It was brought to my attention that there was a Malagasy designer (Haingotiana Ramahandry) that was going to have a fashion show with other African designers (from Senegal, The Ivory Coast, and The Republic of Congo) here in New York City so I decided to stop by and check it out.

This event took place in a hotel and I must say it was tough taking photos since the lighting wasn’t too bright. I used my Canon 5D + 70-200 f/2.8 lens and 135mm f/2.0 lens later on which just barely made it possible to take photos. It took a while to iron the clothes or something so things got started a bit late. It was ok since I was just chatting up with the other photographers. I was happy to see some unique creations which had a flair of the modern and the classic. I’m always amazed by the infinite possibilities in any art form.

Here are some photos of Haingotiana’s work.

Here’s Haingotiana and a model walking down the runway with her after her exhibition was over.

Here we have the Ambassador, his wife (in pink to his left) and a Malagasy couple watching on.

Haingotiana’s standing with the other African designers after the day was done.

Finally a little performance at the end African style.

Gasy Kalo is the band that was playing in the opening weeks at the Bronx Zoo’s Madagascar! exhibit. When I saw them at the zoo, they were playing what I believe to be a wide assortment of music which is representative of the country as opposed to their own music. I was happy to hear they were going to play in town because that meant they would probably play their own music.

I didn’t know this was actually some fellow Malagasy’s birthday party. Two of us also had birthday’s near by so we took the opportunity to also have fun in this rare moment. The Malagasy version of “Happy Birthday” was pretty interesting to me as I’ve never heard it that way.

I didn’t bother taking photos this time because audio is the most important thing for a band’s performance. I took my Nikon P3 for video purposes and Zoom H2 audio recorder. It’s not the best video nor audio but I wasn’t going to be too serious with recording anything tonight. Hey sometimes you have to jump in the moment instead of living it in the third person perspective. I did have to do a bit of editing to make the following video but for me it’s pretty easy.

I thought the band grooved pretty well. I’m fairly intrigued by the beat and how there are two bass guitars. The girl can also REALLY shake her body. Amazing! Now that I look back at the final edit, there is a bit too much of her dancing but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing haha.

So here is a clip of the festivities. Enjoy!

It’s pretty amazing that they decided to make an exhibition on Madagascar at the Bronx Zoo in New York City. This island off the south east coast of Africa is one of the world’s most unique places and like many other places unfortunately, it is endangered. Education is one of the first steps in preservation. In this exhibition you get a very small glimpse at some flora and fauna which exist only in Madagascar.

One of the reasons I wanted to go to the zoo was to checkout the band, Gasy Kalo, who were playing for a limited time. The special festivities were happening only for the first six weeks or so. The band also played during Madagascar’s independence day party but that’s quite a different set list than trying to represent the music of Madagascar at the zoo. The band members are comprised of the various people of different parts of the island which is very cool.

I normally don’t take photos of animals as I’m not equiped enough with a long telephoto lens but it’s fun to try. I brought with me today Canon 5D + 70-200 f4 IS + Kenko 1.5x teleconvertor and a Nikon D300 + Tamron 17-50 2.8 + Nikon SB-400 flash + MB-D10 grip. A Nikon P3 was used for the videos.

Parking was a little ways off from the Madagascar area so we went by some various animals and visited the world of birds first. Now there’s a bunch of bird exhibits so I’m not sure which birds are which anymore while looking through my photos haha. I’m not going to guess which we saw first. By the exhibition, there were some people dressed as lemurs and puppeteers outside the Madagascar! building.

Before entering the exhibition or seeing any other parts of the zoo, which could be done at anytime, I wanted to watch the band Gasy Kalo perform first.

Here’s one of their songs I made a video of. Sorry about the bad audio quality. A point and shoot digital camera is not really a good video camera. This particular song isn’t a style I’m familiar with Malagasy music.

 
We now enter the Madagascar exhibition. The Tsingy as well as the other environments were simulated of course. The amount of research to do this is rather astounding. They had a bunch of the hissing roaches on display which is quite overwhelming really. There were even some albino ones but they’re not in the photos. Imagine these critters running all around you. Sounds like an episode of fear factor. The last photo is of a lemur skull which is a reminder of the human threat to the animals.

We exited and were greeted by somebody holding one of the roaches as well as some Malagasy goods (for display only). This particular roach seemed bigger than the other ones and was more colorful also. Maybe that’s because it’s in the sunlight now as opposed to the “caves” before. Although I’m not sure if this is a different kind of roach.

Next stop, the Monkey house. It was very dark in here as well as many exhibits where the animals are mostly nocturnal. The first photo below is simulated how dark it was but it makes no sense posting photos like that so the rest I’ve adjusted the exposure to be more like daytime.

We then went past the Amphibian house to in order to go to the Crane cafe to get something to eat.

After a break, we checked out the rest of the zoo. The rest of the photos are here in no particular order. I notice I took the more bird photos which is probably because they are the most colorful, in the best light, and not behind the worst glass.

We went back to the band performance area and I saw a few Malagasy around as well as another band, HajaMadagascar. They were just up in Montreal last weekend so that was a surprise to see them. I’m not sure if they were just visiting or were going home but it was cool.

Gasy Kalo was playing a different set of music. I enjoyed this set more than the one at noon. I would imagine they have a big repertoire and songs wouldn’t be repeated much. The girl was also dancing which she didn’t do before. Wow can she really shake her body.

For the final song, HajaMadagascar played. I really liked this one song. You can watch the performance in the video I shot below.

 
Well that’s about it. We went home after this. It was a pretty interesting day. I luckily got to see and do a lot of things. The band plays weekends until July 27 which is the last weekend of the special festivities. If you can try to catch them, do so. It is a great glimpse at a variety of Malagasy music.