Africa Is a Country

Weekend Music Break, N°35

Weekend Music Break, N°35

By
Tom Devriendt

We hardly ever feature Brazilian music, and even less their take on Afrobeat. The above tune by the Abayomy Afrobeat Orchestra dates from last year, but the video’s new. Hope to see more from them. We’ve got 9 more videos lined up for you this week. Ugandan duo Radio & Weasel came up with this: 

Nigerian artists are flocking en masse to Cape Town’s seaboard to shoot their videos (taking cues from Congolese artists ten years ago). Clearly not just for “the light”. Davido’s ‘Gobe’ one more example:

Lagos’ SDC Commandant Obaifeiye Shem’s clumsy reply when asked on TV about the address of the website of his Service was that “my Oga at the top” knows it. The rest is history (as is he, it seems). Your viral Naija meme of the week:

M3nsa and Sena repping it for Ghana:

Tanzanian bongo flava from Belle 9 (call it pop): ‘Listen’:

Also from Tanzania is duo Aika & Nahreel who got themselves a dance hit with ‘Usinibwage’:

Kenyan bongo sounds, here’s ‘Bum Kubam’ by Nikki Wa Pili featuring G Nako. Quite the video:

More Kenyan Hip-Hop by rapper Rabbit in ‘Adisia’:

And switching gears, this video by Just A Band:

H/Ts this week to @Birdseeding, @nemesisinc and GetMziki.

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.