Staff Benda Bilili
When I met these musicians in the lobby of their Hamburg hotel, they should have been tired after driving up all the way from Frankfurt. Instead, over a glass of whisky, they greeted me with an acapella piece of ‘Marguerite,’ a piece of Congolese Rumba.
Most of the musicians are crippled by polio and spent a good part of their lives in the streets of Kinshasa. No strangers to improvisation, they play with everything that is at hand. Spoons and sugar bowls as percussion instruments, self-made guitars or, the invention of the youngster in the band, a tin with a string attached. It’s hard to classify this music: while ‘Marguerite’ is Congolese Rumba at its finest, other songs are funky, more modern without ever losing sight of its Congolese roots. Check out their website here. The German version of this report can be found here. Foto by Dimitrij Leltschuk.
Don’t do evil!
In the United States, the battle over genetically modified crops is over. Much of America’s corn, soybean and cotton production is genetically modified. Farmers across the country’s corn belt in the midwest benefit from good harvests. But, they are also making themselves increasingly dependent on the seed producers. One name is sticking out: Monsanto. A report for Deutsche Welle TV.
The German version can be found here.
Strahlendes Erbe
Einsturzgefährdete Endlager und strahlendes sowjetisches Kriegsgerät: Wie soll man mit den strahlenden Abfällen aus ziviler und militärischer Nutzung umgehen? Wie werden sie entsorgt, und wie kann man sie sicher lagern? Abenteuer Wissen war im russischen Militärhafen Murmansk und bei einem Geologenteam in der Schweiz auf der Suche nach dem idealen Endlager.
A feature on the fate of Soviet nuclear submarines and how to store radioactive waste for ZDF’s Abenteuer Wissen strand.
