Africa Is a Country

August 11, Chad

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

August 11, Chad

By
Boima Tucker

There’s still time left to recognize Chad’s Independence Day today, and keeping with our regular feature, we’re posting popular music from the country.

First up is a short clip of Mounira Mitchala, handling a live show in Paris:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gM-LNwHo2w&w=600&h=373]


Being part of the French sphere of influence, Chadians are listening to and making music popular in other Francophone African countries such as Ndombolo, Coupe Decale, Zouk, and Rap.

Jorio Stars, a Cameroonian and Chadian collaboration(?):

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p1XE_8GoMQ&w=600&h=373]

A nice dance song and video by Pyramydes:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaZ8r2cXy5U&w=600&h=373]

And a Rap song with a beat that sounds (a little bit) like it’s sampling Triggerman!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbRYBdAv3HU&w=600&h=373]
___

Rap is no surprise really, partly because of the worldwide trend, but also because the most famous rapper of Chadian origin is non other than the one MC Solaar:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-zygf1U1ms&w=600&h=373]

Today, it seems that there are nuff home studio recordings by Chadian teenagers, if youtube has anything to say about it.

The francophone alignment has historical precedence, folks like Maître Gazonga were making Soukous hits in the 1980’s:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvvD9RSp6c8&w=600&h=373]

There’s also the Arabic language sphere of influence which produced this Auto-tuned wonder set to a propaganda video:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7vdp-mH9XU&w=600&h=373]

It’s a symptom of the digital age that when finding new music information may be distorted, as Sahel Sounds put so eloquently.

This is might or might not be Farge Elhaloani, and he might or might not be a Sudanese singer performing in Chad:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGpEfR3etVU&w=600&h=373]

And finally to smooth out your evening…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEL9Dia0zrg&w=600&h=373]

Further Reading

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.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.