Here’s ten new videos to get your weekend started. Some pop, some rap, some indie, but first, some dance (what’s in a name). Above’s Black Coffee latest, feat. Nomsa Mazwai and Black Motion on “Traveller”. Next: Owiny Sigoma Band (that’s Joseph Nyamungo, Charles Okoko and friends in London) put out this festival-vibes video for “Nyiduonge Drums” (which, oddly, is not on the record they recently released):

Congolese “Hustler” (his word) Fally Ipupa is “Back”; these loosely choreographed videos never cease to amaze:

Nigerian trio Weray Ent’s second single “Masquerade” features Ghanaian group Vibe Squad. Important disclaimer in the opening lines; what follows is a feast of styles:

Dochi and Ali Kiba bring the weekly Bongo sounds on “Imani”:

With the arrival of their first EP, Bells Atlas released a video for “Lovin You Down” — recorded while the band was on tour recently (and spent time in Miami during the International art event Art Basel):

Rokia Traoré could have come up with a different title for her new record, but the songs that are on there are magnificent. Quite politically engaged lyrics too, like much of what’s coming out of Mali over the past year. Production: John Parish. This is a first single, “Mélancolie”, and video:

UK youth broadcaster SB.TV put up a live video of UK artist (and AIAC household name) Akala, performing his track “Lose Myself”, a collaboration with Josh Osho — a new web series to watch:

Playing in London tonight (and pretty much everywhere else in Europe later this month; they sent us a reminder earlier this week) are Cuban combo Alexander Abreu y Havana d’Primera. Don’t miss it if you like your salsa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9NxNr1I1DU

And, finally, your moment of zen: this video for four-piece London band Woman’s Hour’s “To the End”, directed by South Africans Oliver Chanarin and Laurence Hamburger. Trampolinists are Siphiwe Mosoang and Xolani Nxumalo:

Woman Hour’s debut EP’s soon to be released on Parlour Records. Now watch that video again.

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.