• Timothy Edaki

Musical traditions and language from Edo State have moved from the margins of Nigeria's national (and international) culture to the center.

• Yaw Asare

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.

• Jyhene Kebsi

Blending Tunisian rap with Egyptian mahraganat, Lully Snake defies sexist norms, blurs borders, and opens a new space for feminist rebellion in North African popular culture.

• Luis Castellví Laukamp

The last great Fang bard, Eyí Moan Ndong fused myth, music, and sci-fi to create epic performances that defy Western categories—and demand global recognition.

• Karen Chalamilla

More than two decades after its release, Lady Jaydee’s debut album still resonates—offering a window into Tanzanian pop, gender politics, and the sound of a generation coming into its own.

• Achille Tenkiang

Across the continent, music festivals are challenging industry gatekeepers and testing what it means to organize on African terms.

• Thembi Ngubo

From kwaito to amapiano, South African music is a bridge between past and present, where cultural memory, resistance, and reinvention collide on the dancefloor.

• Coco Em

Amid global political turmoil and restrictive visa policies, artists are redefining resistance—on the dance floor and beyond.

• Florian Bobin

Detained for over six months, Malian singer Rokia Traoré has been locked in a legal battle with her ex-spouse over custody of their daughter since 2019. Between allegations of abuse and arrest warrants, the case appears to be nearing its conclusion.

• Atiyyah Khan

Rashid Vally, the visionary behind South Africa’s iconic jazz label As-Shams, forged a legacy of revolutionary jazz that defied apartheid and continues to inspire new generations of musicians, activists, and music lovers.

• Christopher J. Lee

Through Afro-futurist soundscapes blending tradition and innovation, Ibaaku’s new album, 'Joola Jazz,' reshapes Dakar’s cultural rhythm and challenges the legacy of Négritude.

• Khanya Mtshali

This weekend, Chris Brown will perform two sold-out concerts in South Africa. His relationship to the country reveals the twisted dynamic between a black American artist with a track record of violence and a country happy to receive him.

• Tshiamo Ramela

Tyla’s rise as a global pop star highlights the complexities of race, identity, and cultural representation, challenging how Blackness is perceived across the diaspora.

• Ibrahim Osman

From the streets of Khartoum to exile abroad, Sudanese hip-hop artists have turned music into a powerful tool for protest, resilience, and the preservation of collective memory.

• Dotun Ayobade

What can the lives of the women behind Afrobeat tell us about creativity, resistance, and the interplay of power and pleasure in 1970s Nigeria?

• Jabulile Dlamini-Qwesha

Samthing Soweto and DJ Maphorisa’s clash over a song credit raises the question of whether numbers trump respect in the Amapiano music scene.

• Christopher J. Lee

'Funeral for Justice' is a bracing recording that blends the critical sensibility of Frantz Fanon with the melodies of a genre born from an ongoing liberation struggle.

• Atiyyah Khan

Jazz bassist Benjamin Jeptha’s latest project interrogates the meaning of Creole identity in South Africa, thirty years after the end of white-minority rule.

• Sean Henry Jacobs

The musician Mac McKenzie, who passed away in April 2024, helped pioneer a sound that captured the Mother City’s Creole heritage.

• Palesa Nqambaza

What an amapiano song tells us about post-apartheid South Africa.