An eclectic one. Ethiopian and Ivorian pop, Philly neo soul, Swedish and South African rap and Brazilian jazz. Philadelphia neo soul keeps it topical. One thing we could not figure out: Bilal--half breaking with the dress code of his hosts Kindred--does a guest verse and throws in a line about 'USA to Africa': "And your moving out cause the cost of living is sky high and you know we working on it but its no word from USA to Africa." What does he want? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT9jMJHQn-0 In Ethiopia, pop is doing fine. Listen to Nigusu Tamrat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hek1SlQrnQ4 Almost as poppy, from the Ivorian diaspora comes this song by Dobet Gnahoré and Manou Gallo which, they hope, 'will contribute to bring back together and reconcile all Ivorians': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KrIrUgkETk Swedish rapper Ken Ring and Norwegian producer Tommy Tee went to record the video for 'Plocka Han' in Korogocho (Nairobi, Kenya): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWWmJJa9f9Q From KwaMashu (Durban, South Africa) comes Zakwe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e9HrQUJgvo And to end the week: Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay as seen through the eyes of French director Vincent Moon, Brazilian pianist Laércio de Freitas and his daughter, singer Thalma: http://vimeo.com/31005565

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFIOwmypmwk There's a fast growing collection of cross-over hip hop songs produced by Central and West African artists making a living in the diaspora (especially in French-speaking hotbeds like Marseilles, Paris or Brussels), lyrically reaching back to the countries they've left. This collaboration between Togolese artist YaoBobby (rapping in Mina) and the prolific Fredy Massamba (singing in Lingala) on '(R)Evolution' is another example. (You recognize the shirts.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIMT_vNtFQ8 Long after midnight, once the tourists and the party-goers have left Cape Town's Long Street, the city's darling hub looks pretty vacant, apart from the accidental taxi-driver -- it forms the backdrop for South African rapper Rattex's new video 'Ewe Nje'. With an album and a mixtape under the belt, but hard to find in the local music stores; a lot more more videos recorded, but hardly played on South African TV, Long Street's 'Waiting Room' club does seem a fit location. * Re-read Mikko's story about 'RATTEX: Labour of love & hard entertainment'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0ahXv7TT8k 'Kichwateli' ('TV head' < Swahili) is one of the many chapters in the BLNRB project. Contributors are Just A Band (read Siddharta Mitter's profile of the Kenyan trio here), street collective Maasai Mbili and the German electronic artists Modeselektor. The video was created by Bobb Muchiri (around the 5:00 mark neatly juxtaposing Nobel peace prize winner Obama's statement on the killing of bin Laden with the image of the late Kenyan Wangari Maathai -- you connect the dots). No, TV Head's Kibera doesn't quite have the air of More's Utopia yet, referenced in the introduction, nor does Nairobi's CCTV monitored city center.

No, this is not about the anxieties of Niall Ferguson. Anthropologist John Comaroff spoke at The Graduate Institute in Geneva about the themes that lie at the heart of (the introduction to) the latest book he co-wrote with Jean Comaroff, and which carries the same title as the lecture: 'Theory from the South: Or, How Europe is Evolving Toward Africa.' (Keynote starts 5 minutes into the recording; there's a Q&A in the last third, including some words about Lionel Messi.) http://vimeo.com/29593637

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_mOvMcD5gI Remember Brussels artist Badi (BD Banx on the Héritage project or his Beasty Boys-styled video 'Jump')? He keeps a nice blog too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_QGPTviZkw Taking up the fashionable concept of the book trailer, Edgar Sekloka, one half of French hip hip duo Milk Coffee & Sugar,* here previews, through a powerful poem, his recently released Adulte à Présent, a teenage novel about 15-year old 'la cadette' [the youngest] from Douala, Cameroon, and 13-year-old 'le fils' [the son] from New York, whose paths cross in the U.S. after 'la cadette' flees from her home country.  Here's my translation of the preview poem: I don’t hide myself even when I say I’m talking about myself but since we are all part of one another I believe I’m talking about you I’m talking about us our individualism is universal I talk about everything it’s a mess, it’s confusing, insurrectional it’s spontaneous explicit lyrics stand corrected for in the face of the order’s jokes I am the force of the brothel an impromptu bazaar hard to explain myself I'm not clear, nor concise I'm like your life, I'm complicated a poor man who calls himself bourgeois a pagan who says he’s from good faith a sugar that says it’s bitter a Frenchman who calls himself Cameroonian convoluted thinking in Europe I’m a bikot [black] in Africa I’m a béké [white] but I keep on travelling loosing myself, finding myself talking slang, talking patois I’ve got the flavour of a brown zebra a bit hot and a bit cold a bit black and bit white always confused because they don’t believe me when I say I’m métis under my curly baldness a bit like this, a bit like that a bit like all schizophrenics my folly uses my joy to shed my sorrows I’ve made my modesty public fucking nonsense! I want to be known but I can’t stand them infuriating me I'm an artist like you an artist like everybody but when I sing under a shower sometimes the light abounds and I might be sweaty, I'm still expecting to glisten lurking in the shadows, waiting becomes a day-job to wait: it teaches me to temper my haste when we’ve got all, at once, it is hard to know how to fight so I don’t listen to the ones who flatter me too much those who chat to much the gaze of the neophyte is worth more than the sermons by the professional professorial, paternalistic flukes and I need to keep reminding myself I'm not the child of those industrials my only links in the world of music are with my sister Touria and my brother Picaflore I'm not demagogic I’m not saying the audience is my family that my living room is a concert hall that sizzles that I'm affiliated with a department despite my cryptic thinking, I can’t say whatever, never mind how contradictory like a heart against a brain if I had to judge Men, the first would serve me as a provost and reproach me for having too many affects time would have us write poems with calculators it's not what you want but you choose to undergo it and I'm like you, a pseudo-martyr when my texts show their tariffs but I accept the complexity of my incoherence I am the nail that jams the machine that made it my rap is the theatre of the absurd in the end all this is a spectacle it’s true but I assume you see, I’ve grown up and so did you I’ve become an adult while shouting my adolescent writings Here (in French). *You know the track they did with South African Tumi & The Volume: Rise Up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsXD50lsRGk An older song by The Funk League, but it comes with a new video. Featuring Brand Nubian's Sadat X.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIB6g9uay2U Booker T. Jones on the keyboard with Jim James (of My Morning Jacket fame) singing about 'progress'. Director Aaron Hymes talks about the video (set in Downtown L.A.) here.

5 for le weekend. "Propaganda" one of a series of songs/videos made by The King's Will --one half of the UK duo is Musa Okwonga, whose family migrated from Uganda. The song is a homage to PR and advertising pioneer Edward Bernays: http://youtu.be/2-tOqNdgVIM M.E.D.'s "Blaxican." L.A. identity politics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0RvPfxRPig A scene from "Coz Ov Moni," "the world's first pidgen musical" by Ghanaian duo Fokn Bois. They've been posting clips from the film on Youtube. This is the most recent one in the last few days: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ETwfWFX9JU Clips one and two here and here. A parody of rapper Drake's "Up All Night" by Toronto-based Nigerian Femi Lawson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9p7UWx5NH0 Sweden and Senegal collaborate. Sousou and Maher Sissoko: http://youtu.be/WDYB23GOdr0 Video for "Rain On My Lips" by rapper Pepe Haze (Burundian) and singer Steph McKee (Kenyan). They're based in Nairobi, Kenya. The video is described as "the first ever African music video that is entirely in stop motion animation." http://youtu.be/EjmhGDHrwq0 See you Monday. H/T: Kweligee and Welfare State of Mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzUH_Hdm-iQ Nice work by Tanzanian crew X Plastaz, with some help of Fid Q, Bamba Nazar and J4. The video comes with subtitles, and the lyrics speak for themselves. Curious how many recent tracks carry an explicit 'Africa' in the title.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvUK3GJdOHk

In case you were too young to attend William Kentridge's original version of the early nineties puppet play 'Woyzeck on the Highveld' (as I was), the South African Handspring Puppet Company gives us a new chance to see it. They're on tour in the UK these days. Future dates elsewhere will follow (I hope).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K07TzARpqxU Malian rapper Mokobe ripped into French perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain’s comments about "hard working blacks" in his recent video, "Ca passe tout seul." Now Burkinabé MC Art Melody takes on Nicolas Sarkozy and other "chefs d'états."  That's a sample of Sarkozy's infamous Dakar speech at the beginning of the song about how Africans have "not fully entered into history." As for African leaders, Art Melody accuses them of only being interested in selling Africa "in the name of France-Afrique." (Like Gabon's Lord Ekomy Ndong did last year.) The video is above; part of the chorus is translated below.

The ebony is in the dark. The black is in the dark that has plunged us into the dark. My Africa is in the dark...

BTW, Art Melody also does up-beat songs. (Read This Is Africa's feature on Art Melody.) H/T: okayafrica.

That's today. Other than Chiluba's shoes, Sata's anti-China rants (he's stopped for now), Alexandra Fuller's books about her family, the South African soaps on TV and fundamental Christianity, there is dance-hall by Petersen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad-C6Cq6EsM ...R&B by Roberto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPxw_lbG0_k A cross-over of those two by MrVezzy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auQy4DU8Sok Hip hop by Zone Fam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aojWDkwjEE Swagg walk by Princess Mwamba: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqmHHgHVWJg And some folk by Clement Maimbolwa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIgGZBoC-vc We can celebrate.

What is it with Dutch cultural elites and South Africa? The last time I travelled two hours to watch an opera, it was in South Africa, on horseback. A self-declared pig farmer I was staying with was invited to attend a private opera function at his neighbor’s place, and decided I'd come along. The ride took us through swamps and empty veld. Living on the other side of the ridge, the neighbor turned out to be an emigrated Dutchman. Not much farming happening on the estate he bought some years ago. “We’re thinking of growing some vines. And push the opera scene here in the Cape as well.” Where better to do this than on a farm a good three hours drive outside of Cape Town. This scene came back to me when I drove up to Nijmegen in Holland on Saturday to attend the South African Afrikaaps hiphopera. The play was exceptional. Exceptional not only because it hit all the right notes (the cast of self-defined coloured artists proved itself to be the multi-talented group of musicians and activists they are lauded for back home), but also because the show stands out in the throng of South African artists visiting the Low Countries each year. I didn’t do my maths properly, but I’d say seven out of ten of South African artists visiting us here each year are white (and Afrikaans). Language, obviously (the standing ovations for the Afrikaaps plays over the last two weeks being a fair indicator); history, possibly (Dutch colonialism in the 17th century); guilt, maybe (with the exception of some leftist groupings in the Netherlands, the Dutch populace and their government were not all that critical about the Apartheid state); and religion, sure (disciples from the same protestant root). Then there's the thrill of the clash between white and black? One would sure think so when browsing the Dutch papers lately. There is the essay about Afrikaners being the victims of a new apartheid (by a Dutch right-wing politician in a 'respected' newspaper), Afrikaners feeling alienated (a guest column by Afrikaner "civil society activist" Flip Buys in De Volkskrant of all places), reviews of the Festival for (the) Afrikaans (language) in Amsterdam (at the ‘Tropics Theatre’ — the usual Afrikaans suspects show up: yesteryear's authors and musicians), there is the Africa in the Picture festival (where one third of the featured films was South African), talks about Shooting the Boer, and articles on the trial of Eugene Terre’Blanche’s murder 'dividing the country to the bone' (it sure does – but only in the foreign press). So when I came across this essay and photo series in the Dutch newspaper Vrij Nederland about a right-wing Afrikaner commando-style training camp (‘There’s Afrikaner blood running through my veins,' republished in the Belgian paper De Standaard over the weekend under the title ‘Afrikaner training camp: afraid, white and bullied’), I can no longer feel surprised.

They are all Afrikaners, with Dutch, French or German roots, these youths of the so-called born free-generation.

Cue: rape, murder, ANC and Malema. It makes you wonder who pays for these articles. And why. Soon, our mainstream media will feature an article on South Africa without those four words, but not just now. Read and watch the 'multi-media production' here.