Africa Is a Country

Don’t kill yourself because of suffering

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

Don’t kill yourself because of suffering

By
Boima Tucker

Weekend Music Break, No.104 is just a playlist of ten great songs accompanied by predictably striking visuals from across Africa and its diaspora.

Malian singing legend Oumou Sangare performing in Essaouira, Morocco in June 2012.

Weekend Music Break is back to our regularly scheduled programming.  This week we start out with Malian legend Oumou Sangaré’s first release in seven years – and to top it off, she appears with Tony Allen in tow. The main message is about staying alive: “Don’t kill yourself because of suffering /  No-one should commit suicide because of pain / My brothers and sisters, we should not take our own lives /
because of suffering …”

Life on earth is not easy, but-no one should kill themselves

Then we head to Kenya where Muthoni channels a bit of (UK singer) MIA to call out corrupt politicians in her home country.

Up next, MHD and crew head from Paris to Manchester, and showing the Brits the French-African flavor their gonna miss out on as they start the EU exit process this week.

But London-based Mazi Chukz shows that the British-Africans can hold their own when it comes to stews.

Let’s head back to our continent now, alongside Wizkid who takes on a journey as he plays another packed live show somewhere on the continent.

Back home in Nigeria Lil’ Kesh makes an appeal for no fake love.

Cassper Nyovest does his best “I’m from Atlanta” impression with”Tito Mboweni.”

Let’s calm down from that a bit and head to Tidiane Thiam’s and Amadou Binta Konte in Senegal, and enjoy a more stripped down sound: one guitar, a hoddu and a microphone.

And let’s close out this week’s playlist with my current home of Brazil, and a who’s who of Afro-Brazilian rappers of many different stripes. Here they’re making an appeal for better and more and equal representation in their own country.

Further Reading

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.

Sinners and ancestors

Ryan Coogler’s latest film is more than a vampire fable—it’s a bridge between Black American history and African audiences hungry for connection, investment, and storytelling rooted in shared struggle.