Africa Is a Country

Weekend Music Break No.87

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

Weekend Music Break No.87

By
Boima Tucker

Still from Featurists's Babaah

Weekend is here so that means it’s time for another music break! If there’s any theme this weekend, it is artists who are looking back into the past to tap into some kind of inherited tradition or cultural roots… and then one just for fun. Enjoy!

We covered Gabacho Maroconnection earlier this month in our Liner Notes series — here they perform their song “Allah Moulena”; We also ran an interview with Somalia via Seattle rappers Malitia Malimob — this song samples traditional Somali sounds; A throwback tune from Youssoupha (who’s 2015 album NGRTD is pretty great) — a dedication to his father the great Tabu Ley Rochereau; Fally Ipupa taps into some traditional rural Congolese sounds, updating them with a 2015 Kinshasa flair; D Banj and Akon also bring some new ancient rhythms to the club… it would be really great to hear this kind of rhythm on the dance floors of mainstream clubs in New York or Las Vegas… recent Instagrams by super producer Swizz Beatz point to the possibility of that reality not being too far away; Blsa Kdei taps into a classic Highlife sound, with the lilting guitar on “Mansa”; Featurist gets particularly traditional with his fashion style and moves in this video for “BABAAH” (the dance of grandfather!); Ghanian SK Kakraba is a master of the Gyil — living in Los Angeles he recently released a record on the Awesome Tapes from Africa label; Malian Kora player Abou Diarra plays a live session accompanied by acoustic guitar; and finally, after seeing great success in the UK for his Afropop hit “The Thing“, Atumpan goes dancehall and turns in a video for “African Wine” shot at this year’s Nottinghill Carnival in London.

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.