We like to check in regularly and see what’s happening at www.africandigitalart.com, which recently featured lovely digital portraits of Wangari Maathai, founder of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Greenbelt Movement, who passed away September 25. A huge loss to the international environmental community, and to her native Kenya.

As for the artwork, take five minutes to scroll through, especially to the Nigerian Independence Day (Oct. 1) photos at the bottom. It’s political-nostaligic-confident-fashion photography, a pretty good representation of the country itself.

Pardon me, friends. The post about protest has been removed, because I’d meant to post it to a personal blog, not this one…maybe mobile web makes things a little too easy, eh?

At the very least, it was a good reminder that we’re overdue for some savory web bites over here at WorldSalon. Well, let’s see what we can find, shall we?

-JO

Some hip hop, some other stuff. What do you think?

How about International Freedom from France Day, or Severed from Spain day? Wouldn’t it be cool if former colonies all over the world celebrated independence together? Below are a couple of links to help us brush up on the history of global domination. Both of my countries, Nigeria and the US, could jointly celebrate this Monday July 4, Buh-Bye Britain Day (normally October 1 in Nigeria).

1. A map: http://chartsbin.com/view/wcy

2. A list: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_independence_days

3. A bunch of photos: http://www.newsweek.com/photo/2009/07/01/photos-independence-day-celebrations-around-the-world.html

Christian Guémy, fabulous stencil graffiti artist in France. Lovely portraits. His myspace page has a great soundtrack, by the way. http://www.myspace.com/c215

Ever see anyone play a guitar like this? Check out this woman from Botswana.

Show & Tell: Where do you live? Where are you from? Where’s your culture? I’m in Upcountry South Carolina, USA. The area’s known for mountains, hills and rivers, and horses are also a big part of the culture. This pic is from the website of a bed and breakfast in the hills.

France’s Rouen Museum Returns Mummified Maori Head to New Zealand After 136 Years

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=47233

WorldSalon aims to build a worldwide community of people committed to a certain place. Awesome. But what’s a place? That is the question that we aim to answer over the next few weeks. We will find that a place is its people, its music, its history, its landscape, it’s birds and fishes. And many other things, we hope you’ll share. Ask your mom what a place is. Ask a nine-year-old. Ask your lover. Share with rest of us what they have to say.

African music channel from OkayPlayer. We’ll be checking this one out regularly in an ongoing quest for World-hipness.