Africa Is a Country

Friday Music Break, N°24

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

Friday Music Break, N°24

By
Boima Tucker

Hello! Boima here, and I’m back helping out with the Friday music break. A Haitian Rara (not Ornette Coleman) sampling rap/poem by Hyperdub affiliate The Spaceape got me excited this week, so that’s my lead off pick — above! Not only do the U.S. and China have political happenings this month, but Sierra Leoneans go to the polls next week as well. Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew put out a song appealing for peace amongst young people, who are often conscripted by politicians to carry out violence during election periods. Back in Sierra Leone, the musical messages to hold politicians accountable reassuringly continue:

Meanwhile a young diaspora Sierra Leonean is making noise in the U.K. with an electro-pop sound and Nikki Minaj-esque video:

M.anifest releases a NICE neo-Hiplife video with the beautiful Efya off his album Immigrant Chronicles: Coming to America:

His countryman Sway goes full Akon this week, dropping a video for an electro pop collabo with Mr. Hudson and Crystal Waters! But I can’t help wonder, what happened to Up Ur Speed Sway?

Awadi goes to Medellín, Colombia to sing about revolution. I wonder if the FARC is in on this:

Which reminds me that I had the pleasure to spend a weekend with Medellín based, Pacifico reppin’ Explosión Negra in Philadelphia recently:

New high quality Liberian video for a not-so-Hipco rap:

I’m realizing that I kind of over-Hip Hopped this Music Break, so here’s a nice change of pace from Portugal based singer with Cape Verdian roots Dino D’ Santiago featuring Pedro Mourato and Gileno Santana:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmy04YmbpAw&w=560&h=315

And finally, London based A.J. Holmes, who’s learned from and collaborated with musicians from classic Sierra Leonean bands like Super Combo and the S.E. Rogie band, goes to the sea:

Further Reading

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.