http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYx3j7ilKn8 We presume you've had Tumi and the Volume's latest album, Pick A Dream, as much on repeat as we had this year. This the video for its opening track. Directed by filmmaker Khalid Shamis and 340ml member Tiago Correia-Paulo. Graphics are by French artist Hippolyte.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APjCZaAsg3A From Maputsoe, Lesotho comes a new video for Kommanda Obbs's 'Hona Joale', recorded in the city of Maseru and on the Thaba Bosiu sandstone plateau (where the previous--under the rule of King Moshoeshoe in the nineteenth century--capital used to be). The chorus goes something like this: "I have been broke for a long time, standing on the corner, shooting dice. Right now I'm on form, I'm everywhere. See me on television..." H/T (and translation): Ts’eliso

http://youtu.be/9l-HzZEwNUs We read that the balafon is being considered for inclusion on Unesco's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Lansiné Kouyaté knows how to play it.

Over the past week, it was hard to find an article published in a major international press outlet not looking at the build-up to today's presidential elections through the lens of fear and/of violence. With the exception of a few, most foreign journalists didn't make it outside of Kinshasa (citing logistical problems). People did get killed in the Congolese capital on Saturday, and in Lubumbashi today, but the way this violence creeped into the international headlines clouds the calm and smoothness of the election process in other parts of the countries, as reported by Congolese citizen journalists on their blogs, in their local papers, or on their Facebook pages. Congo is more than two cities. Other journalists tackled it from afar: The Financial Times, for example, is reporting the #DRC elections from Nairobi? That's 2 days driving to Kinshasa. For reports by local journalists outside Kinshasa, read Now AfriCAN (North Kivu), Local Voices (Bunyakiri, South Kivu), Mutaani FM (also in Kivu), Radio Okapi (MONUSCO's website and radio channel) and Le Congo. (If you want images and reports from Kinshasa other than the foreign ones, there is Lingala Facile.) And when the votes have been counted by the end of the week, refocus on what's happening outside the Congolese political theatre. Change won't come from the government. Most Congolese realized a long time ago. Ask the rapper Alesh. In the video and song below he calls out the country's politicians "qui concoctent dans le noir" [plotting in the shadows] and urges his fellow countrymen ("all heirs to Patrice Lumumba") to wake up: "Instead of growing old with analysis, I dare to obstruct those who dream of paralyzing [Congo]." http://vimeo.com/32594362

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.