AfricaIs aCountry

Paying homage

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

Paying homage

By
Tom Devriendt

Pitchom, Batida, Vieux Farka Toure, P-Unit, Sauti Sol and Tinariwen comprise our weekly Music Break.

The late Ali Farka Touré (via Fallen in the Open, CC Licensed).

Pitcho added archival video material (and a short fragment of the brilliant 2008 film ‘The Class’/’Entre Les Murs’) to the title track of his Crise de Nègre album. It’s becoming a trend, but it works. Friday means we have four more:

Batida gets help from Ngongo on “Ka Heueh.”

Last month, in Bamako, Vieux Farka Touré and his father’s friends and former band paid tribute to Ali Farka Touré, master musician. Ali Farka Toure passed away in 2006. Great footage by Bammako Culture.

Popular Kenyan bands P-Unit and Sauti Sol got themselves a hit.

And the quietest song on Tinariwen’s masterful album now also has the quietest music video.

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.