Africa Is a Country

The Delasi Edition

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

The Delasi Edition

By
Delasi

This selection of smooth Afropop illustrates Delasi's transnational vision for contemporary African art and music.

The art for Delasi's 2015 release, #ThoughtJourney

Highly recommended for your weekend mornings: It’s the second Weekend Music Break of the year (enter confetti and dancehall sirens) and I’m super delighted to present you this playlist.

(1) We kick off with the Afro bass duo Gato Preto’s “Take a Stand”, which features Kenyan singer Janice Iche. Sounds like an anthem for African pride everywhere in the world.

(2) On “Brujas,” the Bronx-based artist Princess Nokia explores her roots and origins acknowledging the Yoruba deity Orisha. Try not to get possessed as you enjoy the visuals.

(3) Senegalese producer Ibaaku takes you to his abstract world on the hypnotic tune “Monkey Boy” off his Alien Cartoon album.

(4) Next stop, practice your dance moves to Branko’s “Let Me Go” track feat. Nonku Phiri & Mr. Carmack. Shot in Joburg, enjoy nice Pantsula dance moves infused with zouk bass and Nonku’s chilled R&B flavor.

(5) Sudanese and Nubian inspired collective Alsarah & The Nubatones share melodic vocals in Arabic backed by oud drums on their quest to find home.

(6) Sampha’s “Blood On Me” is bordering around dark and desperately forebodes the demons that are out to get him. For the sake of delicious music, let’s hope they don’t find him.

(7) Jamaican singer-songwriter Chronixx pays tribute to all the queens, if you are not teary eyed at the beauty of black love celebration then you may probably have ideas of starting your own family.

(8) “How Far” by Red Red is a socially conscious and politically unapologetic tune that sees M3nsa playing different faces of the average Ghanaian, and asking the most pertinent questions on all of Ghanaians’ minds.

(9) UK based Ghanaian producer DJ Juls has steadily been releasing hits for a while now. Enjoy this video for “Give you Love” ft. L.A.X.

(10) What would the world do without the black woman? Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 celebrates and glorifies the strength and power of black women in the diaspora.

Further Reading

On Safari

On our annual publishing break, Gaza’s genocide continues to unfold in real time yet slips from public grasp. This is not just a crisis of politics, but of how reality is mediated—and why we must build spaces where meaning can still take root.

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.