Not appearing:
Lapiro de Mbanga
Performance by:
Lamine Touré and Group Saloum
16 November 2010
Littlefield, 622 Degraw St., Brooklyn
Doors open at 7 p.m., $7 advance; $10 door

Purchase tickets online here

In Session 3, the Boston-based Afro-pop ensemble Lamine Touré and Group Saloum will perform a banned song by the imprisoned Cameroonian singer Lapiro de Mbanga, who will join on mobile phone from his jail cell. With a discussion forum with Maran Turner, Executive Director of Freedom Now, a Washington-based legal advocacy organization working towards Lapiro's release.

LAPIRO DE MBANGA is a popular Cameroonian singer and a 2009 recipient of the Freedom To Create Prize. Lapiro’s songs, sung in a local pidgin mixing English, French, and Doula, have often courted political controversy. His 2008 release, "Constitution Constipée," denounces a constitutional amendment removing presidential term limits and calls on president Paul Biya to step down. The song was banned from the television and radio networks. In February 2008 it became an unofficial anthem of street demonstrations, and in September, Lapiro was sentenced to three years in the New Bell prison near Douala. He intends to take his case to the Supreme Court.