Weekend Music Break No.90

A traditional Parang group from Trinidad

To wrap things up for 2015, next week Africa is a Country will have a few best of lists and long form posts for you to ponder into the New Year (as we take our annual December break). But for now let’s have a briefer interlude with our weekly music break, the last one for this year.

Our selection of tunes this week is honestly a bit of a (holiday work party?) grab bag, but at Africa is a Country we only deal in quality. You won’t be disappointed.

Kicking things off we have Badi and Youssoupha’s ode to the Congo of many names, peoples, and political geographies, so appropriately they just use the telephone country code 243 to signify exactly where and what they mean; To follow up we have the grandmaster of Ndombolo style of the rumba-soukous-decale axis, Kofi Olomide, who proves he can be relevant in the social media age with “Selfie”; Mr. Jayvic brings us uptempo dance vibes from Ghana; and then, Yungsal brings us nice Ghana-inspired downtempo vibes from Sierra Leone; Philadelphia, USA’s Doelife turns up for their squad with “Moment”; and then as promised in a previous music break, we said when the clip arrives we’d once again share Scotland’s Young Fathers’ “Old Rock N Roll”, live from Malawi; Boyzn Bucks members Cassper Nyovest and Riky Rick turn in a dark Cape Town tale with “Le Mpitse”; Afro Lisboa’s Black Sea Não Maya crew releases one of the few videos coming out of that scene, hopefully many more to come; And finally, we take a holiday pan-African turn to the Caribbean with some Trinidadian-Venezuelan Parang-Soca and Puerto Rican Parranda-Salsa vibes. Happy holidays, and see you at the next music break in 2016!

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.