AfricaIs aCountry

All of the party

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

All of the party

By
Hinda Talhaoui

A mix of French hip hop and smooth R&B dominates this installment, Number 5, of music from the French capital. Paris is a Continent.

David Beckham playing at his last club, LA Galaxy in the MLS (Anna Enriquez, via Flickr CC).

Not sure what it says about France that the headlines in Paris are dominated by stories that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who sexually assaulted an African woman working as a cleaner in a New York City hotel, is being portrayed as a victim of a conspiracy. To top it all, David Beckham, a semi-retired 36-year-old English player is entrusted with bringing back glamor to French club football (he signed with Paris Saint Germain).

Meanwhile, a mix of French hip hop and smooth R&B dominates this installment of music from Paris.  This week is a short offering since I am going on vacation today.

First up,  the Tunisian rapper Sniper featuring Sexion d’Assault on “Blood Diamondz.” (You may remember that Sexion d’Assault was, until recently, known more for their homophobic outbursts than their music. They claimed to have left hate behind.)

For now, here are two: first, Marseille-born singer Kenza Farah featured on the song “Tous de la Fête” by Dibi Dobo (his family comes from Benin). Kenza Farah’s family is Kabyle from Algeria. Their collaboration features the pan-African spirit that exist among Africans, whether from North and Sub-Saharan Africa, in France.

Then there’s Evanz, a singer discovered by La Fouine, and her song “Ton Silence,”  The song features rapper Soprano.

 

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.