Africa Is a Country

Azonto Germany

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

Azonto Germany

By
Boima Tucker

The diverse histories and orientations of African pop, the diaspora, and its international dissemination and the speed with which culture travels now.

Youtube screenshots from the Christmas Azonto battle in Copenhagen.

So apparently there’s more to the Ghana-Germany connection than the Boateng boys. I think the Azonto rave in Hamburg this past January is proof of that. It’s perhaps an illustration of some of the points we were trying to make about diverse histories and orientations of African pop, the diaspora, and its international dissemination. If anything, this is all an illustration of the speed with which culture travels now.

When I went to the Ghana independence day bash in Manhattan a year ago there was none of this Azonto craze. This year, with the group, V.I.P., in the building, I’m sure it’ll be Azonto all over the place.

But back to Europe. It’s not only contained to Hamburg. There was a Christmas Azonto battle in Denmark, and if you look hard it was not only Ghanaians in the building either. I continue to be surprised but excited by such cultural manifestations, and how we’re able to see how global culture is morphing in front of our eyes.

Till, a Hamburg-based DJ friend who represents the So Shifty crew sent me videos, and has done an Azonto mix. I probably would have been surprised that he was so up to the time with a bunch of tracks I knew from clubbing in Accra, Monrovia, and Freetown this summer, but in the context of all this, it definitely makes sense. Tracklist here.

Further Reading

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.