Few rappers on the continent have been as prolific as Sarkodie this year. The Ghanaian emcee has released a steady stream of songs and videos, all in the lead-up to his album which will be titled Sarkology. So we found it necessary to touch base with him during a video shoot in Johannesburg for “Pon […]

Azonto has been huge in Ghana, obviously, and the rest of Africa. Then it made its grand entrance to London and the United Kingdom with some help from the British-born Ghana boy Fuse ODG, especially with Antenna . It was cool seeing the London All Stars do their Azonto thing, but I was hoping maybe, just maybe, it might finally touchdown here in the US. My salvation might be at hand in the form of the production company, Level 7 .

Asamoah, who just achieved milestone of 150 Serie A appearances, is not shy about publicly sharing his good fortune. He is a relentless tweeter, sharing pics of teammates including one of his son with Giorgio Ciellini (“Beauty and the Beast“), meeting the king of the Asante or — that staple of West African footballers — professing his love of Jesus (serial hashtag: #BecauseofHim).

Ghana is currently experiencing a surge of contemporary performing and visual arts. Here are some notes on goings on about Accra-town. I. Song of the Pharaoh A new play, Song of the Pharaoh by leading playwright Mohammed Ben Abdallah has been in the works for over a year, being rehearsed, work-shopped, and performed at Ghana’s […]

We could call this: The Afro-Trifecta, if you will. They are a lawyer, some sort of business person, or a doctor. Teacher? Respectable, but not enough money. Artist? Quickest way not to be invited home during the holidays. And god forbid, an athlete. Most African parents consider the term “student athlete,” a gross oxymoron. Which is […]

The photos below (click to enlarge), offering a glimpse into the joy and optimism of the immediate post-Independence period in Accra, are from Samuel Kobian Pobee’s Modern Photo laboratory. They were acquired by Samy Ben Redjeb of the Analog Africa record label while he was during research for the liner notes for his latest release […]

Alas! a snake has bitten me My right arm is broken, And the tree on which I lean is fallen. (from Songs of Sorrow, by Kofi Awoonor) When Kofi Awoonor started out as a writer, after his first book of poems, Rediscovery, had been published, he went to sit at the feet of traditional Ewe […]

Shortly before the release of Ghana-born emcee Blitz the Ambassador’s “The Warm Up” EP, we reached out to him to discuss his career and the aspects involved in the making of the album. He described the EP as a a teaser for what is to come on “Afropolitan Dreams”, his third offering since 2009’s “Stereotype” […]

In our current #hashtag fueled media landscape, it is fairly hard for an up-and-coming artist to emerge outside of predetermined genre, social, or sonic signifiers. However, as an artist develops, sometimes they manage to chip away at the walls the media traps them in. With each project they are able to reinvent their aesthetic, while […]

The genesis of the idea was simple and uncomplicated. I was looking for a recipe online and was generally disappointed with what I found. Many links were unnecessarily verbose, cluttered in structure or layout and displayed alarmingly poor imagery. At the end of the day, I could not remember what I was searching for and […]

Africa is a Country has been a fan of Ghanaian-Swiss audio experimentalist Oy’s live performances for a while. Tom’s posting of Hallelujah was my own introduction to her strange but mesmerizing audio-visual creations: A host of other and new exciting tunes will soon be released in recorded form and available to the world. From a music producer’s […]

We hardly ever feature Brazilian music, and even less their take on Afrobeat. The above tune by the Abayomy Afrobeat Orchestra dates from last year, but the video’s new. Hope to see more from them. We’ve got 9 more videos lined up for you this week. Ugandan duo Radio & Weasel came up with this: 

Guest Post by Robert Nathan They’re not your average musicians. Sons of West African griots and court musicians brought up in Washington DC and St. Louis, Weedie Braimah and Amadou Kouyate have straddled the Atlantic all their lives. Indoors, they assiduously studied the kora and the djembe under the guidance of their fathers — master […]