Friday Bonus Music Break, N°18

Another ten music videos that we’ve been playing a lot recently. The first one above. Kudurista Titica’s ‘Ablua’ is a stomper. (Talking about Angolan music, and its history: Marissa Moorman has been consulting Afropop Worldwide for a new series called Hip Deep Angola, the first part of which, ‘Music and Nation in Luanda’, you can listen to here.) Next, still from Angola, and I have a hunch Titica served as an inspiration for Edy Sex:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB4dNscISJc

An older Namibian Overitje pop tune, but Ondarata (remember them) just now put their video for ‘Tukutuku’ on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjT61lyrYgE

Janka Nabay and his ‘Bubu Gang’, whose live performances have become legendary by now, made this video for ‘Somebody’:

From Mali, Ben Zabo’s latest music videos are a treat:

As he did with that other project The Busy Twist, Gabriel Benn (alter ego: Tuesday Born) plays around with images recorded in Ghana in this video for ‘Kwabena’:

Jupiter Bokondji (from Kinshasa) and his band Okwess International in the studio:

South African Bongeziwe Mabandla has been working hard on completing his debut album. I hear all kinds of influences here:

On his website, Ian Kamau (who spent much time travelling and performing in South Africa recently) explains why he wrote ‘Black Bodies’:

And because we feature not nearly enough poetry or spoken word, this ‘park jam’ from Obscur Jaffar (Burkina Faso):

Further Reading

How to unmake the world

In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.

A migrant’s tale

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.

What Portugal forgets

In the film ‘Tales of Oblivion,’ Dulce Fernandes excavates the buried history of slavery in Portugal, challenging a national mythology built on sea voyages, silence, and selective memory.

Trump tariffs and US Imperialism

Trump’s April 2025 tariff blitz ignited market chaos and deepened rifts within his own coalition. Beneath the turmoil lies a battle between technocrats, ultranationalists, and anti-imperial populists, all vying to reshape—or destroy—American global power.