Africa Is a Country

Weekend Music Break No.79

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

Weekend Music Break No.79

By
Boima Tucker

Still from Kendrick Lamar's "Alright"

An abbreviated music break for the weekend of July 4th, 2015:

 

Joey B and the Akwaaba Sound System do an impressive live interpretation of his international hit “Tonga”; Blitz the Ambassador has a new track “Shine” produced by Soulection crew member IAMNOBODI; Kwaito continues it’s resurgence with “Mr. Party”; Iba One from Mali declares his status as a “Rappeur International”; Kendrick Lamar says in spite of everything “We gon be Alright”; and Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux represents for the global South alongisde Palestinian Shadia Mansour.

Further Reading

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.

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.