AfricaIs aCountry

Now or never

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

Now or never

By
Tom Devriendt

Apart from a heavy Senegalese presence, this Music Break, No.37, includes some other favorites of this site: Petite Noire, Laura Mvula, Rachid Taha and newcomer, Napoleon Da Legend.

Rachid Taha, via Wiki Commons.

Per usual, here are 10 new music videos to finish this week of blogging. Here is a video by photographer and graphic designer Laurent Seroussi for Salif Keita’s new “Tale a lbum,” produced by Gotan Project’s Philippe Cohen-Solal. The YouTube version of the clip seems not to be available everywhere. Weird record label thinking.

Next, a glorious video for Carlou D’s “Dooley Beuré” that switches into second gear halfway in (Carlou D of Positive Black Soul of Senegal talks a bit about the making of the video here)

Faada Freddy (real name: Abdou Fatha Seck, one third of Senegalese rap combo Daara J, jamming on “Borom bi” with the Clef de Sol choir.

A music video the Senegalese rap pioneer Didier Awadi shot for “Supa Ndaanaa” during a tour in Canada last summer organized by the people behind the documentary film, “The United States of Africa.”  Awadi is the other half of the legendary Positive Black Soul.

Napoleon Da Legend has new music out, but this one from last year is still nice. “African in New York” is his take on Sting’s classic “Englishman in New York.” Napoleon was born in Paris to parents from the Comoros, moved to New York which, by Afropolitan logics, makes him an “African in New York.”

Some rock’n’raï (whoever coined that term?) by Algerian-French Rachid Taha. For accolades, check his official – hilariously puff-toned – profile. This English and Arabic duet cover version (featuring Jeanne Added) of Elvis Presley’s “Now Or Never” is a polished but intriguing production:

Samba Touré introduces his new EP, ‘Albala’, recorded at Studio Mali in Bamako in the autumn of 2012. Also featuring are Djimé Sissoko and Madou Sanogo, with guests such as Zoumana Tereta and Aminata Wassidje Traore.

The Congolese-South African singer, Petite Noir, and his band played a session for a Brussels radio, in one of the city’s most respected venues (Brussels is the city where Petite Noir was born before moving to South Africa. Here’s a sample.

Just in case you still had any doubt, 2013 will be Laura Mvula’s year.

Finally, here’s Yassiin Bey looking sharp at The Shrine in Chicago.

Further Reading

Progress is exhausting

Pedro Pinho’s latest film follows a Portuguese engineer in Guinea-Bissau, exposing how empire survives through bureaucracy, intimacy, and the language of “development.”

The rubble of empire

Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.

Atayese

Honored in Yorubaland as “one who repairs the world,” Jesse Jackson’s life bridged civil rights, pan-Africanism, empire, and contradiction—leaving behind a legacy as expansive as it was imperfect.

Bread or Messi?

Angola’s golden jubilee culminated in a multimillion-dollar match against Argentina. The price tag—and the secrecy around it—divided a nation already grappling with inequality.

Visiting Ngara

A redevelopment project in Nairobi’s Ngara district promises revival—but raises deeper questions about capital, memory, and who has the right to shape the city.

Gen Z’s electoral dilemma

Long dismissed as apathetic, Kenya’s youth forced a rupture in 2024. As the 2027 election approaches, their challenge is turning digital rebellion and street protest into political power.

A world reimagined in Black

By placing Kwame Nkrumah at the center of a global Black political network, Howard W. French reveals how the promise of pan-African emancipation was narrowed—and what its failure still costs Africa and the diaspora.

Securing Nigeria

Nigeria’s insecurity cannot be solved by foreign airstrikes or a failing state, but by rebuilding democratic, community-rooted systems of collective self-defense.