One of the popular phrases that came out of the protests in the run up to the Cup was, “Copa pra quem”? On the third and fourth days of the Cup, I’ve been darting around to different neighborhoods in Rio during the matches -- from favelas to wealthy beach front neighborhoods, and from street corner botecos to corporate events -- trying to get a sense of the answer to that question. What I've observed is that tourists are out in full force, waking the city out of a sort of mid-winter slumber that we had been experiencing. I visited Lapa Friday night and it was at Carnival levels of busy. The city's newly arrived visitors are friendly, but definitely in vacation mode, and that means they come with all the strange behavior which that entails. This includes plenty of small groups of men stalking around the now full beaches, a common occurence no doubt, however in an event where several people have already remarked to me about the disproportionate number of male visitors, this can become quite disconcerting. In the four days since the cup started I've heard the word brothel mentioned more often than in all of the four months I've lived here. Talking with cab drivers has been informative. Almost every time a cab driver hears I speak English they’ll try to get in as much practice as they can during the ride. One guy said, “I don’t speak English, but I do speak money!” I asked him if he had met a lot of English speakers and he said Argentinians seem to be the most frequent customers and that they like to haggle prices. And it’s true, Argentinians are everywhere here. Fittingly so, as their team is playing against Bosnia-Herzegovina at Maracanã this evening. Colombian fans also are making their presence known in its trans-amazonic neighbor. If you watched their match in Belo Horizonte against Greece on TV, you saw that almost the entire stadium was yellow with Colombia jerseys. I went down to the fan fest in Rio to watch the match with some Colombian friends, and their countryfolk were out in full force there as well. Since this match wasn’t as packed as the Brazil-Croatia opener, we were able to get into the official FIFA-sponsored screening venue without a problem. The crowd was joyful as Colombia dominated the match, but I actually enjoyed the experience at the overflow screen just outside the official FIFA venue more. There, informal vendors hawked cold local beers and Capirinha variations, while locals mixed with visitors in an open-beach atmosphere. Inside the highly securitized fan fest there were over the top multimedia displays, corporate sponsored booths, foreign 'official-sponsor' beverage companies, live music acts, an hype-man MC, video cameras galore, and carnival ride distractions. I personally preferred the experience of just a screen and the people. I was also able to visit some Brazilian friends who are against the Cup this weekend, and was able to discuss a little their feelings about the tournament now that it’s kicked off. I asked one friend if he in his heart was cheering for Brazil when they hit the field, even after all the problems with the hosting. He said no, that he was cheering for Brazil to lose. He actually felt that Thursday’s win was cheap, that the ref had unfairly helped the Brazilian side with a couple of blown calls -- including the penalty kick that put them ahead. I told him that when you spend $11 Billion dollars to host the World Cup, the home team is gonna get a few calls thrown their way. And my friend’s sentiment isn’t uncommon amongst Brazilians. The New York Times published a survey before the tournament asking people in various countries what their cheering preferences were. Brazil, the U.S., and Russia all had a significant percentage saying they were cheering against their own national squads. In the U.S., I chalk it up to the large immigrant population, as I am one of those who often roots for other sides according to a complex web of multi-national allegiances. In Brazil it is definitely related to people feeling defeated about their government’s acquiescence to global capital and FIFA (a feeling that Jon Oliver explains so well.) I get the sense that there's a general feeling of fatigue amongst those who participated in the protests, disillusioned by the lack of response to their demands by their government. What's more, the police response to the protests last year was extremely harsh, and many people who are more moderate in their direct action techniques have been coerced into staying off the streets. This time, on top of the normal riot police, the Army is involved, and private firms like Blackwater have been flown in. More than one person has told me that while they were involved in the protests last year, they'd be quietly opposing the cup in the safety of their homes during the tournament. Cheering against the Seleçao is an appropriate, and probably cathartic form of personal protest. So, in light of all this, I asked my friend who he’d been cheering for, and we both agreed that any African team playing would be our choice. I like to expand that include the African diaspora, and for many reasons was very excited when Costa Rica dominated Uruguay yesterday. It actually brought me back to that infamous Uruguay-Ghana quarter final during the last World Cup, giving me a bit of redemption for that painful Ghana loss. Incidentally, I had watched that match four years ago while in Bolivia, alongside a group of Brazilians living there. When I found out one of them was cheering for Ghana, I asked why he would cheer for an African team, and not his southern neighbor. He looked at me and said, “look at my skin, this is in my blood.” As far as for me, yesterday my day was capped with an agonizingly delayed triumph by my team Cote d'Ivoire. I celebrated enthusiastically, in a friend's apartment, and perhaps a few thousand Brazilians did as well.

I haven’t been on social media yet, and I’m sure everyone’s already talking about this, but how fitting is it that the first goal of the tournament is an own goal by Brazil? I mean four goals scored by Brazil, one for the other team, perfectly illustrates Brazilian feelings about the build up to this tournament. It also perhaps sums up day one of the tournament in Rio. Scorecard on the streets - the protests in Rio, Sao Paulo, and Natal pretty much dominated the first half. Riot police responded with tear gas and concussion grenades. The national news station Globo TV fittingly switched back between shots of the street violence and people in the fan fests, offering a perfect picture of the two Brazils we’ll see during the cup (however two Brazils is a constant theme here -- even without the cup.) It seemed like the protesters had been able to make their point just when the entire world was watching. During the morning, I had heard that traffic and supermarkets in Zona Sul were at apocalyptic slowdown levels, so I living in Zona Oeste, was worried about being able to make it to a place to watch the game in time. However by the time 3pm rolled around the streets seemed empty, and my wife and I hit the omnibus to see how far inside the city we could get. Already the city was like a ghost town, and besides one short traffic stop at São Conrado the streets were clearer than your average Monday evening. We breezed through the city, and all I could think about was how easily everything was working. It seemed that Brazil was managing this situation - without a match in the city and on a public holiday - pretty well. To be completely honest, I couldn’t help thinking how the chaos that everyone predicted with “imagina na copa” was no where to be seen. The usually bustling entrances to Rocinha and Vidigal were empty, Leblon and Ipanema were clear, and besides a few surfers on the beach, it seemed like everyone had gone home to watch the match. Carnival was much more chaotic than this, and that happens every year. I started to think that questions of Brazil’s ability to host the cup were completely unfounded. Was this routine any different than a normal Seleçao game day? Were the Brazilian people own goaling in their fear of the country's ability to host such a mega event? We had gotten to Copacabana so easily that when we passed the fan fest we decided to brave it and join the throng. We got off the bus at the front gate of the official fan fest, which was also the place we had heard a protest was forming. There were plenty of riot police and helicopters, which again gave the whole scene an apocalyptic feel. It was a strange dissonance against the already inebriated fans on the beach. Porta potty lines were long, but generally people were in a festive mood. By the time we had gotten to the fan fest the gates were closed so we opted for the overflow screen down the beach, which was also already packed out. That’s when the anti-FIFA protests rolled through, and we ended up in the middle between the fans and the protesters, with riot police lined up on the other side of the protesters. I was worried a little that the riot police were going to do something crazy, but the protest was peaceful and passed by in a calm manner. Maybe the police didn’t want to have teargas around the tourists? You all watched the match so you already know the score on the pitch, but some interesting moments to take note. 1) When the first goal happened, Marcelo’s own goal, I was actually worried that if Brazil didn’t win, as an unexpected consequence of the over blown security, the riot police were going to turn on the fans. This added plenty of motivation for my own cheers when Neymar came through to save the day. 2) The moon rising over Copacabana beach as Brazil settled into the lead, and the crowd settled into a contented hum, was a beautiful moment. It was probably the first time I felt a part of Brazil since moving here. 3) I was amazed when a trio of older Brazilian women of different races settled in behind me and kept expressing their motherly concern over the fatigue of the players on the field. 4) Are all English fans annoying? At least the group I was standing next to was self-aware enough to repeat over and over “we’re American” and “we loooove soccer” really loud. To their credit they were probably the most diverse single crowd at the beach, simultaneously repping Jamaica, Iran, and I would assume a few other places while sporting English jerseys. 5) At the same time, in a post-9/11 world, U.S. Americans abroad have seemed to become used to hiding in plain sight. Ninety-percent of the time I would hear English in an American accent, I would look up and see a Brazilian jersey or colors (I was no exception). I get the sense that this is never something an Argentinian would do. By the time the second wave of protests passed by the overflow screen (besides the military helicopter circling, I’m sure those inside the highly secured fan fest didn’t even notice their presence), it seemed that the protesters voices had fallen off into another moment of time. FIFA, with the help of the Seleçao, had come thru and won in the second half. However when I thought back to the empty streets, and the relatively low impact the match made on the actual functioning of the city, all the money spent on this event went into stark relief. If the action in Rio couldn’t hold a candle to the madness of Carnival, or even an average work day, why all the money and stadiums just to fill some ridiculous FIFA standard? At the end of the day the question of whether or not Brazil could handle the cup to me was answered with a resounding yes. The question of whether or not they should still remains. For the perfect soundtrack, all the way from Rio de Janeiro, check out @ChiefBoima with AfricasaCountry Radio, Episode 3. You can listen to all the episodes here.

World Cup Day 1 -- The sun is out in Rio for the first time in days. It's a national holiday. Anticipation in the air. I'm woken up to the sound of horns.

My first Brazilian national home game of significance is today… but perhaps this one is bigger than many. This is because there are two fields of action. One is on the pitch and the other is on the streets. This is Brazil's chance to prove itself in many different ways. As a country that's arrived on the global stage, as a fully developed democracy. It seems like proving themselves on the pitch was the last thing that was on many Brazilians minds in the run up today. 'Imagina na Copa' has rung in my ears since I've arrived. Well the cup is here and today I'm woken up to horns.

This morning I'm going to be trying to follow the action on the streets, this afternoon I'll be looking at the pitch. I've been following activist groups online for months in the preparation. It seems like one prominent activists' house was raided by police last night. Sao Paulo is already seen some protest action. Airport workers in Rio went on strike this morning for 24 hours. How else are Brazilian activists and workers going to show their cards today?

My next challenge today is to attempt to become mobile in Rio... I'm dreading the traffic.

For the perfect soundtrack, all the way from Rio de Janeiro, check out @ChiefBoima with AfricasaCountry Radio, Episode 3. You can listen to all the episodes here.

Came across this nice little disco edit of Toto's "Africa." Since we have a running series going, thought it would be nice to add it to the bunch. So deeejay! Take us awaaaay to Aaaaaafrica!

The ONE organization (it counts one of Warren Buffett's sons as well as Bono, Sheryl Sandberg, Condoleezza Rice, Nigeria's unpopular finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, among its leadership) dropped a new African pop star powered video this past week: http://youtu.be/jrEX4jpVtzQ So this is their strategy? Ask a bunch of relatively wealthy, globally-mobile pop superstars to tell rural youth to not participate in the flashy urban lifestyle they (the artists) usually promote--to stay in the countryside and participate in the resource extraction side of global capitalism? As Sean pointed out to me over email, the video isn't unlike the type campaign some dictatorship (South Africa's racist regime was fond of it) might use as a tool of "national development" or to fight crime or build national morale. It's actually kind of humorous if you look at it in that way. Let's pretend ONE (the organization) tried to do something like this in the American Midwest. Like, asked Kanye West to go to a car factory in Detroit and tell inner city youth to invest in their future as urban manufacturers. Would it work? Maybe that's not the right analogy. Still, this ad/music video/pro-agriculture campaign in my mind just isn't effective, and way out of touch with the reasons why African youth follow pop stars in the first place. It's not that I'm completely against edutainment. I do think that in general, especially in the context of developing countries, we have to be vigilant about who's involved in such projects, and how funding molds priorities of organizations, artists, and average people. Perhaps the most important thing for the producers of such material to do is to understand and respect their target audience, an attitude that would prioritize grassroots movements and help enforce transparency. For example, a Danish company recently launched an entertaining (and a little less patronizing) pro-sex ad addressing falling birth rates in their country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrO3TfJc9Qw And in Liberia a similar campaign involved Liberian rapper Takun J (full disclosure: I was tangentially involved and in support of this project), and efforts to curb rape and sexual abuse in his country. http://youtu.be/uXJN_Y263JM The Takun J project was a heartfelt plea from the rapper, wanting to share the story of hardship of a young woman he met. In my opinion Takun's sincerity goes a long way to get the message across to his large following of urban male youth. At least more convincing than D-Banj as a farmer.

Last week I wrote a post about my excitement around the African musical permutations I was hearing this year in Trinidad’s Carnival. Since this week I was in Brazil for my first Carnaval Carioca, I wanted to also write about my experiences seeking out similar connections as a newcomer to this country. It’s no secret that Brazil is America's largest African country. So as a DJ of African descent who specializes in the music of the Black Atlantic, I was excited to hit the ground here and experience the Brazilian Atlantic musical permutations first hand. I've come to find that while Brazil is a nation with a strong pride in its African roots, the continued role of race in the formation of country's deep social divisions reveals some confusing contradictions. As the social reasoning goes in Rio, wealthier residents live in the formal city and are generally, but not always, white or light skinned. The residents of the informal favelas are mostly, but not always, dark skinned and of African descent. The marginal position that the favelas and their residents hold in society is reflected by the way their cultural production is treated. Funk Carioca is perhaps the cultural product that most represents life in Rio's favelas today. According to my friend Maga Bo, it is also one of the most African manifestations in contemporary Brazilian music because of its roots in the Maculele rhythm of Capoeira. In Rio, it and its practitioners are constantly subjected to either attacks by the state, or not unlike hip hop in the U.S. - appropriation into the machinery of capitalism. This mirrors the twin processes of removal and gentrification happening to the favelas' actual residents. Additionally, funk's often vulgar lyrics and favela origins cause even some self-identified Afro-Brazilians to look down upon it. The marginalization of certain aspects of Afro-Brazilian culture, combined with my own status as an outsider, often leave me frustrated when seeking out Afro-Brazilian culture in the city. Therefore, when I do come across African cultural permutations here it is both surprising and exciting. The first weekend I arrived in Rio I went to a large mainstream club in Lapa. The DJ played a lot of electro pop inflected funk, and a rock cover band played songs by bands like Bon Jovi. It wasn't necessarily my cup of tea, but in the middle of the night, my predilections were satisfied when the DJ ran a set of tunes that sent me into a dancing frenzy. One of those songs that really stood out was 'Ziriguidum' by Bahian band Filhos de Jorge: http://youtu.be/U10M6bxZjQw The reason I was so excited to hear this tune is that I know the melody from the song of a salsa-obsessed Beninois singer named Gnonnas Pedro. In the 1960s Pedro gave himself a Spanish-sounding name, revealing his desire to be associated with the Afro-Cuban sounds which were making their way all over the African continent at that time. These beginnings would eventually lead him to a long career of singing funk, salsa, highlife, soul, and updated Beninois traditional styles for such legendary projects as T.P. Orchestre Rythmo and Africando. 'Yiri Yiri Boum', having appeared on reissue compilations from outfits such as Putamayo and Sofrito records, is perhaps his most internationally recognizable hit: http://youtu.be/3-PjzzM93jo However, I didn't know until recently that while Pedro did a great rendition, he didn't write the song. The origins of the tune bring us back across the Atlantic to a Cuban composer named José Silvestre Méndez, and the great Beny Moré who recorded the song while on residency at a nightclub in Mexico. His version is likely the recording that made its way to Benin by vinyl LP, where Pedro picked it up. The trans-Atlantic connections of the melody (Portugal and Jamaica added to the list) now make it even rival 'The Peanut Vendor' in my mind. It turns out that 'Ziriguidum' was one of the biggest songs in Salvador's Carnival last year, and so it makes sense that it would have reverberated around the country in the following months. The melody would eventually make its way down to São Paolo, graft itself onto Maculele, and turned into an Atlantic super jam by Funk Ostenaçao artist MC2K: http://youtu.be/BTUv7p3XcjY For me, such musical connections add a bit of the familiar to the unfamiliar, helping me sort through the confusion that is Brazilian identity politics. Sure, MC2K is singing about and showing off girls shaking their butts. But the fact that he includes Capoeiristas in a video for a song that uses Maculele, and samples a pan-Atlantic Afro-Brazilian roots song from Bahia, shows me that the underlying cultural connections aren't totally lost on the "vulgar" and "low class" funk artists. The weight that Bahian music carries in the Brazilian national conscience was solidified for me by the time this year's Carnaval rolled around. That's when another big tune from Salvador, Psirico's 'Lepo Lepo', hit the streets. The song is a "pagode de miséria" ballad about the power of love (sex) over money that sounds (and looks) like a mix of bachata and jump up soca: http://youtu.be/AHVS5DW434g You couldn't escape renditions from (often white and middle class) Carnaval revelers anywhere in Rio. Perhaps its ubiquity in the party has been the reason why the song has received some blowback, and has become the subject of countless parodies. However, in the process of enduring alcohol soaked renditions on the city's public buses, I've come to understand that alongside funk, Northeastern musics such as axé, forro, and pagode are probably the most visible aspects of Afro-Brazilian culture in mainstream Brazilian society (David Goldblatt makes a pretty good case for Futebol though as well). And, it is often through these musics that an explicit African pride is channeled, which for me continues to pop up in unexpected places: http://youtu.be/xZZmByZWv94 Even though the Northeast can still be thought of as the cradle of Afro-Brazilian culture, Rio's historic position in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and as a locus for Northeastern migration has made it central to the mainstreaming of Afro-Brazilian music. Besides being the birthplace of funk, Rio is recognized as the birthplace of samba. Rio's famous samba schools are the historic epicenter for both local social activism and the formation of an Afro-Brazilian identity for the country in general (check out Marlon Bishop's program about Samba on Afropop for more context.) From their beginnings through to today, socially marginalized favela residents often use these schools and their vaulted position during Carnaval as a soap box to express their views on society. Runners up of this year's Carnaval competition, Academicos do Salgueiro started as one such organization, and watching their performance was another revelatory surprise for me. Their theme of 'Gaia' or harmony with nature, with a composition originally built around a 6/8 rhythm and floats and costumes that drew on African aesthetics, really dug hard into representing the African roots of Brazil. Seeing them live, it was hard to not get carried away by, and sing along to the resounding chorus praising the Orixas of Candomble: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gIW0H5IPcQ I wrote last week that it seems like in the Caribbean older ideas of political pan-Africanism are fading, and contemporary Africa is providing new inspiration for a generation of globally aspirational cultural producers. On the other hand, in Brazil it seems to me that African-ness continues to be informed by ideas of national heritage and cultural roots. It wasn't just Salguiero celebrating Africa at this year's Carnaval competition in the Sambódromo, Brazil's African heritage was and often is a recurring theme. However, this year the thread came up against an interesting juxtaposition with the prevalence of a theme similar to the one I was noticing in the Caribbean: the interrogation of Brazil's position in the world. To me, these two threads symbolize the crossroads that Brazil is at just before it hosts FIFA's World Cup. As more and more eyes look to the country, Brazil may have to find ways to reconcile the contradictions between their pride in their roots and their contemporary social divisions. In other words, like any global superpower, Brazil will have to figure out how to project all their confusing contradictions into our globalizing world.

It's Carnival time again! Besides being one of my favorite annual excuses to party (although I usually partake in August, as I'm usually stuck in the northern cold at this time of year), it always gives me an excuse to catch up on the musical output of many of my favorite scenes from around the Atlantic world. Yesterday, when listening to a new soca mix from Hamburg-based DJ duo So Shifty, I couldn't help but get (over)excited about some of the connections I heard being made between Africa and the Caribbean. The first song that stood out was "Chuku Chuku" by Denise Belfon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap58OunqsKA "Chuku Chuku" caught my ear, because I noticed that it interpolates "Ashawo," a global smash by Nigeria's Flavour. The song already had a trans-atlantic dimension as a version of the classic Cuban song "Manisero" or "The Peanut Vendor." Afropop did a great audio documentary on the legacy of the Cuban original, and its mark on popular music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kl6sg8WHZA However, perhaps unaware of the American origins of the melody, Flavour meant for "Ashawo" or "Nwa Baby" to be an homage to Nigerian Highlife, a style that had lost out to the more hip hop and dancehall inflected musics that became popular across West Africa in recent years. The original highlife version of "Nwa Baby" was Rex Lawson's "Sawale": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBOXi3bJ7ug In the end Dancehall won out, and Flavour's popular "Ashawo Remix," versioned from Benin to Ethiopia to Zambia, became the logical candidate for a song to cross back over the ocean to the Caribbean. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMSTYtMSbL0 That's all exciting in its own right, but it wasn't what excited me most about So Shifty's mix. The song that deserves that distinction is one by Olatunji Yearwood (shout out the Nigerian OG). This is the tune that caused me to proclaim via Twitter the arrival of Azonto Soca: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA8Z7h2L4ow To me, besides the clear rhythmic similarities of the Stag Riddim to Azonto, Olatunji is clearly channeling the singing styles of Ghanaian and Nigerian pop singers, making the connection explicit. I've been aware for some years that contemporary Afropop styles were becoming popular in Caribbean scenes. Decale Gwada or Madinina Kuduro show how connected the French Caribbean islands are to the Francophone capital. Some of those explorations have crossed over into the smaller neighboring islands, and I've even heard Kuduro tunes played at house parties during Brooklyn's West Indian day parade. But these incarnations for me are outliers, intrepid explorations into the outer realms of the African electronic diaspora by experimenters or progressive-minded DJs. Or they're just superficial fads. For example, during last year's Labor Day weekend festivities I had to laugh when the DJ at a Soca fete I was attending threw on Puerto Rican Don Omar's cover of a Portuguese singer's misappropriation of an Angolan dance style, and then proceeded to give a massive shout out to Venezuela! The arrival of the influence of contemporary Afropop on the Soca mainstream didn't become clear to me until this January while DJing a party in Brooklyn. Dlife, one of New York's biggest Soca DJs approached me during my set to talk about the Afrobeats tunes I was playing. He then told me about Machel Montano's Carnival remix of Timaya's "Shake Yuh Bum Bum": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1zvmil4NMg I imagine my Sierra Leonean father and his friends, who used to take me to the Caribana Fesitval in Toronto as a child, would be quite tickled if they attended the celebration this year. In order to understand this you have to know that for decades Africans have been consuming Caribbean music, merging different musical cultures and histories into new forms. In Sierra Leone especially, calypso-influenced styles such as palmwine are part of our national heritage. Because of this, and because of my experiences going to Carnival-like celebrations in North America, I've always felt that Anglophone Caribbean culture from places like Jamaican and Trinidad was part of my own cultural heritage. For me it is a great source of pride to see some explicitly African contributions coming to the fore in dancehall and soca circles. Every year in Brooklyn, amongst the roll call of Caribbean nation flags waving on Eastern Parkway, once in a while you might see a Ghanaian or Nigerian one pop up. This year those flags might just wave a little higher! After a couple of initial tweets, the great Wayne and Wax chimed in, and asked my why I heard the songs as Azonto. We had a quick exchange where we discussed the rhythmic breakdown that identify it as Azonto or not. Siddhartha called us nerds. Alexis Stephens chimed in with Busy Signal's version of U Go Kill Me, and pointed out the connections that DJs in London like Hipsters Don't Dance are making in their work. So Shifty responded with Yung Image's cover of P Square on the Alingo Riddim, and Iswayski submitted a mix by Brooklyn-based Guyanese Grenadian DJ Speedydon. Erin MacLeod loved it, and an overall grand time was had by everyone. Later in the night, as almost if to settle the issue @RishiBonneville submitted this video from St. Vincent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI8D-3i7wAE Tempering my excitement for a resurgence of some kind of 21st Century Pan-Africanism, what we're observing is more a story of the ascendance of a unitary global pop. This global pop rides the waves of neoliberalism, and aspirational belonging to an individualized consumer-driven global economy. However, it also accompanies an increase in South South connections, albeit mediated often via immigrant populations in Northern capitals - but also new economic relationships and the Internet. It's doing crazy things to culture, and such musical connections in this day and age are just more proof that we're living in a hyper-connected world. The differences between Rio, Port of Spain, Accra, London, and New York are melting away to reveal one giant mega city - inside of which the divisions between classes may tell us more about international society than national borders. However, let's not dwell on the dark side of globalization too much, after all this is Carnival! The only time in many former-slave/colonial societies that racial, class, and cultural barriers are temporarily lifted in the service of universal revelry. So go ahead, dive into Azonto Soca, and imagine the possibilities of our new world! * Top image by Blaine Harrington.

In our current #hashtag fueled media landscape, it is fairly hard for an up-and-coming artist to emerge outside of predetermined genre, social, or sonic signifiers. However, as an artist develops, sometimes they manage to chip away at the walls the media traps them in. With each project they are able to reinvent their aesthetic, while their work remains true to their identity as a creative person. We call these artists stars. In Toronto-based singer-songwriter Kae Sun’s case we would have to call him a Black Star. His latest album Afriyie is a surprising and fresh addition to the global African media landscape. Tracks like “Lead Loaded Letters” stand out with their mix of heavy electronics over clunky blues guitar riffs, signaling an ability to rise above neatly laid out categories. With Afriyie, Kae Sun has managed to emerge as one of the most promising singer-songwriters in the international scene. Like many young Canadians today, Kae Sun’s story is one of global migration. He moved from Ghana as a youth to attend university in Ontario. It was here he started pursuing music professionally, however his path to becoming a professional musician started much earlier during his childhood in Ghana. These various life experiences come through on his first full length album Lion on a Leash. The album was mostly performed by a live band with some electronic production subtly infused, we hear a distinctly rock-leaning sound with some influence of Afrobeat, reggae, and hip-hop. An EP released two years ago called Outside the Barcode was a collection of beautifully written tunes performed on acoustic guitar and sung by Kae Sun. His emotion and sincerity as a performer really shine through on this effort. Several of the songs on that EP appear in new re-imagined form on Afriyie, allowing us, the outside observers, to see the development of his boundary pushing sound, reflecting an artistic growth and an increased access to production resources. The question of what counts as African music is becoming more irrelevant as the rest of the globally networked world becomes more familiar. Afriyie is Ghanaian in a way that is only starting to become prevalent in our contemporary moment. It is representative of a national identity, more like the color of a passport, rather than ancestral tradition or cultural representation. It is place and time specific, and doesn’t seem weighed down by a need to play identity politics. It represents the place where the artist is at, as a culmination of life experiences, rather than a romantic obsession, or longing for the past. This is notable for an artist who has moved recently from one country in the global south, to another in the north. Kae Sun’s absorption of influences from his adopted home is clear to me throughout the album. I hear echoes of a historically strong Torontonian electronic sound, as well as connections to other hip-hop tinged Black Canadian songwriters such as K’naan and K-os. An ability to connect with and reflect on his immediate surroundings is reflected in his artistic choices. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJK7u7Opo3U After seeing the above video in which Kae Sun covers Citizen Cope’s “Lifeline,” I was pleasantly surprised to see an immigrant artist take up the cause of local social issues. In this case, it was the eviction of a community from government subsidized housing to make way for private developers. I wanted to take an opportunity to chat with Kae Sun to tease out where he sees that his lines of influence lie... I’m surprised at how different Afriyie is from Lion on a Leash sonically, how did you arrive at the current more electronic leaning sound via an all acoustic demo EP in Outside the Barcode? Kae Sun: It was always the plan to try to do more with ambient sounds and programmed parts, and you can hear it in some of the songs on Lion but you need more time and space to do that and I had a smaller budget. The EP is an exception in a way because I did that out of an urgency I was feeling with those particular  songs but as far as full-length albums go I always wanted to do something a bit more conceptual so this happened at the right time. What were your musical influences before you started making records? What are you listening to now? I feel like my influences shifted over the period it took to complete the record but my earliest trigger was a singer from Montreal Arianne Moffat. I found it interesting how she incorporated electronic sounds and textures into her very melodic songs and then later I was going to these rocksteady and reggae nights and really got put on to some classics. Also when I was making trips to Ghana, Femi’s Day by Day was my soundtrack. These days I try to listen to anything that grabs my attention. Your album titles intrigue me quite a bit, especially Outside the Barcode and Afriyie. Do you want to give some background to these names, and why you chose them? Writer/Activist Arundathi Roy used the term “living outside the barcode” in reference to people in India who essentially live off the grid as a consequence of their poverty. It’s an interesting thing. It’s almost like poverty has shielded them from being exploited as a consumer base although they’re exploited in more horrible ways. I found this interesting because driving through Accra I got the same vibe in certain communities, things I didn’t notice when I was growing up. So that’s where that title comes from. Afriyie is more personal, it’s my middle name, named after my grandfather. [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/88007039" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] “Dzorwulu Junction” stands out on Afriyie. And while Kanye West claims to be a black new wave artist with his recent album, I would say that this song was more explicitly so. This style is also a reference I’ve heard in people like Spoek Mathambo who are flirting with Afro-futurism. Do you see your self as sonically connected to either of these artists? Perhaps, but I think there’s more to it. Some artists are good at creating a conceptual context for their work and by so doing expand and/or challenge our understanding of what is possible with music, I think of Miles Davis, Prince, David Bowie, Dylan, Andre 3000, Kanye, M.I.A. I think  it’s in the breadth of the work and continuously evolving or trying to move things forward. I’m definitely partial to that approach to making music and drawing from a wide range of ideas and influences to transcend genre, transcend medium even into literature, poetry, visual art, philosophy and so on. That’s really what I’m going for. A lot of the time I find being labelled “musician” can be restricting. What about thematically? How does your own liberationist content fit into a contemporary conversations about African liberation, Afro-futurism, New Slaves, etc? I find it hard to look at what I’m doing from that angle, it wouldn’t work well for me. What I know is that the intent for me is always spiritual. Creative expression is my spiritual practice, that’s my worship so to speak, every idea I have regarding liberation comes from the fact that I believe God’s creative expression is love. Freedom and justice come from that love and in so far as that is not the current condition for humans artists will either create to release that tension or create to escape it. Check out the rest of the interview on MTV Iggy.

This summer I’ve been hired as a freelancer for Iggy, MTV’s global music website. The site is aimed at young people to introduce them to the idea that pop music is a global phenomenon (if today’s tech savvy youth already didn’t know.) I get paid by Viacom every time I put something up there, but it’s a pretty quick moving stream of content, and posts tend to disappear rather quickly. I thought it would be good to run each one of my posts as a series over here on Africa is a Country.

This past Spring I wrote an article for the Red Bull Music Academy about the music and nightlife communities clustered around African neighborhoods in New York. A key motivation behind writing that article was to bring some visibility to the many diverse communities of African immigrants within the city that aren't always visible to the average New Yorker. It never fails to surprise me that when I take a trip uptown or to my favorite African eatery, I come across an advertisement for an African event or concert by a famous African artist plastered on the walls that never received mention in the big New York entertainment publications, African or otherwise. I used the opportunity to write the article to do a general overview of the city, but since space wouldn't allow me to go into too much detail about specific neighborhoods in that single article, I wanted to write a few blog posts to highlight some of the individuals I met while researching and shooting photographs for the story. Since today, July 26th, is Liberia's Independence day, there's no better place to start than Staten Island. Staten Island is the borough least known by the general population of New York. Tourists take advantage of the free ferry to catch glimpses of downtown Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, but rarely venture past the port. However Staten Island, home to an amazingly diverse array of people from Mexico to Sri Lanka to Russia, is interesting enough on its own. West Africans, especially Liberians, make up a significant population of this diverse community. Staten Island's Park Hill neighborhood is popularly known as Little Liberia, and the story of this amazing mini-Monrovia has been chronicled by several very talented people throughout the years. As someone who is familiar with the contemporary Liberian music industry, and interested in local music scenes in general, I was keen to find out what music was being made there, and what connections Staten Island musicians have back to home. One surprising thing that I found is that Staten Island is an essential underground tour stop for African entertainers in New York. Sierra Leonean artists like Shady Baby have performed there, as well as Ghanian actors, and Liberian artists from around the United States. YOK 7, a rapper I met and hung out with in Freetown will be performing there this August 11th. Park Hill, the neighborhood that happens to have been the birthplace of the Wu Tang Clan, is also the home of a collection of Liberian rappers such as the 23 year-old Trigg. http://youtu.be/HUdhskxgZw8 I was introduced to Liberian rappers on Staten Island after Glenna Gordon put me in touch with Musa, a photographer and music producer who lives in Park Hill. The day I ventured out to meet Musa, he took me up on the roof of the Park Hill building complex where he was doing a photo shoot with a couple of local groups (not the below video, but similar). http://youtu.be/EgtrdmhLmVY I have to admit I was a little disappointed, because music they shared with me seemed to have very little of the specifically Liberian identity I had come to know and was excited about in the Hipco and Gbema I knew from Monrovia. But this reaction, a common judgement aimed at immigrant youth of all backgrounds, would be reconciled after my next visit (and after a little philosophical self-reckoning). On the day I brought the Red Bull photographer to Staten Island, Musa introduced us to Trigg. The young rapper posed for pictures around the neighborhood as he traded a mix of African-American vernacular and Liberian English with passers by. We could tell that he was well regarded in the community, and the familiarity of everyone around almost gave the very concrete jungle-like complex the feel of a rural town. We talked with Trigg and Musa a lot about the shape of the local industry and their connections back home. After getting further insight on the dynamics of the local scene, I couldn't help but notice some interesting parallels in the local politics of both Staten Island and Monrovia. I listened while Trigg commented on the lack of respect Park Hill rappers get in their own community, and about how rappers from Philadelphia would come in and get preferential bookings at community shows. This is a phenomenon I would hear about regularly in Liberia in regards to artists from outside the country. We topped off our visit with a lunch of palm butter soup courtesy of Trigg's mother. While we ate, we sat and listened to a generation of Liberian youth raised in America, politic in Liberian English about life in Staten Island. I couldn't help but marvel at the dual nature of the immigrant experience. Many of them longed to visit home, a place many of them left as babies, but were very much engaged in a contemporary Liberian society that exists on this side of the ocean. This Liberian society is intimately intertwined with African-American culture - underscored by Liberia's complicated history with the United States. At any given moment you can hear a group of Liberian youth comment in Liberian English on everything from French Montana to Trayvon Martin. I don't want to romanticize Park Hill too much, it isn't a neighborhood without its problems. However, it really is the perfect place to escape to when longing for a little taste of Liberia and New York. I'm sure today there will be quite a party going on. To get deeper sense of the Park Hill neighborhood, I recommend picking up Jonny Steinberg's book Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York City. Also, check out more of Glenna Gordon's extensive work photographing life in Staten Island.

You may have noticed a new logo lurking around Africa is a Country headquarters. When Sean put out the call for a design upgrade last year, I immediately thought of Diego Guttierez, an amazing graphic designer I’ve had the luck to work closely with in recent months. I met Diego a couple years ago when he was hanging with the Mex and the City folks. At the end of last year he signed on as the Art Director for Dutty Artz, the artist collective I belong to in Brooklyn, and has done an amazing job upgrading our visual identity. Now he’s agreed to help do the same for Africa is a Country. Check out the rest of his work here: http://talacha.net

Africa is a Country has been a fan of Ghanaian-Swiss audio experimentalist Oy's live performances for a while. Tom's posting of Hallelujah was my own introduction to her strange but mesmerizing audio-visual creations: http://youtu.be/n36CvQCvzJE A host of other and new exciting tunes will soon be released in recorded form and available to the world. From a music producer's perspective, I get really excited to hear how such captivating performances are manifested on record. The process of translating a song from the studio to the stage and vice versa is an art in itself, one that not all musicians can do well. Oy's sophomore album, Kokokyinaka, is a highly enjoyable journey that inventively incorporates field recordings into digital production techniques. The label's press release gives insight into the album's creative process:

The wildly vibrant sample base includes a parachute, fufu pounding, fireworks, and a shoe. Along with all of the animated stories it was mostly collected on trips to Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and during a residency in South Africa. The actual writing and the production for the record took place at studios located in Berlin under the guidance of talented drummer, producer, and co-writer Lleluja-Ha.

Throughout the course of the album we accompany her through her explorations of African cultural intricacies from the perspective of a half-in half-out Afro-European. This makes it easy for comparisons to mixed Afro-European vocalists like Nneka or Anbuley to pop in my head. But, Joy's album stands apart because instead of straight ahead pop, dance, Hip-Hop or soul album, this project feels like a personal journey that is just as experimental culturally as it is technically. http://youtu.be/r4S6Z-9qR6U For more on Joy, check out an interview with her on OkayAfrica, and this teaser for her latest video: http://vimeo.com/62645660