AfricaIs aCountry

Weekend Music Break, N°34

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

Weekend Music Break, N°34

By
Tom Devriendt

Pretty much all of this week’s artist are regular guests on the blog. First up: Pitcho. Remember him. Second, lifted from his ‘Jama ko’ record, here’s a Mali-shot video for Bassekou Kouyate: 

There’s Anbuley’s “pushing African music” even further into the future:

Nuru Kane (born Papa Nouroudine Kane, in Dakar) has got a new record out:

New video for Ian Kamau as well:

Marques Toliver & The Sometimes in the studio:

Zakwe gets help from Danger and Zuluboy on ‘Bathi Ngiyachoma’:

And Danish duo Okapii sent us through their new video for ‘Don’t mind the rain’, recorded in Barbados:

Further Reading

Slow death by food

Illegal gold mining is poisoning Ghana’s soil and rivers, seeping into its crops and seafood, and turning the national food system into a long-term public health crisis.

A sick health system

The suspension of three doctors following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son has renewed scrutiny of a health-care system plagued by impunity, underfunding, and a mass exodus of medical professionals.

Afrobeats after Fela

Wizkid’s dispute with Seun Kuti and the release of his latest EP with Asake highlight the widening gap between Afrobeats’ commercial triumph and Fela Kuti’s political inheritance

Progress is exhausting

Pedro Pinho’s latest film follows a Portuguese engineer in Guinea-Bissau, exposing how empire survives through bureaucracy, intimacy, and the language of “development.”

The rubble of empire

Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.

Atayese

Honored in Yorubaland as “one who repairs the world,” Jesse Jackson’s life bridged civil rights, pan-Africanism, empire, and contradiction—leaving behind a legacy as expansive as it was imperfect.