Africa Is a Country

Music Break. Simphiwe Dana

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

Music Break. Simphiwe Dana

By
Tom Devriendt

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=829dg3GN7aM&w=500&h=307&rel=0]

Does it matter whether we know where a music video was shot? Probably not, but watching this first clip for Simphiwe Dana’s new album Kulture Noir, I can’t help but stare at the steel barred windows of the police holding cells in the background. Daily, around that corner, you find people on the sidewalk exchanging messages with their imprisoned friends or family members.  It thus makes for a weird block party in Cape Town’s City Bowl. Fortunately, there is the music. That’s London-based South African bandleader Adam Glasser on the harmonica, by the way.

Further Reading

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.

Sinners and ancestors

Ryan Coogler’s latest film is more than a vampire fable—it’s a bridge between Black American history and African audiences hungry for connection, investment, and storytelling rooted in shared struggle.