AfricaIs aCountry

Giving the Bizness

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

Giving the Bizness

By
Tom Devriendt

This is our third Music Break post. It is curated by anthropologist Tom DeVriendt, who may just take a liking to keep doing them.

Merril Garbus of tUnE-yArDs performs in Paris this year (Wiki Commons).

Merril Garbus of tUnE-yArDs cite Barrington Levy, Odetta, Woody Guthrie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charlie Chaplin, Ruth Garbus, Bertolt Brecht, Björk, Todd Rundgren, Fela Kuti and “you” as their influences. Here the band performs their original composition, “Bizness,” live for a public radio station in New York City.

Tanya Auclair (from West London, “via Canada and Rwanda” and citing as her influences Bongo Joe Coleman, Juana Molina, The Staple Singers, Laurie Anderson, Matthew Herbert and E.S.G, sings and plays ‘Origami’.

A still from a video of Tanya Auclair performing her song, “Origami,” live (via Vimeo).

Trust Shabazz Palaces and Kahlil Joseph to do it again on “Black Up.”

While we’re in South Africa, I’m feeling this guitar band from Cape Town: MacGyver Knife. And their new song. While we’re on it, there aren’t that many corners in Woodstock left where bands or advertising companies can shoot a music video, spray a graffiti or do a photo shoot.

And to end, a new video by School is Cool arrives one year early.

Further Reading

Slow death by food

Illegal gold mining is poisoning Ghana’s soil and rivers, seeping into its crops and seafood, and turning the national food system into a long-term public health crisis.

A sick health system

The suspension of three doctors following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son has renewed scrutiny of a health-care system plagued by impunity, underfunding, and a mass exodus of medical professionals.

Afrobeats after Fela

Wizkid’s dispute with Seun Kuti and the release of his latest EP with Asake highlight the widening gap between Afrobeats’ commercial triumph and Fela Kuti’s political inheritance

Progress is exhausting

Pedro Pinho’s latest film follows a Portuguese engineer in Guinea-Bissau, exposing how empire survives through bureaucracy, intimacy, and the language of “development.”

The rubble of empire

Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.

Atayese

Honored in Yorubaland as “one who repairs the world,” Jesse Jackson’s life bridged civil rights, pan-Africanism, empire, and contradiction—leaving behind a legacy as expansive as it was imperfect.

Bread or Messi?

Angola’s golden jubilee culminated in a multimillion-dollar match against Argentina. The price tag—and the secrecy around it—divided a nation already grappling with inequality.