AfricaIs aCountry

Friday Bonus Music Break, N°28

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

Friday Bonus Music Break, N°28

By
Tom Devriendt

Kuduro pioneer Sebem (fresh out of prison; he was in for repeated traffic violations, from what I understand) has a new video out (above); the clip’s rural setting is surprising, given kuduro’s over-all urban flow. Next, a Senegalese collaboration between Djibril Diop and Aida Samb:

Kenyan Jeraw draws inspiration and images from local blockbuster film ‘Nairobi Half Life’:

A new video for Belgian-Congolese (but mostly Bruxellois) rapper Pitcho — taken from his new album Rendez-Vous avec le Futur:

Earl Sweatshirt wrote a “letter” to his South African dad Keorapetse Kgositsile:

From Lesotho, a new video (shot in Mozambique) for Kommanda Obbs:

London-based, Douala-born “one-man band” Muntu Valdo has a new video — not sure why YouTube won’t allow you to embed it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaM1_CmxjXk

Swiss-Ghanaian singer/improvisational musician Joy Frempong “Oy”; you already know we’ve been following her work:

And two acoustic sessions to wind down. Guinea-Conakry-born, Canada-residing Alpha Yaya Diallo:

And Cape Town-based Beatenberg (whose debut record ‘Farm Photos’ you should give a listen as well):

Et voilà, back on Monday!

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

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.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

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.