Weekend Music Break No.85 – The Dance Edition!

UK Afrohouse dancers Milo & Fabio

The weekend is here so let’s take a break to enjoy some music… and dance! This week’s edition is a collection of dance videos, official clips, fan made and otherwise. Enjoy a glimpse at the myriad of moves hitting dance-floors and streets across the world!

We start off in the UK with a impressively growing Afro-House dance scene, dancers (and musicians) such as Reis Fernando and Milo & Fabio incorporate influences as wide as Hip Hop, Kuduro, and House; Then, we move to Trinidad where the Afropop take over continues unabated, making for some great Africa-influenced Soca moves; Yemi Alade releases a new video focused on dance, so we thought we’d include her and her dancer’s Coupe Decale influenced moves here; Colombia does dancehall to great effect, and with this video by Leka El Poeta, we get a little “Choke” as well for those who are keeping track; Not relegated to history with Harlem’s Jazz age, the Cha Cha makes it back to NY, and this rotating cast of Yak Films dancers do their best to update it to 2015; We are winning anytime Just A Band release a new video, and this dance-focused video definitely is one of their best yet; Former AIAC contributor Wills Glasspiegel co-directed this video (along side DJ RP Boo) focused on Chicago’s Footworking phenomenon, shot at the South Side’s Bud Billiken parade; which reminded me that Flying Lotus had drawn some specific connections between Jazz and Footwork earlier this year with his video for Never Catch Me featuring Kendrick Lamar; And, last but not least, Pantsula dancers also get the Jazz treatment in another former AIAC contributor (Allison Swank) produced video for the UK’s Sons of Kemet.

Further Reading

Fuel’s errand

When Africa’s richest man announced the construction of the continent’s largest crude oil refinery, many were hopeful. But Aliko Dangote has not saved Nigeria. The Nigerian Scam returns to the Africa Is a Country Podcast to explain why.

Fragile state

Without an immediate change in approach, Somalia will remain a fragmented country populated by self-serving elites seeking foreign patrons.

Coming home

In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.

Imaginary homelands

A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.

Business as usual?

This month, Algeria quietly held its second election since Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted in 2019. On the podcast, we ask what Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s second term means for the country.

The complexities of solidarity

Assassinated in 1978, Henri Curiel was a Jewish Egyptian Marxist whose likely killers include fascist French-Algerian colons, the apartheid South African Bureau of State Security, and the Abu Nidal Organization.