AfricaIs aCountry

Weekend Music Break, N°39

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

Weekend Music Break, N°39

By
Tom Devriendt

This year’s turning into a good year for quality music videos. Here’s another selection of 10. First one below is a single from Durban’s Nandi Mngoma’s new album (she has a fancy blog though there’s more chance of catching updates via her Twitter account): South African dance as you know it.

Next, finally here: the first video for OY’s debut record — remember Boima’s recent write-up — delivers. Shot in Accra, Ghana. YouTube notes tell us the dancers are Bugi Bust. Well here you have it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJM_0ghPd80

Also shot in Accra is this video for Tawiah’s “FACes”, off her upcoming mixtape album, FREEdom Drop (yes, that’s Wanlov and Mensa in the clip):

There’s Josephine, born to a Liberian mother and Jamaican father, describing herself as having “enjoyed the advantages of a colourful West African culture as well as feeling intrinsically British”. Can’t possibly do wrong:

A beautiful oddball by SKIP&DIE whose singer Catarina Aimée Dahms, aka Cata.Pirata, is South African:

(They know how to throw a party too.)

New video for Afro-Panico’s “Matimba”. Filed under: Afro-House | Kuduro | Pantsula:

Brazilian Pan-African rap vibes from Ba Kimbuta on “Consumo” (over a Mulatu Astatke sample):

Mo Kolours also released a new video for his “Promise” tune:

There’s Outspoken & The Essence’s “own interpretation of Hip-Hop”. The track, called “The SlaveMasters Whip,” is a first from their upcoming Nomadic Wax-produced album Uncool and Overrated: God Before Anything:

And finally, on high rotation ever since it came out this month: “Azamane Tiliade” from Bombino’s album Nomad, produced by Dan Auerbach. Play it loud:

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.