The Music of Alex van Heerden
Van Heerden was a fixture in Cape Town’s jazz and alternative music scenes. His music is now available for purchase online.
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Nathan Chiume
Nathan Chiume is an Africa analyst and consultant.
Mos Def and the Battle of Algiers
What is that sample of Arabic during Slick Rick’s verse on Mos Def’s “The Auditorium”?
Working class Coloured life in South Africa
The film “Shirley Adams” is the story of a coloured mother in Mitchell’s Plain in Cape Town, struggling to care for her recently disabled son.
Where is Angola?
A random terror attack on a football team gets media to pay attention to the conflict in Cabinda. In the process, they also expose their ignorance.
Superheroes of History
Batman watches Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro addressing US media in an imagined black-and-white 1959 photograph.
The Indominable Lion
Samuel Eto’o is the official face of the 2010 World Cup. He is also the most impressive African footballer of the last decade.
Structures fit for animals
A selection of news items, videos, music from and drive by commentary before I shut down for December 2009.
Why the fear, the fire and the guns remain
The song “Weeping” by Bright Blue is one of five South African tunes (and some of the albums they’re on) that I have on repeat right now.
Delayed and watered down
You don’t come to Africa Is a Country for positive news and analysis. This week’s round-up won’t disappoint you.
Fela Kuti was an AIDS denialist
Fela’s AIDS diagnosis and denialism was fairly well known and an open secret.
South Africans fought for freedom, but won democracy
The famed South African musician Hugh Masekela has a history of speaking his mind on postapartheid politics.
Blood on the chair
Platon, the New Yorker staff photographer got many of the world’s leaders to sit for portraits. A number of African leaders obliged.
The Carnival at the Cape
The historian John Edwin Mason’s photographs of Cape Town’s New Year’s Carnival.
You can now trust Nigerians
Recently advertising and the movies in the West have have been hard on Nigerians. Even when they mean well.
House music
Since it is Friday, I might as well put up a few music videos.
Let Robeson Sing
Manic Street Preachers pay homage to the greatest American of the first half of the twentieth century, Paul Robeson. The music video by Nigerian Andrew Dosunmu is a tribute too.
Who will get rich
The fantasy that local people – small businesspeople, informal traders, especially black people – will make money or get jobs during the 2010 World Cup.
The New Black Atlantic
What does it mean when a Tanzanian rapper joins a cypher on BET, the US entertainment TV channel on its biggest night – during prime time – and rhymes in Swahili.
The society of elegant people
What is it about Congolese men who dress up in tropical weather like they’re on a catwalk in Paris sometime in late Fall?
Family ties
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting news piece on the growing migration by Portuguese workers to Angola.