Creativity builds nations | Muthoni Drummer Queen

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In a hopeful talk followed by an empowering performance, musician and TED Fellow Muthoni Drummer Queen shares how industries like music, film and fashion provide a platform for Africans to broadcast their rich and diverse talents — and explains how the shared experience of creativity can replace attitudes of exclusionism and othering with acceptance and self-love.

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30 Comments on Creativity builds nations | Muthoni Drummer Queen

    • NPC #76
      Why do you consider art to be secondary to functionality? Isn’t the best way to approach this to consider both as equal, considering that without forms of art, human labour, and supposed ‘progress’ wouldn’t be checked by anything. The philosopher isn’t any less valuable in a society than an astronomer, and to suggest otherwise seems absurd to me.

    • NPC #76 You didn’t actually answer my question mate. You just replied with a nonsensical misuse of the term Communism, which you presumably acquired your supposed knowledge of from far right youtubers.

      So to ask again, why do you consider art, and any expression of humanity in the form of art, to be a secondary principle to functionality and labour in a society, even though in reality the two are intrinsically linked

    • Perspeii because I was directly involved in creative arts. I produced dnb for a top label, travelled all around the world djing, made average money being amazing at what I do. At 22 I decided to do a degree in computer science, then majored in psychology as well. With me it is purely anecdotal, but I have experience at the top of both fields.

      I see paying a lot of taxes, that in turn help the poor far more important than artistic forms that simply play on ones dopamine mechanisms for a short amount of time.

      Stem is fruitful for the majority of people that do it, creative arts isn’t, and it’s just a circlejerk for the 95% who won’t make it, taking out loans for useless things that most likely won’t result in a job. 🙂

  1. Kenya is one of the most unequal countries in the sub-region. Forty two percent of its population of 44 million, live below the poverty line.

    No offence, but I don’t think you need creative arts, you need clever people

  2. African nations have creativity.
    Western european nations have creativity.
    Yet it wasn’t the Ethiopians, Mali or songhai that grew out of slavery and the Iron age like Britain did, nor did the aztecs usher in the age of science like the swedish, Germans or Russians.

  3. It’s so sad to see vulnerable people like this indoctrinated into a predatory industry with all the right intentions, but none of the perspective they need to protect themselves.

  4. You learn something new every day. Today I learned that I am subscribed to TED Africa, which apparently has 15.2 million predominantly (99% or thereabout) non-African subscribers… I guess we never knew we needed those African drum beats in our lives and almost weekly stories of how great and prosperous Africa is, which I guess is why they want to share their prosperity with the rest of the world through illegal immigration of historically unprecedented proportions. Thanks Big Brother for this little programming session, now let’s go abolish all borders and hold hands and sing Kumbaya together!

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