http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywfyv5fdgM4 Your Music Break: from Nairobi. Via Kate Bomz

Not sure whether Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa’s new novel, El Sueño del Celta (The Dream of the Celt), has been published in English yet — so I might be spoiling it for some future interested readers if it hasn’t — but halfway through the story about the Irish diplomat-turned-nationalist Roger Casement, I already regretted […]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjyibxWzWkA&w=600&h=373] Your Music Break: Simphiwe Dana, live, singing in Xhosa, accompanied by another South African singer, Mthwakazi, in Johannesburg. H/T: Nerina Penzhorn (again).

Maybe not the most popular artist in Benin today, but the country’s independence day is a good day to listen to Benin-born jazz guitarist Lionel ‘Gilles’ Loueke. This performance was recorded in Boston earlier this year: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nls0wvH1TTI&w=600&h=373]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1jFThFnGTY&w=600&h=373] Last week in Bolinas, CA, my friend, Kora McNaughton (she lives in Santiago), got me onto the music of Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux.  (Interview–in English–from 2010 here.) I have her new album (a gift) to prove it.  Too bad I won’t be in the city Monday night when Ana Tijoux performs at SOB’s.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtZd2uimcuI&w=600&h=373] The other day, we were wondering where all the female African MC’s were at. Give us some time to come up with a proper answer (serious, where are they?), but we think South African Zaki Ibrahim is one of the few. Beats for this track (and cameo in the video) are by Canadian house […]

By Dan Moshenberg Did you hear about Medea? You know, the woman who killed her two kids? It turns out, according to the Associated Press, she lives in Mali, and her name is Coumba, or maybe Tabita. At any rate, she’s 18, a domestic worker in Bamako, and she did the unthinkable. She killed her […]

South African artist Spoek Mathambo gets the Tim & Barry treatment for their online music channel dontwatchthat.tv. (Watch it here.) Spoek will be playing in New York (Damrosch Park Bandshell) on August 7, by the way, as part of the ‘Live from the Continent’ line-up. Other guests are Blitz the Ambassador and Iyadede. DJ’s for […]

The oldest republic in Africa, Liberia–formed in 1847–celebrates its independence today.  Chances are Dumyarea, the song we wrote about earlier will pump from stereos and in cars, but there’s more. Right now you have two major styles Gbema and Hipco (the co is for Colloquial), and sometimes they mix. All of the songs on youtube are […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vr1nyXu4Ts Stromae seems determined to turn every song on his 2010 album Cheese into a hit. A video like the one above will no doubt help. I’ve always been surprised by articles digging for his ‘Rwandan roots’ (e.g. “in Africa, I am considered white”), for in Belgium we just know him as the dude from […]

Cape Town-based Driemanskap’s ‘I will make it’ is not new, but the video for the track is. We threw 5 questions to Damian Stephens, founding partner of Pioneer Unit Records, the independent hip hop label to which Driemanskap is signed. He is also a music producer (as Dplanet) and one half of an audiovisual ‘band’ […]