Africa Is a Country

Now or never

Now or never

By
Tom Devriendt

Apart from a heavy Senegalese presence, this Music Break, No.37, includes some other favorites of this site: Petite Noire, Laura Mvula, Rachid Taha and newcomer, Napoleon Da Legend.

Rachid Taha, via Wiki Commons.

Per usual, here are 10 new music videos to finish this week of blogging. Here is a video by photographer and graphic designer Laurent Seroussi for Salif Keita’s new “Tale a lbum,” produced by Gotan Project’s Philippe Cohen-Solal. The YouTube version of the clip seems not to be available everywhere. Weird record label thinking.

Next, a glorious video for Carlou D’s “Dooley Beuré” that switches into second gear halfway in (Carlou D of Positive Black Soul of Senegal talks a bit about the making of the video here)

Faada Freddy (real name: Abdou Fatha Seck, one third of Senegalese rap combo Daara J, jamming on “Borom bi” with the Clef de Sol choir.

A music video the Senegalese rap pioneer Didier Awadi shot for “Supa Ndaanaa” during a tour in Canada last summer organized by the people behind the documentary film, “The United States of Africa.”  Awadi is the other half of the legendary Positive Black Soul.

Napoleon Da Legend has new music out, but this one from last year is still nice. “African in New York” is his take on Sting’s classic “Englishman in New York.” Napoleon was born in Paris to parents from the Comoros, moved to New York which, by Afropolitan logics, makes him an “African in New York.”

Some rock’n’raï (whoever coined that term?) by Algerian-French Rachid Taha. For accolades, check his official – hilariously puff-toned – profile. This English and Arabic duet cover version (featuring Jeanne Added) of Elvis Presley’s “Now Or Never” is a polished but intriguing production:

Samba Touré introduces his new EP, ‘Albala’, recorded at Studio Mali in Bamako in the autumn of 2012. Also featuring are Djimé Sissoko and Madou Sanogo, with guests such as Zoumana Tereta and Aminata Wassidje Traore.

The Congolese-South African singer, Petite Noir, and his band played a session for a Brussels radio, in one of the city’s most respected venues (Brussels is the city where Petite Noir was born before moving to South Africa. Here’s a sample.

Just in case you still had any doubt, 2013 will be Laura Mvula’s year.

Finally, here’s Yassiin Bey looking sharp at The Shrine in Chicago.

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.