This Saturday I’ll be djing between acts at The Apollo Theater’s Africa Now! Concert. Yesterday, I had an interesting conversation with the Apollo’s director about the different African crowds in New York (last year they had Tiken Jah Fakoly to an enthusiastic crowd of Francophone African Harlemites), got a tour of the building, rubbed the […]
I used to like Rhinos, I never loved them, but I thought they were pretty cool. I once even saw a couple in the wild with my parents in Kruger National Park. Sadly, like so many other things, rhinos have been ruined for me. I can’t like them anymore. I don’t dislike them personally, but […]
I don’t care much for Cape Town group Freshlyground’s muzak. But you can’t deny the cleverness of the video for their new single, “Chicken to Change.” They recruited the puppets–especially Robert Mugabe–from the intermittently funny, online South African satirical news show ZANews. And they called Mugabe a chicken. Then Zimbabwe’s humorless immigration authorities banned Freshlyground […]
FIFA and the South African organizers of the World Cup yesterday unveiled the official World Cup tune. Sorry K’Naan. You’ll always have Coco Cola. The song–non-sensical lyrics over a beat created on a Casio–is a collaboration between Shakira and Zolani, the lead singer of South African group Freshlyground, a band which reminds me of Mango […]
Last week I put up a short post about singer Busi Mhlongo’s struggle with cancer. This week my man Bongani Madondo, who is spending lots of time with Busi sent me a long “conversational piece” that is the first of three that he is ‘sharing with the world on Busi.” Bongani first comments on that […]
