Africa Is a Country

Summer in the City

Summer in the City

By
Wills Glasspiegel

The pick of summer 2012's shows and parties in New York City.

Africa is a Country doesn’t always claim a city or even a continent. But we do claim New York as one home among many for live music in the late summer.

We’ll be taking a break from posting during August. For many of the site’s contributors, summer’s finally here so you’ll find us outside. The editor asked the collective to let readers know what they were up to: which shows, exhibitions, happenings they think we shouldn’t miss out on, which books they’ll be reading, or what music they’ll be pumping at their garden parties, and share it in the form of a list. Here’s my pick of upcoming shows and parties in New York City.

Below is a short list of recommended shows and parties. Some we’ve discussed on AIAC; some we haven’t. Please feel free to add your own show and party recommendations in the comments section.

Shabazz Palaces’ short film for Black Up is contemporary visual poetry at its best. Butterfly (is it ok to still call him that?) brings his critically-acclaimed fever-dream rap project to Ft. Green Park tonight.
Shabazz Palaces
7.24 | Ft. Greene Park

Venus X and $hanye’s legendary (at least around these parts at AIAC) NYC party returns to Manhattan with some of the artists that were there in the beginning when this party first developed its trend-setting tendencies in 2010.
GHET20G0TH1K ft. Total Freedom, Nguzunguzu, Slink, $hayne and Venus X
7.25 | 200 Varick St.

Check out Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto’s classic Smithsonian Folkways release and you’ll hear the high lonesome and not-so-secretly African sound of America (the continents). It’s gaita music from Colombia and it’s definitely the realest shit happening on Bleeker Street in late July.
Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto w/ Geko Jones (Que Bajo?!)
7.26 | Le Poisson Rouge

It’s hard to believe Turkish psych folk goddess, Selda Bağcan, is coming to NYC for the first time.
Selda Bağcan
7.28 | Lincoln Center

DJ Spoko, an underground South Africa house music genius behind DJ Mujava’s transcendent “Township Funk,” arrives in the US for the first time straight from Pretoria where he’s a local legend for making “Bacardi House.”
DJ Spoko, MJ Cole, Micachu & the Shapes
7.28 | PS1 Summer Warmup

WizKid is massively popular throughout the continent and the Diaspora. People often call him the African Justin Bieber.
WizKid, Banky W, Skales, Rotimi
7.28 | Grand Ballroom

Following on the success of their opening exhibition which focused on gothic futurism of multimedia sculptor and art-rap genius Ramellzee, Susanne Geiss has put together a superb series of concerts this summer in their intimate SoHo space. This one looks particularly good:
James Ferraro, Tim DeWit, Wu Tsang, Shayne Oliver
7.28 | Susanne Geiss Gallery

Timbuktu diva extraordinaire Khaira Arby is back yet again in NYC with her indomitable band.
Khaira Arby
8.1 | Lincoln Center

Sidi Touré, The Pedrito Martinez Group, Wouter Kellerman
8.6 | Marcus Garvey Park

And 2Face is a really good reason to love Naija pop right now, as he has been for years:

2Face, M.I., Brym
8.8 | Irving Plaza

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.