AfricaIs aCountry

Weekend Music Break No.74

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

Weekend Music Break No.74

By
Boima Tucker

Here is our weekend round up of audio and visuals from around the African Internet…

Kicking things off, Spoek Mathambo spearheaded band Fantasma premiered their video for Cat and Mouse this week, featuring a collection of young South African ballet dancers.

Alabama neo-trap poster boys Rae Sremmurd saw Fantasma’s video, and decided to head to South Africa for their latest as well. Some over here at Africa is a Country think they’ve spotted a Sean Jacobs doppelgänger.

The Alkebulan project is a series of EPs accompanied by a series of short stories from prominent African artists. They released the first video from the project this week.

Cape Town weirdo rappers DOODVENOOTSKAP jump in-to the Internet and dance around a bit in their video for “Protein Shake”.

13 year-old Kudurista Buriana of Cabo Snoop’s Power House crew brings us the video for “Pica malembe”.

Bebeto Bongo takes us to Burkina Faso and teaches us the Zoungou Zoungou dance.

Ghana and Nigerian dancehall link up on Shatta Wale and PatoRanking’s “Romantic”.

In honor of Afropop’s Hip Deep special this week on Afro-Peruvian music and culture, here is Susana Baca’s classic “Maria Lando” (Lando), live in Buenos Aires.

Nigerian singer Asa launched the visuals for Eyo last week. Here it is for you to enjoy today!

When Bono’s not getting run over on American television, he is promoting an end to poverty through his One organization. Here they assemble an All Star cast of African women performers for their “Strong Girl” campaign.

About the Author

Boima Tucker is a music producer, DJ, writer, and cultural activist. He is the managing editor of Africa Is a Country, co-founder of Kondi Band and the founder of the INTL BLK record label.

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.