Don’t Expect No Help At All

I can’t handle your problems
So don’t try to handle mine
Get yourself a shotgun, a pocket full of shells
And we can while away the time

After the League Of Nations granted Belgium a colonial mandate to run Ruanda-Urundi (thus named by the previous German colonialists) in 1924,  they placed members of the minority Tutsi people in charge. To an extent, this was an enlightened move, in that both native peoples accepted that Tutsis were naturally more suited to control and administration and Hutus more suited to farming. But the Belgians formalised this difference into a class system, arbitrarily classifying anyone owning more than 10 cows as a Tutsi, forcing everyone to carry ethnic identity cards and allowing only Tutsis to attain higher education and hold positions of power.

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Guernica

75 years ago today the German Luftwaffe and Italian Aviazione Legionaria carried out an aerial raid, on behalf of General Franco’s Fascist forces, on a small town seen as being of strategic importance in the struggle for the control of Spain. The name of that town became stamped on the world’s consciousness, both because it was one of the first ever bombing raids on a defenceless civilian population and also because it inspired the creation of one of the twentieth-century’s most powerful works of art.

 

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The Story So Far

Should you wish to catch up on the tour so far, the links below connect to the appropriate day’s post:

April 7th: Wembley Empire Pool, London
April 8th: Wembley Empire Pool, London
April 11th: Newcastle City Hall
April 14th: Tivolis Koncertsal, Copenhagen
April 16th: Aarhus University
April 17th: Tivolis Koncertsal, Copenhagen
April 21st: Beat-Club, Bremen
April 24th: Rheinhalle, Dusseldorf

Since this was first posted, the WordPress audio player has changed. The music from these eight days can be found below:

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