Kufiyas (and other pop Orientalisms) in SPIN's 20 Best Videos of 2010

SPIN Magazine's list of the 20 Best Videos of 2010 was recently published. The kufiya makes appearances in two of the top 20.

At number 20: MIA's "Born Free." You read about it on hawblawg here.

At number 7, Superchunk's "Digging for Something." You read about it on hawgblawg here.

Superchunk - Digging For Something from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Some well-known kufiya wearers show up in other vids. Das Racist's "Who's That Brown?" is #6.



Das Racist don't wear kufiyas in the vid, but they have been spotted wearing them on other occasions. (The t-shirt, worn by Victor Vazquez, says Coca Cola in Arabic.)


?uestlove of The Roots shows up in Duck Sauce's "Barbara Streisand" video (# 9), at about 0:27. As hawgblawg readers now, he too is a sometime kufiya wearer. (The photo below looks better than the one on the original post.)


Other pop Orientalisms:

Fez alert! Armand Van Helden of Duck Soup is shown wearing a Shiner's Fez in the "Barbara Streisand" video (#9) at 0:36. This puts him in very good company, as you know from reading hawblawg's previous fez alerts.

And RZA of the Wu Tang Clan shows up throughout the Vampire Weekend "Giving Up the Gun" video (#4) as the tennis umpire. RZA is a member of the Nation of Gods and Earths (Five Percenters). You've read my article about the Five Percenters here. And I've told you about THE book about the Nation, by Michael Muhammad Knight's The Five Percenters: Islam, Hip-hop, and the Gods of New York.

RZA and the rest of the Wu Tang are from Shaolin (Staten Island). I was born there too. That about ties it all together.

Happy New Year!