Africa Is a Country

Friday Bonus Music Break, N°28

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

Friday Bonus Music Break, N°28

By
Tom Devriendt

Kuduro pioneer Sebem (fresh out of prison; he was in for repeated traffic violations, from what I understand) has a new video out (above); the clip’s rural setting is surprising, given kuduro’s over-all urban flow. Next, a Senegalese collaboration between Djibril Diop and Aida Samb:

Kenyan Jeraw draws inspiration and images from local blockbuster film ‘Nairobi Half Life’:

A new video for Belgian-Congolese (but mostly Bruxellois) rapper Pitcho — taken from his new album Rendez-Vous avec le Futur:

Earl Sweatshirt wrote a “letter” to his South African dad Keorapetse Kgositsile:

From Lesotho, a new video (shot in Mozambique) for Kommanda Obbs:

London-based, Douala-born “one-man band” Muntu Valdo has a new video — not sure why YouTube won’t allow you to embed it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaM1_CmxjXk

Swiss-Ghanaian singer/improvisational musician Joy Frempong “Oy”; you already know we’ve been following her work:

And two acoustic sessions to wind down. Guinea-Conakry-born, Canada-residing Alpha Yaya Diallo:

And Cape Town-based Beatenberg (whose debut record ‘Farm Photos’ you should give a listen as well):

Et voilà, back on Monday!

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.