Kelefa Sanneh

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kelefa Sanneh is an American journalist and music critic. From 2000 to 2008, he wrote for the New York Times, covering the rock 'n' roll, hip-hop, and pop music scenes. He now writes about culture for The New Yorker.

Sanneh garnered considerable publicity for an article he wrote in the October 31, 2004, issue of the The New York Times titled "The Rap against Rockism."^[1] The article brought to light to the general public a debate among American and British music critics about rockism, a term Sanneh defined inductively to mean "idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the lip-syncher." In the essay, Sanneh further asks music listeners to "stop pretending that serious rock songs will last forever, as if anything could, and that shiny pop songs are inherently disposable, as if that were necessarily a bad thing. Van Morrison's "Into the Music" was released the same year as the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight"; which do you hear more often?"

In 2008, he left The New York Times to join The New Yorker as a staff writer.

Before covering music for the Times, he was the deputy editor of Transition, a journal of race and culture, based at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, at Harvard University.

His writing has also appeared in The Source; Rolling Stone; Blender; the Village Voice; Man’s World (“India’s classiest men’s magazine”); “Da Capo Best Music Writing” in 2002, 2005, and 2007; and newspapers around the world.

He was born in Birmingham, England, UK, and spent his early years in Ghana and Scotland. He now lives in Brooklyn.

[edit] "Project Trinity"

Sanneh wrote "Project Trinity," which appeared in The New Yorker's April 7, 2008, edition, to give context to the controversial comments of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who was Barack Obama's pastor. The article provides a historical context of the Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama's church, and to Wright, the former pastor of Trinity.