Nowadays we’re doing multiple #musicbreaks on Twitter and Facebook when the spirits move us. We figured we’d put the ten favorite ones up every Friday as our #BonusMusicBreak. First up, old school jazz man Pharoah Sanders is still doing it. Here’s a video (uploaded this week on Youtube; recorded last year) of him and his band playing (and him getting down):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N3kd5NAWeM

Since we’re on the old schoolers. Here’s the video for Ebo Taylor’s ‘Ayesama’, shot in his hometown of Saltpond (Ghana):

I really like Lee Fields. You’re The Kind of Girl:

Zimbabwe celebrated its independence this week. Here’s Tendai, one half of Shabazz Palaces with “rhodZi” (the video is directed by Seattle-based filmmaker and critic Charles Mudede):

California-based Ethiopian artists Meklit Hadero, Gabriel Teodros and Burntface combine to form CopperWire (H/T: siddhmi):

‘Bang Bang’ by one of Sean’s New School students, Selena Dhillon (originally from Toronto) featuring Humble The Poet:

THEESatisfaction’s “funk-psychedelic feminista sci-fi epics”:

Nicki Minaj is selling ice water in Accra? Zongo!

http://youtu.be/Zk9_FcuX4Jk

Boima: “Yup, I’m a fan.” PR: “Sierra Leone’s Premier Rap Guy From Freetown Releases His Long Awaited Video Featuring Farda G. Shot Entirely On Location In Freetown The Vid Promises To Be Raw, Grity & Strictly Hip-Hop”:

Finally, kuduro baile from Germany; Gato Preto’s ‘Tschukudu’ (H/T: TropicalBass):

Further Reading

Goodbye, Piassa

The demolition of an historic district in Addis Ababa shows a central contradiction of modernization: the desire to improve the country while devaluing its people and culture.

And do not hinder them

We hardly think of children as agents of change. At the height of 1980s apartheid repression in South Africa, a group of activists did and gave them the tool of print.