Africa Is a Country

Weekend Music Break 55

Weekend Music Break 55

By
Tom Devriendt

When Tendai Maraire broke down his Chimurenga Renaissance mixtape for us last year, he said about “It’s Time For You To Go”, a song inspired by a family visit to Zimbabwe (“driving down the street bumping Biggie’s ‘Juicy’”): “Young Maraire Boys being crazy at home.”

Toronto, Canada-based Zambian artist Chansa recently released his debut single, titled “Immigrant”, and has a video for it too:

Simba, Milton Gulli and Zubz’s “Scenario”, a first single taken off their Tribute To A Tribe Called Quest, which is a production by Mozambican arts collective Grasspoppers:

We now also have images to go with Ghanaian-Swiss audio experimentalist Oy’s hair philosophy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZmcAXy_7Bo

Matshidiso goes for a run in and around Johannesburg:

New soul from Sandra Nkaké who hails from Yaoundé, Cameroon but resides in France:

Anoter soul-ish one from the Mozambican lady who’s got Lusophone Africa on lock: Lizha James’ highly-stylized ode to her mother:

Jacques Vergès, Femi Falana and Thomas Sankara are but a few names who feature in this new track and video by Togolese rapper Elom 20ce (which he dedicates to Gouyano Sinandare, the 12-year-old who got murdered by the police during the student protests earlier this year):

Bajah (from Sierra Leone) recorded a Last.FM session with Prince Polo at The Kennel Studios in Brooklyn:

And Oliver Mtukudzi and the Black Spirits played an almost 30-minute set on Seattle radio station KEXP:

* The photo of Sandra Nkaké by Claire Vinson.

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.