AfricaIs aCountry

Music Mondays

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Music Mondays

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SK_Z_LGEac&w=500&h=301&rel=0]

These guys are obsessed with the elements. The band is named for the cold current that runs up the continent’s southeastern coast line. Benguela is based in Cape Town, South Africa. And this tune is called “Meridian.” It’s from their most recent album, “The Black Southeaster.” You know what the Southeaster does in the Cape. Critics have described their music as “post-rock.” Whatever this all means, we know they’re no slouches: Benguela have played with, among others, the great Robbie Jansen and AIAC’s favorites BLK JKS. Blow away.

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.