AfricaIs aCountry

Weekend Music Break, N°42

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

Weekend Music Break, N°42

By
Tom Devriendt

Many collaborations and surprise comebacks popped up in our feeds this week. First, this one by Kenyans DNA and Tanzania’s Mr. Nice, who tried his luck in South Africa for a while but now seems to have found his ground again back home:

A Swedish-South African collaboration between Kwaai, Driemanskap, Syster Sol, Mofeta, Kristin Amparo, Cleo and Kanyi. Video by (photographer) Luke Daniel and Neil Wigardt:

Also shot in the Cape flats: this video for Pharoahe Monch in Mitchell’s Plain:

Still based in Brussels these days, Badi (Banx) returned from the DRC with a clip recorded at Nzonga Falls for “Losambo” (part of his ongoing Kin Transit video series):

An American-South African Hip-Hop collaboration between HHP, Omar Hunter El, Asheru, Benn Chad, OneTwo, Projector, Zubz, Cassper Nyovest, Nomadic, Element Lehipi Khalil on “Animals”:

Two new videos for Pan-American Los Rakas’ short “Mi Pais” (which has Raka Dun expressing his American dreams and struggles before joining Raka Rich in the studio — head over to YouTube for full English translations) and “No Tan Listo”:

http://youtu.be/h95ni5yPbAM

There’s a new single and video for Coely, who’s mostly filling Belgian clubs at the moment, but we can see that changing soon:

Johannesburg producer Alkabulans’ instrumental “Cross-Dimensional Symmetry”. Trust South African Iapetus Records to surprise us:

London combo Anthony Joseph and his Spasm Band recorded this video in Berlin for “Started off as a dancer”:

And since it’s been a while we included some Cabo Verde music here: old master Zé Luis performing “Ku Nha Kin Bem”:

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.