AfricaIs aCountry

Music Mondays

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

Music Mondays

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SK_Z_LGEac&w=500&h=301&rel=0]

These guys are obsessed with the elements. The band is named for the cold current that runs up the continent’s southeastern coast line. Benguela is based in Cape Town, South Africa. And this tune is called “Meridian.” It’s from their most recent album, “The Black Southeaster.” You know what the Southeaster does in the Cape. Critics have described their music as “post-rock.” Whatever this all means, we know they’re no slouches: Benguela have played with, among others, the great Robbie Jansen and AIAC’s favorites BLK JKS. Blow away.

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.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

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?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

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.