Africa Is a Country

Weekend Music Break, N°41

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

Weekend Music Break, N°41

By
Tom Devriendt

From Luanda: Dj Djeff has Nacobeta, Agre G & Game Walla doing their thing in the new video for “Mwangolé”. There’s a standard success script for all those kuduro videos out there. Not that we mind:

Glen Lewis’s Shona tune “Ndiyo ndiyo” will keep South African clubs warm this winter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw7szeOHLWM

Kenyan P-Unit released this track, “Mobimba”, last month, featuring Sweden-based Alicios. Originally from Congo (that’s Alicios), you don’t have to look far where they took their inspiration from this time:

Not entirely sure what’s going on in this jumpy clip for MoBlack’s (also known as Domenico Falcone) “MeKa”. Is there a remix out yet?

M.anifest is working hard this year. Here on a new collaboration with EL:

Talib Kweli went to South Africa and came back with a music video for “High Life”:

A first single for Guinean Masta G (Conakry) off his album “Introspection”. Produced by Ahms Beatz; the final mixing was done by Redrum. (More music by Masta G here.)

Kae Sun’s got a new album coming out soon as well (‘Afriyie’, dropping later this month). “When the pot” is a second excerpt (remember last year’s “Ship And The Globe”):

Samba Touré’s album, Albala, was released this week. First single is “Be Ki Don” (YouTube notes have a translation of the lyrics — here):

And your moment of Zen: this video for Ghostpoet (born Obaro Ejimiwe, who has Tony Allen playing on drums on his latest record). Recommended:

Further Reading

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.

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.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.