When Brazil’s African Muslims scared the world
Taking place 190 years ago, the Malê Revolt in Bahia, led by African Muslim slaves, shook Brazil's foundations and echoed global fears of a new Haiti.
Culture
Rememorando os 190 anos da Revolta dos Malês no Brasil
Há 190 anos, a Revolta dos Malês na Bahia, liderada por escravizados africanos muçulmanos, abalou as bases do Brasil e ecoou temores globais de um possível novo Haiti.
Requiem for a revolution
A sweeping, jazz-scored exploration of Cold War intrigue and African liberation, Johan Gimonprez’s 'Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat' lays bare the cultural and political battlegrounds where empires, artists, and freedom fighters clashed.
Bring back Ngonnso
One Cameroonian woman’s quest to reclaim stolen artifacts reveals the enduring wounds of colonialism and the fight to restore Africa’s heritage.
How Rashid Vally showed us the way
Rashid Vally, the visionary behind South Africa’s iconic jazz label As-Shams, forged a legacy of revolutionary jazz that defied apartheid and continues to inspire new generations of musicians, activists, and music lovers.
Ibaaku’s space race
Through Afro-futurist soundscapes blending tradition and innovation, Ibaaku’s new album, 'Joola Jazz,' reshapes Dakar’s cultural rhythm and challenges the legacy of Négritude.
An allegiance to abusers
This weekend, Chris Brown will perform two sold-out concerts in South Africa. His relationship to the country reveals the twisted dynamic between a black American artist with a track record of violence and a country happy to receive him.
The beautiful game’s ugly secret
The #MeToo movement exposed abuses across industries, yet men’s football remains resistant to accountability, protecting predators and sidelining survivors.
Tyla and the politics of ambiguity
Tyla’s rise as a global pop star highlights the complexities of race, identity, and cultural representation, challenging how Blackness is perceived across the diaspora.
Beats of defiance
From the streets of Khartoum to exile abroad, Sudanese hip-hop artists have turned music into a powerful tool for protest, resilience, and the preservation of collective memory.
Reading List: Adam Hanieh
Materially speaking, oil is simply a sticky, black goo. It doesn’t have any innate power separate from the kind of society we live in—capitalism.
Bored of suppression
Colonial-era censorship bodies continue to stifle African creativity, but a new wave of artists and activists are driving a pan-African push for reform.
Drawing the line
How Sudanese political satirist Khalid Albaih uses his art and writing to confront injustice, challenge authority, and highlight the struggles of marginalized communities worldwide.
Reading List: Dotun Ayobade
What can the lives of the women behind Afrobeat tell us about creativity, resistance, and the interplay of power and pleasure in 1970s Nigeria?
Reading the present as history
In his debut novel, Thaer Husien remixes genre and takes readers on a psychedelic ride through a dystopian yet disturbingly familiar future Palestine.
Why are African artifacts everywhere but Africa?
The countless African artifacts that continue to be held in Western institutions after being obtained illegally send a violent message that makes efforts toward reconciliation inconsequential.
More French than Algerian
This week, Kamel Daoud became the first Algerian to receive France’s most prestigious literary honor. Yet, in Algeria, no one seems to care.
Between Harlem and home
African postcolonial cinema serves as a mirror, revealing the limits of escape—whether through migration or personal defiance—and exposing the tensions between dreams and reality.
The aftertaste of the ocean
Mati Diop’s 'Dahomey' isn’t solely concerned with the subject of repatriating Beninese artifacts, but with returning the debate to the Beninese themselves.
Museum of memory
An eye-opening documentary on African literary titan Wole Soyinka wants us to laud his “politics” without ever having Soyinka himself talk about them.