Africa Is a Country

Alicia Keys fails Brenda Fassie

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Alicia Keys fails Brenda Fassie

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9H1Rgx5VVU&w=600&h=373&rel=0]

I am catching up over the next few days. Lots to blog. (Too much football means I stop thinking about anything else, but I’ll try.)

I know there’s some love for Alicia Keys on this blog: But was it only me or did she sound out of tune and out of sorts when covering the late Brenda Fassie’s single “Too Late for Mama” with South African band BLK JKS at the pre-World Cup concert two weeks ago?

BTW, I only saw the performance on the net since both the public broadcaster in South Africa as well as ABC here in the US apparently decided not to show the collaboration between Ms Keys and  BLK JKS. (Separately during Shakira’s performance Zolani Mahola, who has a verse on the song, could only be heard and not seen.)

If you can’t bear Ms Keys, there’s always the original complete with cheezy video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC-JqKc1mx4&600&h=373&rel=0]

Further Reading

Sinners and ancestors

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How to unmake the world

In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.

A migrant’s tale

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.