Eko Hotel, Victoria Island: the scene of so many expensive misdemeanours in the past, did its best not to disappoint. Kim Kardashian (pictured sailing into the salubrious Murtala Muhammed International Airport) was billed to “co-host” an event with R’n’B crooner Darey Art-Alade in honour of “Love..Like a Movie”. In other words, it was a “Vals” […]
Uploaded in mid-August on YouTube, this 1968 clip may be the earliest known clip of Abdullah Ibrahim. In the video, a wiry (all arms and legs) Ibrahim is performing with his band at the time — consisting of John Tchicai, Gato Barbieri, Barre Phillips and Makaya Ntshoko — on German television: If you haven’t had enough […]
R&B singer-songwriter Wynter Gordon is taking a considerable step outside her comfortable mid-commercial range with her new single ‘Stimela’ and its self-directed video, but it’s hard to argue that it isn’t reeking of the worst type of structural World Music arrogance. It practically has it all: the cleverly metaphorical words from Hugh Masekela’s lament of migrant workers reduced […]
‘Grand comme le Baobab’ (“Tall as the baobab tree”) is a film told through the voice of Coumba (in Pular language), who tries to avoid her 11-year-old sister from being sold into marriage to settle a family debt in rural Senegal; shot mostly with a local cast.
German singer-songwriter Joy Denalane (born to a South African father who’s a cousin of Hugh Masekela) recorded her song ‘Im Ghetto von Soweto’ twice. I prefer the original, less explanatory, German version (a tentative translation of which I’m including below) to the later English adaptation (rewritten for an international audience, I assume — it has […]
2011 was the 25th anniversary of Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” I don’t have to remind you of the album’s significance. It is hard to imagine now the impact of that album, but it did a lot of things: it resurrected Simon’s stalled career, was the first “World Music” album to be a crossover hit, won Simon […]
The Africa we dream of/Only 8 goals away. This from the “8 Goals for Africa” song, which is part of an awareness and advocacy campaign developed by the United Nations System in South Africa on the eight Millenium Development Goals. As you can see, the song features a veritable who’s who of stars from across […]
In an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News Hugh Masekela, who will perform at the opening ceremony of the 2010 World, speaks the obvious about the long-term meaning of the World Cup. “The World Cup is a passing fancy. It won’t be there on July 12. And South Africa will still have its problems.” That […]
Hugh Masekela, the giant trumpet player (he had a Billboard no.1 hit in 1968. People forget that), has a new show, “Songs of Migration,” that just played in Johannesburg (a decent review of the show over at the South African cultural blog Mahala.). It is a revival of the music made and sung by migrants […]
