AfricaIs aCountry

Music Break

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

Music Break

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5s-FUbcE9o&w=500&h=307&rel=0]

This is not really a music video I know, but it’s worth your time. Trust me. Artist Hanifah Walidah interviews New York City-based director Patricia McGregor and musician, Greg Tate about their creative process in making “Burnt Sugar presents The JB Songbook,” happen. “The JB Songbook” is a performance centered around the life and music of James Brown. (The show was staged in early October this year at the Apollo Soundstage in Harlem and will be staged in January and February next year; check here for updates.) From Walidah’s site it turns out the interview is part of a creative journalism series titled Tales from the White Wall, “… about creatives and their creative process.”

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.