Music Break. Friday Bonus Edition

By: Tom Devriendt

Ploughing through the blog’s archives to come up with a fair selection of ten videos for next week’s year-end lists, I wondered why we haven’t written about the Congolese Salaam Kivu All Stars. Things went well in Goma, Kivu during the elections last week. A year ago, youth and media organization Yole! Africa staged the SKIFF festival in Goma (where they also shot the first video below), and they were planning to do so again this year. ‘Saisir l’Avenir’ means as much as ‘to seize the Future.’

Get ready for a work out. Angolans The Shine and Portugal’s Throes do “kuduru rock”:

Okay, after that workout, we can slow down. Nice 10 minute live set by James Farm, the American “acoustic jazz quartet” consisting of saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Eric Harland. Recorded at The Jazz Standard.

And 18 minutes (also recorded live at The Jazz Standard) of Ambrose Akinmusire and his Orchestra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNRqk5WygpM

Finally, we had this one on our Facebook page earlier this week. Tamikrest backstage at a music festival in Switzerland:

Voltamos a Africa? Black Brazil in the time of Bolsonaro

Wangui Kimari

Even with the contradictory and violent policies of many African contexts, is emigration to the continent from toxic, racist, rightwing Brazil a viable option for Afro-Brazilians?

Politics

Jan 15

The Congo finally witnesses political change, but how meaningful will it be?

George Kibala Bauer

It’s the first time an African president appears to have rigged an election, not in favor of his hand-picked successor, but in favor of an opposition politician.

Politics

Jan 14

Social media, repression and the crisis in Cameroon

Kathleen Ndongmo

Despite consistent and protracted attempts by government to repress access to social media and freedom of expression, citizen’s voices are being heard over the internet in Cameroon.

Africa Is a Country

Dec 24

On safari

Sean Jacobs

Happy new year!

Essays

Dec 23

Mahmood Mamdani on Marxist intellectual Samir Amin

Mahmood Mamdani

Samir Amin’s life resembled that of Karl Marx: a man without a homeland, but one whose home was a chosen commitment to a historical project.

Dec 22

The gentrification of African studies

Haythem Guesmi

Displacing African Studies outside of Africa and emptying it of any transformative potential, obscures its revolutionary legacy and converts it into an impotent, banal field.

Politics

Dec 21

John Bolton’s African power play

Alex Park

Africa, for Donald Trump and his National Security Advisor John Bolton, is a place to risk a little and chase some glory. US media just parrots it.

Politics

Dec 21

The role of indigenous activism on climate change in Africa

Bert van Pinxteren

Discussions on the global climate crisis tend to ignore the role that Africans are playing at the leading edge in the fight against climate change.

Politics

Dec 20

Why western donors love authoritarian leaders

Alex Park

In recent years, Rwanda and Ethiopia have been some of the largest recipients of aid money from the UK and US governments, as well as some of the West’s leading philanthropies, including the Gates Foundation.

Politics

Dec 19

The battles over land in Namibia

Henning Melber

The land issue is the most divisive issue that Namibia has experienced since independence.

Politics

Dec 18

The politics of reforming traditional land in South Africa

Sindiso Mnisi Weeks

Land reform in South Africa has to not only tackle racial inequalities of ownership, but also the power of chiefs and the Zulu royal family.

Essays

Dec 17

The slave holders on the border

Why do people on the border between Nigeria and northern Cameroon refer to Boko Haram as slave holders?

Essays

Dec 16

The creation of black criminality in South Africa

Gabeba Baderoon

The seamless continuity in industrial levels of imprisonment employed by the colonial and the modern South African state.

Politics

Dec 15

The struggle for a minimum wage in Nigeria

Camilla Houeland

Protracted negotiations about a minimum wage for workers in Nigeria put the country’s unions where they belong: in front of the struggle for poor people.

Essays

Dec 14

Looking for my religion

Norbert Odero

The power of having a god who resembles us.

Essays

Dec 13

The silences in academia about capitalism in Africa

Jörg Wiegratz

Many African countries are by now capitalist societies and analytically need to be treated as such.

Dec 12

The most powerful currency today

Vik Sohonie

Passport privilege remains an entirely unaddressed, unsustainable inequity, and the most consistently overlooked factor that defines every single immigration debate and “crisis” of movement and migration.

Dec 11

The tyranny of good intentions

Ashoka Mukpo

Scandals like the one at More Than Me—the US charity that failed to protect school girls in its care from rape by staff—are common in even the most elite aid organizations.

Culture

Dec 11

The forgotten kingdom

Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed

The link between knowing history and political agency in northern Ghana.

Culture

Dec 10

The narrative of homophobia in Africa

Nsubuga Ssemugooma

The identities, liberal or homophobe are cultural and political. They are not a perfect mirror of the narrative of homophobia in Africa.

Africa is a Country