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.

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).

I have a student (born in Texas) who insists he won’t travel to or through Mississippi or Alabama. What if he had to see The Alabama Shakes play live?

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 […]

The always reliable Billy Bragg live on the streets of Dublin this past weekend.

New Orleans-based historian Thomas J. Adams on Occupy Wall Street:

Judith Stein in Dissent: Despite its apparent permanence, OWS is mostly composed of part-time participants, who stay a few nights. There is a core of permanent campers, possibly those who run the general assemblies, the key OWS institution. The problem is that if they simply stay in parks, they prove their staying power but nothing […]

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