Here’s a resolution for the new year: to feature more Togolese pop. If you don’t know who the above Toofan duo is, google “Cool Catché”. Kuduro on the other hand we can never feature enough — this is a new video for MC Maskarado:
How anonymous parties define, construct, and support uprisings in Africa via social media.
How the humanitarian movement grew in close relation to the democratization of moving image technologies.
In South Africa, repackaging dated colonial fears about race and sex are used to sell beer and to win an advertising award for being "different."
Kuduru as an effort by politically connected Angolan elites to to package a fun and edgy dance born in Angola as soft power.
An interview with Nigerian-American artist, Toyin Odutola.
Kuduro pioneer Sebem (fresh out of prison; he was in for repeated traffic violations, from what I understand) has a new video out (above); the clip’s rural setting is surprising, given kuduro’s over-all urban flow. Next, a Senegalese collaboration between Djibril Diop and Aida Samb:
The author, also a photographer, on documenting South Africa's "train churches."
The Professor is a fiction film by Tunisian director Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud. Synopsis: Tunis 1977. Khalsawi Khalil, Professor of Constitutional Law is responsible to defend the official State’s position in a period of tension between the government and the Interntional League for Human Rights. One day, Khalil learns that Houda, one of his students with […]
Vice Magazine recently ran an interview with Al Walser, the DJ who nabbed a Grammy nomination for a less than stellar performance on his song ‘I Can’t Live Without You,’ scandalizing the mainstream Electronic Dance Music (EDM) circle. If anything, his nomination sheds light on the disoriented state of the music industry. But, I would argue that […]
Kicking off with an introduction from Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, the short documentary Fuelling Poverty amounts to a very brief Nigerian Fuel Subsidy 101 course. In thirty minutes, it covers the history of the issue and methodically explains how the government (encouraged by the IFIs, by the way) failed its people. By removing the subsidy […]
A black photographer who moved to South Africa from the US, explores the transcontinental dialogue between black middle class people the world over.
Results of today’s parliamentary and presidential elections in Ghana are expected at the earliest by Sunday. (BTW, in areas where “the biometric verification machines did not work” voting has been extended till tomorrow.) Once you’ve checked out our elections preview (yes, our Dennis Laumann predicts incumbent President John Dramini Dramani Mahama will win a tight election), keep up […]
Sbujwa is a South African dance described as a dance that requires every muscle in your body to work in order to complete the moves.
Documentary filmmakers are better at spreading the word about their new work on the web compared to fiction directors, or there’s just more documentary films being made. (Or I’m looking in the wrong places.) Here are ten more films to watch out for. First, four fiction features: A Menina dos Olhos Grandes (“The girl with […]
The online retrospective, “Literary Sudans," is intended to highlight the two Sudans as sites of literature and culture.
An interview with Abdellah Karroum is the artistic director of the Biennale Regard Benin 2012, which premise is “Inventing the World: the Artist as Citizen.”
In Africa “biennials are a difficult idea, conceptually as well as financially, to implement and sustain,” Sean O’Toole wrote recently in Frieze. The first Biennale in Lubumbashi in the DRC — being organised by Sammy Baloji, Patrick Mudekereza and Elvira Dyangani Ose — was postponed suddenly only two months before it was due to open. O’Toole […]
It might not be Dakar or Nairobi, but Gaborone certainly does not look empty.
Azonto and its growing global reaches… Somebody should write a book about it. ‘Tribal Azonto’ above: Ghana via the UK — sampling South African electro? Next, from Accra proper, a rap convo with Trebla, Hotjam, EL and Stargo (and many other cameos):