Africa Is a Country

Friday Bonus Music Break, N°26

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

Friday Bonus Music Break, N°26

By
Tom Devriendt

We should start numbering these bonus music breaks. First up, above, from Kenya: the Large Gang, who claim to be “a lifestyle,” or at least more than a music group. Also from Nairobi (H/T “urban soul” blog GetMziki), the Grandpa Records family (basically a group of artists that are signed to the label) doesn’t take itself too seriously. Refreshing:

Coupé-décalé from Côte d’Ivoire in front of a green screen with beats by DJ Arafat (check the hilarious virtual guitar halfway into the video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UjGb1th2EU

A new and dreamy video for Ghanaian singer Efya:

You’re familiar with Mensa by now, so you know what to expect. File under Good Music (seriously) / Humor / No Further Comment:

According to South African rapper Jack Parow, Afrikaans (the language) is Dead.

But that’s of course not quite what he means, if you listen closely to the lyrics. Another Afrikaans rapper, also from Cape Town, is HemelBesem. Not sure what’s up with the Tennessee reference at the start here:

Switching gears: South London rapper Corynne Elliott aka Speech Debelle’s living for the message:

I’ve been listening to Salif Keita’s excellent new record this week. It’s produced by Philippe Cohen Solal (from Argentinian Gotan Project). Here they talk a bit about the recording (also introducing Esperanza Spalding) — the recurring song in the background is stand-out track ‘C’est Bon, C’est Bon’, a collaboration with Roots Manuva:

And finally, Seu Jorge has uploaded to his YouTube channel the complete concert he gave a year ago at the Quinta Da Boa Vista park in Rio de Janeiro at the occasion of the Dia da Consciência Negra. It was a star-studded affair (what a band!). Here’s Seu Jorge jamming with Caetano Veloso:

Further Reading

On Safari

On our annual publishing break, Gaza’s genocide continues to unfold in real time yet slips from public grasp. This is not just a crisis of politics, but of how reality is mediated—and why we must build spaces where meaning can still take root.

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.