Africa Is a Country

Friday Music Bonus Edition

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

Friday Music Bonus Edition

By
Tom Devriendt

So drawn into the video (a plethora of faces, personalities and historic moments) Atlanta trio Algiers made for ‘Blood’, I forgot to pay attention to the lyrics the first time seeing it:

Yanigga recorded the video for ‘Dans un ghetto près de chez toi’ (“In a ghetto near you”) in Logbaba (Douala, Cameroon):

Fatoumata Diawara’s been busy touring since releasing her first album last year. Translation of her lyrics on ‘Sowa’ can be found here. Unplugged in Holland:

Michael Kiwanuka’s song ‘I’m Getting Ready’ comes with a new video:

That new video (we blogged about here) for K’Naan’s “Nothing to lose” featuring Nas, shot in Toronto. The video, in which Nas, K’Naan and an entourage of young Somali-Canadians, includes a visit to the Somali Social Club and K’Naan making a plug for countries in the Horn of Africa:

And, finally, AIAC favorite and Nas collaborator Damian Marley’s latest ‘Affairs of the heart’:

Further Reading

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.

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.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.

The sound of revolt

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance.