AfricaIs aCountry

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.

About the Author

Boima Tucker is a music producer, DJ, writer, and cultural activist. He is the managing editor of Africa Is a Country, co-founder of Kondi Band and the founder of the INTL BLK record label.

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

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.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

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.