As the OG of #Musicbreak, I’m responsible for stuff like jazz, leaving the more energetic genres (hip hop, global base, kwaiti and Naija derivative pop) to the much younger AIAC co-conspirators. So here’s 10 tunes and artists I’ve been checking out for a minute.

The hip hop collective Odd Future’s public profile is largely built around Tyler the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt and Frank Ocean. (By the way, both Tyler and Earl are children of African immigrants. Less prominent has been the group’s main DJ, singer, producer and only female member, Syd tha kyd, as well as producer and illustrator Matt Martians. These two also run their own band, self-described as playing “soul funk.” Here’s a 22 minute set of them playing live on LA radio station KEXP’s Street Sounds show in November 2012:

Then there’s Cecile Mclorin Salvant, the Miami-born singer (mother French; father Haitian) with a political science degree, who reinterprets jazz and blues standards. Her album “Woman Child” (2013) is worth checking out. In this video, recorded at the Detroit Jazz Festival, she performs first a song by Bert Williams, who is considered the best selling black artist before the 1920s and who performed in blackface. Then she does “Yesterdays” by Jerome Kern.

Njabulo Madlala, a South African opera singer who lives and performs in London. Here he performs a Miriam Makeba standard “Qongqothwane,” live for Classical Kicks, a series geared to classical music started by violonist Lizzie Ball (she played with Nigel Kennedy) at Ronnie Scotts in London:

I always return to Tutu Puoane, the South African-born, Belgium-based singer. Here’s two tunes. First “Love Ends,” and second “Alone at last.” The latter has Puoane performing with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic in Antwerp. The song features Bert Joris, he is on trumpet and composed the song, along with Puoane’s husband, Ewout Pierreux. Live at de Roma, Antwerp, 24 March 2013:

In April–along with a fellow AIAC’ers — Elliot Ross, Ben Talton, Dan Magaziner, and Derica Shields — I went to see Christian aTunde Adjuah (the former Christian Scott) at the Jazz Standard in New York City. Scott spent the evening alternating between talking and playing (with a little too much emphasis on the former). One highlight (for me at least) was his remix of Jay Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild.” Here’s a link to the original, and here‘s a video of Scott and his band performing the song live in Amsterdam.

The Cape Town singer Melanie Scholtz decided to put poet James Matthews’ work to music. The result is the album “Freedom Child.” Here’s a live performance of one of the songs, “Black I Am.”

My young children love this Gregory Porter tune and the video. I am their dad, so I like it too.

Then there’s the much older Mike Gibbs (he was born in the then Southern Rhodesia in 1937) and the Kinetic Jazz Orchestra performing an old standard, “Sadie Sadie” by Horace Silver.

Finally, in honor of the 34 miners of Marikana murdered by police one year ago today in South Africa, here’s Charlie Haden and his Liberation Music Orchestra performing the South African national anthem in 1987 as it should be done (and no, not that hybrid version sung by the country’s national rugby team since the end of Apartheid and that stitched together “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” with the racist “Die Stem”).