AfricaIs aCountry

Paying homage

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

Paying homage

By
Tom Devriendt

Pitchom, Batida, Vieux Farka Toure, P-Unit, Sauti Sol and Tinariwen comprise our weekly Music Break.

The late Ali Farka Touré (via Fallen in the Open, CC Licensed).

Pitcho added archival video material (and a short fragment of the brilliant 2008 film ‘The Class’/’Entre Les Murs’) to the title track of his Crise de Nègre album. It’s becoming a trend, but it works. Friday means we have four more:

Batida gets help from Ngongo on “Ka Heueh.”

Last month, in Bamako, Vieux Farka Touré and his father’s friends and former band paid tribute to Ali Farka Touré, master musician. Ali Farka Toure passed away in 2006. Great footage by Bammako Culture.

Popular Kenyan bands P-Unit and Sauti Sol got themselves a hit.

And the quietest song on Tinariwen’s masterful album now also has the quietest music video.

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.