We thought it would be nice to compile a Bonus Music Break centered on acoustic guitar music. First up is Toronto-based Ghanaian Kae Sun with "Lion on a Leash": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8d7AyRkDSs Another Ghanaian: Kesse (made his breakthrough on Ghana's version of American Idol) was profiled by The Fader last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juw1-d5JmKU Then there's German-Nigerian Ayo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzxRpAU-YO0 And video of a 23 minute live set by Asa, France-based Nigerian (credits: "Fire on the Mountain," "Mr Jailer,"), recorded in San Francisco: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II668alI00g Bez, the young Nigerian (remember him?) will be in New York City next week (Society HAE has the details) http://youtu.be/S26Ti4VqKxY You can't say acoustic guitar music and not include Michael Kiwanuka, Ugandan-born British crooner. He is a big part of our regular Twitter #musicbreaks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BN_Shadmk0o Stateside, there's Cody ChesnuT. (BTW, while below he slows things down, I've seen him crank it up with The Legendary Roots Crew): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTuj3jYehtE And Gary Clarke Jnr with a stripped down version of my favorite tunes (remember him?) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB_9qaHmTok

Photographer Gregory Chris shot African music stars Nneka, Meta (of Meta and the Cornerstones) and Just a Band in and around New York City. Here he talks about how he came to chose these artists and what he tried to convey. "I wanted to shoot the artists in the streets of the city, in the neighborhoods where they live, their favorite places, inside their homes, in a place they feel comfortable. Basically, I wanted to shoot them as they are."

Republican party propaganda wants to paint President Barack Obama's Kenyan family as alien to America. In this propaganda, Barack Hussein Obama Snr and the old man's supposed "anti-colonial" and left-wing biases. In this propaganda Kenyans are reduced to anti-American zealots. Yet the strongest impression one gets from the Obama family in Branwen Okpako's beautiful, and substantive documentary of Obama's half sister, Auma Obama, is how familiar and American (i.e. the values Republicans proffer of hard work and guile) the Obamas are.

"Relentless" is fundamentally a film about Lagos. About how director Andy Okoarafor sees it. In Okoarafor's rendering, Lagos is a hard, inhospitable city, where people look stressed out, always hustling. They're always on the move. But Okoarafor also has loves this city.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyT_bYUUG6o I won't bother to unpack this commercial, but this is exhibit A for the case against uncritical boosterism and identity politics. Coca Cola Kenya hijacks "the Africa is booming" discourse to sell more soft drinks. Here's their cynical sales pitch:

There are close to 1 billion people in Africa each with a reason to believe. Because Coca-Cola knows, understands, lives and breathes AFRICA, ONLY COCA-COLA can influence positive attitudes amongst AFRICANS by claiming its role AS the ICON OF HAPPINESS and the BEACON OF OPTIMISM.

In South African director Charlie Vundla’s “How to Steal 2 Million,” Johannesburg is equated with “a jungle.” Main protagonist, middle aged Jack–fresh out of jail and looking for a job and opportunities–compares the city unfavorably to New York City, where, in contrast, people “are in it together.” Mostly shot in empty streets or in dark interiors and at night, the Johannesburg of the film lives up to this characterization. But it’s not just the main character who pines for a projected version of New York City; the film itself longs for its double, adapting and mirroring New York’s association with film noir.

Coming on June 1 is Northwestern University journalist professor Doug Foster's new book, After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Postapartheid South Africa. The book is published by WW Norton in New York City. The title is unoriginal (Financial Times's Alec Russell had the same title) but should not take away from what I think will be an excellent first take on Jacob Zuma's presidency. Norton is marketing it as "the most important historical and journalistic portrait to date of a teetering nation whose destiny will determine the fate of a continent." They promise that Doug has had "early, unprecedented access" to President Zuma as well as to "the next generation in the Mandela family." The book is based on six years worth of interviews. I am looking forward to reading it. Here to remind you of Doug's style are excerpts from a 2009 profile of Jacob Zuma in The Atlantic Monthly.

Zuma is a large-boned man with a shaved, bullet-shaped head. He carries himself in the loose-limbed manner of a natural politician, and the edges of his mouth regularly turn up in a Mona Lisa smile, as if he’s just remembered an old joke. His cheeks are full and his skin unlined; he looks far younger than his 67 years. Tinted wire-rimmed glasses shade his heavy-lidded eyes, so it’s hard to know when he’s pulling your leg, or getting angry at the drift of your questions. He’s famously even-keeled—or chill, as his children say; they’ve never seen him lose his temper. Zuma’s home in Johannesburg lies in the middle of the block on a dead-end street in a comfortable suburb of the city. It’s a two-story house, like others on the street, surrounded by high security walls. The walls are topped with electric sensors to warn of intruders. Inside them, highly trained agents keep watch from the driveway and the garden. Zuma’s closest supporters, justifiably or not, fear his assassination. His food is prepared only by people he has reason to trust. On the day I first visited [his house], two of his children—a 14-year-old son by his second wife, who committed suicide in 2000, and a 17-year-old daughter by his third wife, from whom he is now divorced—were doing homework at the long table. They seemed rather blasé about the recent dramatic developments in their father’s life. “It’s only politics,” his daughter told me, echoing a refrain she hears regularly from him. [At Zuma's home in Nkandla in rural Kwazulu Natal province we] sat in plastic chairs on the porch, looking out over the valley shrouded in mist. While he was talking, a young daughter—one of about 20 children Zuma has fathered with an assortment of wives and mistresses—was brought over to sit on his lap by one of his junior wives; the mother and daughter both live in a rondavel downhill from the main house, which is presided over by Zuma’s first wife, Sizakele Khumalo, a formidable, sharp-tongued woman in her 60s whom Zuma courted when they were teenagers. Polygamy is accepted in Zulu culture and legal in the new South Africa, and Zuma makes no apologies for his full love life. Still, when I asked about his relationship with Khumalo, his eyes welled up. “Do you see this woman? This is my wife—my first wife,” he said. “People look at me, how much I sacrificed. They don’t look at her. She represents women who sacrificed but who are not known. They are in the quiet.” He sketched the “emotional tale” of their separations—she’d waited for him for the 10 years he spent in prison, and then for 14 more years while he was in exile. She’d suffered a miscarriage shortly after he fled the country, he said, adding: “My heart was bleeding then.” When the police came to harass her during the years of Zuma’s absence, they brought along dogs to threaten her. Yet in all those years they were apart, she never considered breaking up. “My heart wouldn’t allow me to be negative,” Khumalo told me. “I just focused on the fact that he was coming back someday.” These days, being at his ranch with Khumalo, his brothers and cousins, his children, and other family members helps Zuma “reconnect,” he said. He offered his daughter a slice of grilled beef, pulling it away when she lunged for it until she remembered to hold out both hands politely. “If I can’t identify with this area where I come from, and begin to be too high-flying … I’m like a South African who’s floating in the air.” ...  [I]t struck me that periodic recklessness, reined in by the collective leadership of the ANC, has traced the narrative of Zuma’s life. ... A cell mate [of Zuma on Robben Island], Ebrahim Ebrahim ... described Zuma during his prison years as a world-class listener with a canny understanding of human behavior—and a good leader, because he knew how to assuage hard feelings arising from political arguments. A few months before [the 2009 presidential elections], the ANC had convened a series of focus groups of likely voters. Party strategists had listened as anger poured forth, directed toward both the ANC and the government, for the failure to turn lofty plans—for a better education system, the fight against crime, and economic uplift—into reality. “It was scary,” said one of the listeners. But the ANC’s historic role still bound most participants to the party; few planned to vote against it. Regarding Zuma, a racial split was clear: “White people think he’s guilty” of the corruption charges that have dogged him over the years, one of those who observed the focus groups said. “Blacks don’t think so.”

Read the full article.

One of my favorite MCs / hip hop producers, Damu the Fudgemunk. I always check for his new work. (Reminds me of Madlib.) The video, below, is from 2009's Madvillian. And this link is to his latest work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bSkjLtJG-A So the main rapper on this Tanzanian track is a teacher and the featured artist is his student. The kid, Dogo Janja, is considered a star for the future. The song talks about the lack of pay and respect for teachers--no prizes for guessing the name of the great teacher whose pic flashes at the conclusion of the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me4ky4imyE0 Nigerian wedding music from Nigerian-American Eldee: Golden Arrow buses, Table Mountain, colonial statues in the company gardens. Is Cape Town the honeymoon spot for cool newlyweds or for shooting music videos on budget? Hey Europeans and Americans do it already. http://youtu.be/VS4aFoeQG6A A video preview of Chief Boima collaborator DJ Lamin Fofana's latest: http://youtu.be/mY6HNGWHzKE Finally, some Yoruba soft jazz by Dipo (no not Diplo obviously) with "Be Your Man." There's also the freestyle version with Ghanaian vocalist Enya. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXkcfzZ47dA

New humorous, but sharp, web series on "the African experience in America" wants to "refute negative portrayals of Africans in the media" and simultaneously work "as a window into the lives and traditions of individuals from different parts of the continent of Africa."

Senegal voted this weekend. Abdoulaye Wade is gone after 12 years. Macky Sall, once Wade's protege and variously prime minister and minister of mining under the old man is now in charge. We hope to have a few post election analyses posts up in the next few days. Till then enjoy the exuberance of "the dancing man" filmed by Al Jazeera journalist Azad Essa in Dakar last night.

Five for the weekend. I haven't done this in a while. First up Philadelphians Chill Moody (rapper) and Cody Kahmar with the music video for "My Eyes": http://youtu.be/xlcXoK9HCpE Malfred's reggae homage to Tanzanian mothers, "Asante Mama": http://youtu.be/RYNvbD7haL0 Staying in East Africa, here's new music from Uganda's Maurice Kirya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJfJSXXtfvQ The Mexican-Ethiopian rapper Gonjasufi's video for "The Blame": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KyO5-_JbbI And finally, any week of music breaks I'm involved in won't be complete without some Nigerian-American pop: http://youtu.be/o3bUUmIY2os

Remember when famed DJ and tastemaker, Diplo, got mad at Africa is a Country's Boima for a post Boima did about global dance music and cultural appropriation? (Click here for the post and scroll down for Diplo's outbursts). Anyway, Okayplayer's Eddie 'Stats' Houghton (check out his Large Up blog btw) got the two to sit down (and even shake hands) recently in New York City. You can read the transcript of the exchange on Okayplayer's blog. It is all very civilized. In related news, Diplo is the subject of a rambling Rolling Stone profile that went up today in which vague reference is made to "critics [who] have accused [Diplo] of hipster imperialism." I hope they weren't talking about Africa is a Country. Later today (Friday) Boima will join Eddie, Wayne Marshall (of Wayne and Wax) and Venus X Iceberg (it was her twitter 'beef' with Diplo that first prompted Boima's post btw) at New York University for a roundtable discussion at the EMP Museum's 2012 Pop Conference on "Tropical Music, Appropriation and Music "Discovery" in the Global Metropolis." Let's hope there's a tape.

http://vimeo.com/37612321 In Durban, South Africa, "shackdwellers are taking their municipality to court. The government evicted poor residents from their homes ... [in order to allow the construction of a road] ... and threw them into transit camps, where they live ‘like a fish in a tin’, waiting for more permanent housing that never comes. [One of the conditions of the eviction order was that the occupiers would be provided with permanent housing within a year. The deadline for doing so expired almost two years ago and nothing has been done to comply with the order.] It’s not easy to make the state behave in ways that aren’t like a state. But this is shackdweller statecraft" (from Dear Mandela and Raj Patel).

Here's video of the coup announcement in Mali. Ridiculous. The screen is dark at first -- they were having technical difficulties -- but the image appears after 30 seconds or so. See the scene. As for the speech, it's the usual pompous nonsense, poorly delivered by a junior officer out of his depth.

My latest list of new African films or films with African topics. From now on I'll start numbering them. So this is N°1. This list include "The Ambassador," a Western set in Namibia, a sort of sequal to "eLollipop" and a documentary about Kenya's version of "America's Best Dance Crew."