Everybody take out your bicycles

An eclectic playlist of music that features musicians as diverse as Horace Silver, Obour, Black Dillinger and Mzungu Kichaa.

A still of Black Dillinger, via Richvibes Records.

We like music so much, we have an oversupply of suggestions for our “Music Break” post. So why not offer you all that other music – well at least seven of them at a time – that did not make the cut?

Black Dillinger, “From a Place”
Let’s admit it, we all have at least once – willing suspension of disbelief – considered how much different Cape Town could look like if everybody took out their bicycles rather than their cars, as Black Dillinger reminds us in his new video. Or maybe not.

Mzungu Kichaa, “Jitolee”
Mzungu Kichaa (literally: the crazy white man) has a Danish father and an English mother, but grew up in East Africa and has been doing East African Bongo Flava since its early days in 1999/2000. He was in Bongo Records with Juma Nature, Professor Jay, Solo Thang and all the artists who invented the genre. Today he represents East African abroad as well as back home in East Africa. He speaks Kiswahili fluently and writes his songs himself. This song Jitolee is from his first album Tujo Pumoja.

Streets to the Hill, “El Shaddai”
We like this circa 2007 cover by Oakland R&B due Streets to the Hill consisting of guitarist Ryan Daisley and vocalist Nasambu (her family is Kenyan). Not sure if they still exist.

Teba, “Food of Life”
Looks like rooftop concerts are trending in Cape Town. Connected: the new music video for “original social worker” Teba’s song “Food of Life.”

Obour, “Obour.”
Some consciousness from Ghanaian hiplife musician, Obour where he “… goes back to his Atenteben days.” We are assuming this is about him going back to his ‘traditions’ or his childhood. Anyway, we can dance to this.

BD Banx, “Jump”
Now for something totally out of left field. We need more of Brussels-based rapper BD Banx (born to Congolese parents).

Horace Silver, “I Had A Little Talk”
Finally, slowing it down. Taking you back to 1971. Jazz pionist Horace Silver (and his quintet) with ‘I Had A Little Talk …’ off his album, “The United States of Mind.”

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.