Africa Is a Country

Weekend Music Break 56

Weekend Music Break 56

By
Tom Devriendt

Three South African videos to start with. Cape Town rapper Youngsta moves between the city’s neigbourhoods of Wynberg and the CBD:

…while fellow Cape artist HemelBesem went for a stroll in Utrecht, Netherlands earlier this year. EJ von LYRIK who was on tour with him gets a cameo:

Mafikizolo seem to find a lot of fun in creating retro-styled videos lately:

A Nomadic Wax production for Diamondog, an MC from Angola, currently based in Berlin, Germany:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJMXM3SC908

From Jumanne’s archives: Kali Kwa Wote Unit from Zanzibar, ‘Tatizo Coins’ (an older song):

Baloji (who no longer needs an introduction) has two songs on the latest (and great) Red Hot compilation, both Fela interpretations. Here’s one of them:

Dinozord — from Kinshasa — could be seen dancing in a KVS-sponsored production recently but rapping is still what he does best:

A new album and a sweet video for guitarist Hervé Samb:

Rap from Québec, Canada: Webster (real name Ali Ndiaye — he has a Senegalese dad):

And another one from Angola: Puto Português and ‘Minha Passada’:

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.