Africa Is a Country

Shameless Self-Promotion: Chief Boima at The Apollo

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

Shameless Self-Promotion: Chief Boima at The Apollo

By
Boima Tucker

This Saturday I’ll be djing between acts at The Apollo Theater’s Africa Now! Concert. Yesterday, I had an interesting conversation with the Apollo’s director about the different African crowds in New York (last year they had Tiken Jah Fakoly to an enthusiastic crowd of Francophone African Harlemites), got a tour of the building, rubbed the tree of hope, and stood on the stage where every American black performer of significance in the last 100 years has stood. Besides the fact of my inclusion in the symbolic welcoming of a new generation of Africans into the folds of Black American history, touching the log (while the Apollo stagehand watched me unamused) is really all I needed.

Here’s all the info:

Apollo and WMI Present
AFRICA NOW!
Saturday, March 16 at 8 p.m.

Africa Now! is a weekend festival spotlighting today’s African music scene. The festival centers around a blowout concert event on the legendary Apollo stage. Featuring a line-up of artists who have drawn upon their roots for inspiration and transplanted them into the global music landscape, Africa Now! is a must see event. Blitz the Ambassador, Freshlyground, Lokua Kanza, and Nneka are scheduled to perform on this special night.

Hosted by celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson.

Presented in partnership with World Music Institute.

Tickets: $30, $40, $55
In person at the Apollo Theater Box Office
By phone call Ticketmaster (800) 745-3000
Online at Ticketmaster.com

* Cross-posted at Dutty Artz.

Further Reading

How to unmake the world

In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.

A migrant’s tale

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.

What Portugal forgets

In the film ‘Tales of Oblivion,’ Dulce Fernandes excavates the buried history of slavery in Portugal, challenging a national mythology built on sea voyages, silence, and selective memory.

Quando Portugal esquece

Em ‘Contos do Esquecimento,’ Dulce Fernandes desenterrou histórias esquecidas da escravidão em Portugal, desafiando uma mitologia nacional construída sobre viagens marítimas, silêncio e memória seletiva.