Friday Bonus Music Break, N°14

By: Tom Devriendt

Quite the mixed bag this week. ‘Disco Malapaa’ by Arusha’s Jambo Squad above; nine more below.

Like Jambo Squad, Mokoomba (from Zimbabwe) switch into Latino mode halfway in their new video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqZdaVNOHj0

Anbuley’s ‘Oleee’ arrives just in time for European summer:

Also based in Europe, although his latest video (like the previous one) suggests a longing for elsewhere, is Gaël Faye:

Simphiwe Dana decided to take a step back from social media a while ago and concentrate on doing what she does best: speak truth through music:

Still in South Africa, taxis and drifters:

South Africa based poppy Cameroonian Denzyl:

From Guinea, the Matoto Family:

Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars signed up for a cause:

And — to turn it down a notch — Ablaye Cissoko and Volker Goetze wrote a subdued lament for Haiti — quite beautifully — and recorded a video for it in Gorée:

The Story of Kenyan photographer Priya Ramrakha

Priya Ramrakha was one of the most prolific photographers of Africa’s independence movements in the 1950s and 1960s. A new book highlights his impact.

Jul 15

All you need to know about Ethiopia and Eritrea’s rapprochement

Abraham T. Zere

The pace of rapprochement between Eritrea and Ethiopia, longtime foes who have been in deadlock for the last 20 years, changes quickly. It is hard to keep up.

Jul 14

Everything ends with a song

Grégory Pierrot

“When the game is over in Russia, I’ll go play another at the field down the street. I’ll find a song to sing on the way.”

Jul 14

The Respectable French

Emily Lever

The 2010 World Cup was tumultuous for France; both an athletic failure and a site of social conflict. The French Football Federation doesn’t want to repeat it.

Jul 14

Kylian Mbappé, Karim Benzema and France’s Second-Class Citizens

Haythem Guesmi

Fascists love Mbappé and hate Benzema. Between these two lies the problem of romanticizing the French team as an African team.

Jul 14

What Would a World Cup Win for France Mean in the French Caribbean?

Annette Joseph-Gabriel

A possible French victory hovers like a thin layer of hope that barely veils the simmering anger at France’s neglect of the islands and pessimism about the future.

Jul 13

Nigeria’s World Cup Adventure is Over: Do We Still Love Her?

Damola Durosomo

Focusing on sports allegiance to Nigeria, offered a break from pondering over all of its social ills.

Politics

Jul 13

The new anti-migrant national consensus

Vito Laterza

Italian politics has taken a sharp turn to the right. This populism portends similar moves around the globe. Italian politics are global politics.

Jul 12

The masters of the improbable

Gianpaolo Baiocchi

In 1982, Brazil’s generals vetoed the inclusion of Reinaldo, Rei (“King”) an amazing striker prone to making black power salutes, in the country’s World Cup squad. But two other rebels, Socrates and Zico, made it.

Jul 11

Ibrahim Usman’s Road to Qatar

Watching the World Cup with a young Nigerian professional footballer in Seattle, U.S.

Politics

Jul 11

Dambisa Moyo is wrong about the global economy – here’s why

Jason Hickel

Western media can’t seem to get enough of Moyo: her ideas stray little from old neoliberal mantras so endlessly recycled by establishment elites in the US and Europe.

Culture

Jul 10

The Coming-Out of the African Same-Sex Novel

Iweala’s novel, “Speak No Evil,” comes out as we’re witnessing a burgeoning African—and specifically Nigerian—literary attention to same-sex sexuality.

Jul 09

#TousEnsemble

Heleen Debeuckelaere

The success of Belgium’s national football team as a key site for political struggles over identity, race and immigration.

Jul 09

Cette équipe tue les fascistes

Grégory Pierrot

en ce moment, le plus français de tous les français est un gamin noir d’origine algérienne et camerounaise nommé Kylian Mbappé.

Jul 09

The Pan-Africanist roots of football in Ghana

Philip Janzen

Soccer came to Ghana with “a Jamaican educationist.” That’s the popular version. It’s not entirely correct.

Politics

Jul 09

Unemployment and the Rise of Neoliberalism in Ghana

Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed

To address high unemployment in Ghana, many entrepreneurs and “labor experts” present volunteerism as the way out of poverty and unemployment.

Culture

Jul 09

No Country for Yes Men

Zain R Mian

In his latest book, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o ventures that colonial and neocolonial rule cannot survive without the work that prisons perform.

Politics

Jul 08

The Gall of the West–On State Visits to Nigeria

Noah Tsika

Emmanuel Macron’s Lagos visit came and went in a long tradition of diversionary state visits by Western politicians who condescend to Nigerians.

Jul 08

Fear of a Black France

Grégory Pierrot

You want to troll French fascists? Tell them the truth: the most French man in the world right now is a black kid called Kylian Mbappé.

Jul 07

The header that rocked the world

Kangsen Feka Wakai

At Italia 1990, Cameroon pulled off the greatest upsets in football in the history of the World Cup–against Maradona’s Argentina.

Africa is a Country