Here’s another Music Break to soundtrack your weekend! This round up is the “other countries” edition with a selection of tunes starting out in Latin America from Cuba to Brazil, and ending up around the rest of the African diaspora. Check it all out via the Youtube playlist below! Music Break No.97 1) We kick it off […]
When your Uber driver has never heard of Muhammad Ali you realize you're not his friend and you and he occupy different worlds.
The Nsibidi Institute Memory Project attempts to use digital forums to preserve popular, everyday memories of Nigeria.
For the last three months, we have been working on the sound design of my first feature-length documentary, Taking Stock, a film about my father and our third-generation family business in Benoni, a city to the east of Johannesburg. I brought a crew of close friends I had met at film school in the USA […]
Is diasporan a word? It is now. You cannot understand what it is to be Nigerian, or Kenyan or South African now, without factoring in the diaspora.
Why are we so averse to acknowledging complexity, difference, subtlety and agency when it comes to art that emerges from and in Africa?
Is the new benchmark in South African cinema “Happiness Is A Four Letter Word"?
As with our last movie night post, we need to start with the bad news. 1. The Durban International Film Festival (or DIFF), one of the most important film festivals on the African continent, has been through some turmoil lately. With only a couple months to go to DIFF, the festival manager Sarah Dawson as […]
Back to our regularly scheduled music break for your weekend! Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that what we’re taking a break from, so this week labor is a theme. However, so is liberation, and therefore perhaps fittingly, Haiti is too. To kick the series of videos off, we have a nice premiere from Burkina Faso’s Art Melody! Check […]
It’s hard not to imagine what could have been, or indeed could be in postcolonial Ghana if the political will and right management was in place.
Their voices, sharp and angry, shook me from my slumber. I didn’t know the language, but I instantly knew the translation. So I groped for the opening in the mosquito net, shuffled from my downy white bed to the window, threw back the stained tan curtain, and squinted into the light of a new day […]
Fresh of a trip to the UK and Germany, with stops in Afro-European strongholds of London and Berlin, I thought I’d theme this week’s Music Break around some of what I saw and heard there. So enjoy this brief (and not comprehensive by any means) trip around young Afro-Europe, with stops in London, Paris, Berlin, […]
What would an alternative visual vocabulary through which to comprehend Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, look like?
It is rare in much of Africa to see a festival line-up of both established and up and coming artists performing with a full band.
Who, ultimately, can speak with authority on recent events in Egypt, and, more importantly, how?
A website archive makes the case that Liberia needs a history that will be called 'history after the settlers.'
Amy Sall (Sunu Journal), Candace Keller (Michigan State), Drew Thompson (Bard), curator Thato Mogotsi and Cherif Keita, reflect on Malick Sidibé's impact.
A break from the routine of the work week, a weekend music break for you all to enjoy this May Day! 1) Rest in peace Papa Wemba 2) Netherlands-based Cape Verdean singer Gery Mendes asks if our world is really ready for positive change, is it? 3) I’m in the UK right now, so I […]
Except for one-year, when Mohamed Morsi was President, modern Egypt has only been ruled by military regimes
African travelers, it would seem, must still justify their movements across the planet (whether the motives be professional, economic or political).