singing and rhythms were fun. On the plus side, it's a blast just watching that bald guy. I got the feeling that this guy was the instructor, since he led the songs, played the most complex looking intrument, and finished off the show with the coolest moves. The smoothness with which he easily flowed from move to move is exactly what I wanted to see.

Where the first clip was lacking in the sound department, this one is lacking in pretty much every department. At least it has sound, so now you can hear the singing and the sticks banging together. I've never seen this style of capoeira before (although I haven't seen much capoeira at all), and I must say I like it. Who doesn't want to see high-speed rhythmic stick fighting?

I'm guessing this week is some kind of culture week at the library, because today when I went in there to borrow some Richard K. Morgan books, I was greeted by piano and cello harmonies. To my mild surprise, a small ensemble was performing classical music to a rapt audience.

The music was nice, but I didn't have much time to listen to it since I was running around looking for a free computer to print out information on which books I wanted. Strangely, the music kind of fit my running up and down stairs. I suddenly had a private soundtrack for The Quest for the Unoccupied Library Computer, starring me as myself. I also got the privilege of shouting at a librarian for the first time, for her to hear me over the music. She seemed intimidated and frightened, but on the other hand, that's perfectly normal behaviour for a librarian.