Africa Is a Country

Weekend Music Break 62

Weekend Music Break 62

By
Tom Devriendt

10 new music videos from Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Kenya, Mali, Burundi (via Belgium), South Africa and Nigeria (via the US and the UK) to get your weekend started. But first up, from Senegal, Daara J Family have a new video out, directed by Lionel Mandeix and Loïc Hoquet. N’Dongo D and Faada Freddy, from Dakar, still bringing it after all those years:

“THIS VIDEO IS SOOOO AMAZING IT HAS A JAMAICAN VYBE PLUS DANCING N FLAVOR I GOTTA LUV MY NAIJA PPL DEM TUN UP LOUD BUSS TWO BLOODCLAAT BLANK FI DIS!!!” And that was just one of the first YouTube comments under this new Burna Boy jam, ‘Yawa Dey’, directed by Peter Clarence:

Here’s another Nigerian jam, by Omawumi and Remy Kayz:

More Pan-African styling courtesy of Nde Seleke in ‘Pelo Ea Ka’. Lesotho house music as good as it gets:

Kenyan director Wanuri Kahui shot this video for South African rapper Tumi — is this the new Pan-African aesthetic?

Compare the above to what Zimbabwean hip-hop artist Orthodox is doing in Bulawayo…

…or what Nigerian-American Kev is doing in Queens, New York (he is part of the Dutty Artz’ L’Afrique Est Un Pays project — check the EP we shared yesterday):

In Kenya, Muthoni the Drummer Queen has released an unusually dark video:

Meanwhile, in Belgium, Burundi-born (but claiming Rwanda as his original home) Soul T knows his Soul classics; this is a first single off his EP Ife’s Daughter:

And now for something completely else, to end, ‘Ay Hôra’ is a great new tune by Malian singer Sidi Touré and band (throwing a good party too):

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.