I first saw this video this summer when it was posted online. I love the swing treatment given to Donny Hathaway’s 1973 song by The Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble and singer Bilal, Recorded live in Los Angeles, June 2010.

I don’t care much for Cape Town group Freshlyground’s muzak. But you can’t deny the cleverness of the video for their new single, “Chicken to Change.” They recruited the puppets–especially Robert Mugabe–from the intermittently funny, online South African satirical news show ZANews. And they called Mugabe a chicken. Then Zimbabwe’s humorless immigration authorities banned Freshlyground […]

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/12812385 w=500&h=281] The promo for South African-US duo Blk Sonshine‘s latest release.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0mPUpojd84&w=500&h=307&rel=0] This past summer at least three prominent figures of the Cape Town jazz scene–the saxophone players Robbie Jansen and Ezra Ngcukana and, most recently, pianist and historian Vincent Kolbe–passed.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SK_Z_LGEac&w=500&h=301&rel=0] These guys are obsessed with the elements. The band is named for the cold current that runs up the continent’s southeastern coast line. Benguela is based in Cape Town, South Africa. And this tune is called “Meridian.” It’s from their most recent album, “The Black Southeaster.” You know what the Southeaster does in the […]

Simphiwe Dana is probably the most talented female singer of her generation from South Africa. (Thandiswa Mazwai would come a close second; whatever that means.) Dana is still young, she’s only 32, so we can only imagine what she will still achieve. In 2008 the British music writer, David Honigmann of the Financial Times, described […]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dydtXJ94CE&w=500&h=307&rel=0] Detroit DJ and producer, Theo Parrish, is one of the artists slated to appear at the 2010 Pan African Space Station, the annual 30 day “music intervention” from September 12 through October 12 in venues around Cape Town, South Africa, on radio as well as online. (The festival coincides with the yearly commemoration of Steve […]

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/14091396 w=500&h=281] The debut music video from Nigerian-born, “alternative-soul” artist, Bez. The video was shot in Lagos. Via Naijablog.

The British writer V.S. Naipaul’s previous forays into Africa were fictional: The novels “A Bend in the River” (1979) and “The novel Half a Life” (2001) were both set in nameless African countries. Now he has decided to write a travel book, ‘The Masque of Africa” about the African continent; actually about “magic.”

This 60 minute radio program on the music and ideas of Oumou Sangare–known as “The Songbird of Wasuru”–is one of the 25 excellent episodes (at last count) with an African theme in the online archive of the BBC 3 Radio program, “World Routes.” h/t Tom DeVriendt

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/13045384 w=600&h=368] This short clip of Brooklyn’s Mos Def, offering greetings while performing at the most recent edition of a Muslim-led arts festival held annually (in mid-July) on the southside of Chicago, is an appropriate choice to end our break of about 3 odd weeks. We’ll be getting slowly back into the swing of things.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zoqsw3n8D6g&w=500&h=307&rel=0] My man Gary Younge, New York-based feature writer and columnist for The Guardian, has a new book out on 21st century identity politics: Who are We–And Should It Matter in the 21st Century? The clips above and below, are from an interview with Gary about the book on the BBC program, “Booktalk.”  After the jump, […]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_TU7lhqnN0&w=500&h=307&rel=0] From an article in last week’s “Detroit Metro Times”: ‘… In the ’60s, Motown was so popular in Italy that Berry Gordy had his artists record translated versions of their songs specifically for the Italian market. Back then, the transistor radios of teens from Turin to Palermo were blaring such hits as The Supremes’ […]

That’s the only way to explain the “career” of  the really bad rapper, Bangs (Sudan-born, Australian-based), that includes doing TV commercials, being mocked as “The 11th Hottest Rapper in the Game,” getting interviewed by hip hop journalists, and having a distribution deal. Here‘s some background if you missed this mess.  And Bangs, who mimics 50 Cent […]