Ploughing through the blog’s archives to come up with a fair selection of ten videos for next week’s year-end lists, I wondered why we haven’t written about the Congolese Salaam Kivu All Stars. Things went well in Goma, Kivu during the elections last week. A year ago, youth and media organization Yole! Africa staged the SKIFF festival in Goma (where they also shot the first video below), and they were planning to do so again this year. ‘Saisir l’Avenir’ means as much as ‘to seize the Future.’

Get ready for a work out. Angolans The Shine and Portugal’s Throes do “kuduru rock”:

Okay, after that workout, we can slow down. Nice 10 minute live set by James Farm, the American “acoustic jazz quartet” consisting of saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Eric Harland. Recorded at The Jazz Standard.

And 18 minutes (also recorded live at The Jazz Standard) of Ambrose Akinmusire and his Orchestra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNRqk5WygpM

Finally, we had this one on our Facebook page earlier this week. Tamikrest backstage at a music festival in Switzerland: