Africa Is a Country

Music Mondays

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

Music Mondays

By
Sean Jacobs

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From an article in last week’s “Detroit Metro Times”: ‘… In the ’60s, Motown was so popular in Italy that Berry Gordy had his artists record translated versions of their songs specifically for the Italian market. Back then, the transistor radios of teens from Turin to Palermo were blaring such hits as The Supremes’ “Se il filo spezzerai” (“You Keep Me Hanging On“), Stevie Wonder’s “Solo te, solo me, solo noi” (“Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday“) or even The Four Tops’ “Gira Gira” (“Reach Out I’ll Be There”) …’

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I like Rox, the London-based half-Iranian, half-Jamaican musician. Here she is doing an acoustic version of one of her songs.

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The new Africa is a Country co-conspirator, Brett Davidson, pointed me to the beautiful sounds of singer, Lindiwe Shuttle, born in Atlanta and based in Cape Town. This video is of a live performance of her song “Jungle Book” when she opened for Finlay Quaye in Cape Town in May this year. Sample her music here or  watch her talk about her music here.

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Now for some history: Nowadays Atlanta rapper, Big Boi of Outkast, goes by the name of  Sir Lucious Left Foot.  He is saying that he is still doing the same thing, but don’t blame  me if I am not convinced and want more of that 90s countryfried music like 1993’s “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik” (above) or “Git Out, Git Out.”

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This is probably viral by now and does not need this blog. “Window Seat” (The Remix) by Erykah Badu and Rick Ross. Remember the original version? (I am not talking about the non-controversy around the video for the song, but the genius of the original song itself.)

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Finally, on a somber note. My friend Suren Pillay sent me a notice of the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town’s August 19th inaugural Dulcie September Memorial Lecture.  If you have forgotten, Dulcie was the ANC activist murdered in broad daylight by South African death squad in Paris, France, in March 1988. (When in Paris a few years ago, I went and pay respect to Dulcie’s memory at the scene of the crime.) Having the event on August 19 carries some significance as Dulcie was born on August 20, 1937.  If you know me, I had to think about music. I remembered electronic music pioneer Jean Michel Marre’s homage to Dulcie, “September.” I had it on repeat for a whole day.  Go to the lecture if you’re in Cape Town. (The video is not embedded, so you can click on it and go watch over at Youtube.)

— Sean Jacobs

Further Reading

After the uprising

Following two years of mass protest, Kenya stands at a crossroads. A new generation of organizers is confronting an old question: how do you turn revolt into lasting change? Sungu Oyoo joins the AIAC podcast to discuss the vision of Kenya’s radical left.

Redrawing liberation

From Gaza to Africa, colonial cartography has turned land into property and people into populations to be managed. True liberation means dismantling this order, not redrawing its lines.

Who deserves the city?

Colonial urbanism cast African neighborhoods as chaotic, unplanned, and undesirable. In postcolonial Dar es Salaam, that legacy still shapes who builds, who belongs, and what the middle class fears the city becoming.

Djinns in Berlin

At the 13th Berlin Biennale, works from Zambia and beyond summon unseen forces to ask whether solidarity can withstand the gaze of surveillance.

Colonize then, deport now

Trump’s deportation regime revives a colonial blueprint first drafted by the American Colonization Society, when Black lives were exiled to Africa to safeguard a white republic.

On Safari

On our annual publishing break, Gaza’s genocide continues to unfold in real time yet slips from public grasp. This is not just a crisis of politics, but of how reality is mediated—and why we must build spaces where meaning can still take root.

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.