http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTRmpJ_EpJE

Dub Colossus member Samuel Yirga “plays one night a week in Addis’s only jazz club/coffee bar, where the way he mixes Keith Jarrett and Herbie Hancock with Ethiojazz has won him a cult following.” He says:

I take traditional music and turn it around, and people in Ethiopia are starting to listen to the way it swings now. Our musical culture is under attack from inside and out, it’s all rock bands, hip-hop groups and pop singers, and nobody can afford to run a big band.

Via Real World Records.

Further Reading

Davido’s jacket

Davido’s appearance at ‘Amapiano’s biggest concert’ turned a night of celebration into a study in Afrophobia, fandom, and the fragile borders of South African cultural nationalism.

Empty riddles

Drawing on his forced migration from Rwanda, Serge Alain Nitegeka reflects on the forms, fragments, and unsettled histories behind his latest exhibition in Johannesburg.