Africa Is a Country

'Real African Music'

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

'Real African Music'

By
Boima Tucker

Thanks to HavePlentyMusic I saw that big time house producers experimenting with Kuduro for a few years, are perhaps finally ready for Coupe Decale (Click through to listen to the remix). Kind of full circle really, as I really think Bob Sinclair’s and similar productions were a big influence on the sound of Coupe Decale, and the Euro pop surge of Magic System, Jessy Matador, et al to begin with. Boddhi Satva a house producer from Central African Republic is the perfect ambassador to bring it to the scene at large. Watch him shake his Bobaraba in a recent video interview.

Traxsource who is selling a DJ Arafat (Côte d’Ivoire) single as remixed by Boddhi describes it as “real African music.” I’ve noticed that while sites like Traxsource and the house scene in general have managed to support music that helps to redefine notions of what “African music” means, there is a tendency at the same time to hold the music back dealing in descriptions that rely on rehashed stereotypes and notions of authenticity.

Boddhi Satva does more, real Central-African-Belgian-House-Remixing below:

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.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.