Africa Is a Country

Weekend Music Break No.72

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

Weekend Music Break No.72

By
Boima Tucker

Manny and Floyd

Kicking things off this week, South Africa’s BoysnBucks collective show off their “Umswenko” in a new video for “Mswenkofontein”:

A bit of Afrobeats from Sierra Leone, Lady Matto brings a nice London-shot video for her uptempo dance track “Oba”:

Nigerien Afro-Rock group Tal National released an album this week. Shabazz Palaces member, and AIAC contributor Tendai Maraire offered up a remix to celebrate the occasion:

DJ Simón de la Onda sent over a couple videos from Guinea and Angola, just as I was putting together this list!

First up Les Jumeaux Damaro bless us with “To Mara Fanyi”:

… and some Angolan Kizomba from Marceny to give a little romance to your Saturday!

Get it while it’s hot! DJeff offers up a free download of his track “Ser Kazukuta” featuring Yuri da Cunha and BZB:

São Paulo’s MC Bin Laden is Brazil’s craziest videoclip maker:

Back to Sierra Leone via Idris Elba and his Krio rapping on Ghanian super group VVIP’s remix for “Selfie”

A bit of shameless self-promotion in the form of a new remix that I released last week. This one fuses the Afro-Bolivian Saya tradition with pan-African rhymes delivered by Mexican rapper Bocafloja:

And finally, in honor of the “fight of the century” tonight (#TeamManny!), Wax Poetics offers up the most memorable boxing entrances. Let’s see if Manny and Floyd’s entrances can live up to the standard set by “Mr. Unbeatable” Roy Jones Jr.:

Further Reading

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.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.