Afropop Worldwide
557 episodes - English - Latest episode: 1 day ago - ★★★★★ - 281 ratingsAfropop Worldwide is an internationally syndicated weekly radio series, online guide to African and world music, and an international music archive, that has introduced American listeners to the music cultures of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean since 1988. Our radio program is hosted by Georges Collinet from Cameroon, the radio series is distributed by Public Radio International to 110 stations in the U.S., via XM satellite radio, in Africa via and Europe via Radio Multikulti.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
African Music at the Crossroads
June 07, 2018 14:00 - 59 minutes - 108 MBAfropop producer Banning Eyre takes us on a surprise-filled tour of his 30-some years of covering African music. Through conversations with Georges Collinet and producer/agent/DJ Rab Bakari, the program reflects on how the world, the music, the culture and the media have changed and keep on changing throughout Africa and the diaspora. Along the way we hear some of the tunes that have most inspired Banning and Georges, sample the latest Afrobeats and Naija pop, and speculate on where African m...
Carnival Goes Digital
June 05, 2018 17:11 - 11 minutes - 20.5 MBAfropop Closeup Season 3 - Episode 2 Produced by Ian Coss
All That Brass
May 31, 2018 15:04 - 59 minutes - 108 MBDO YOU LOVE BRASS? WELL, WE HAVE A SHOW FOR YOU… GANGBE BRASS BAND, REBIRTH BRASS BAND, FELA, FRANCO AND T.P.O.K. JAZZ. JOIN GEORGES COLLINET FOR “ALL THAT BRASS” - PART OF AFROPOP’S CELEBRATION OF OUR 30TH ANNIVERSARY! [APWW #780]
Cape Verde Sounds Heard And Unheard
May 24, 2018 14:42 - 108 MBShow#779 Producers: Banning Eyre and Sebastian Bouknight Airdate: May 24th 2018 In this program we meet Fatou Diakite, descended from a Malian family, but raised in Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau, and a master of styles from morna to Gumbe. We also meet Lucibela, now based in Lisbon, and one of the most talked about Cape Verdean singers today. We also hear new work from Nancy Viera, Jenifer Solidade and Elida Almeida. We’ll also catch up with a few male artists, and visit instrument builder an...
Tobago's #MeToo Trailblazer: Calypso Rose
May 22, 2018 17:42 - 20 minutes - 37.8 MBFor six decades Calypso Rose has been one of the Caribbean’s leading feminists and human rights advocates. Now, at the age of 78, she's touring the world with songs about sexual assault, workplace discrimination, and some thoughts on Donald Trump. In this report, Afropop correspondent Dan Rosenberg talks with Calypso Rose about using music as a weapon for social change, and how Rose collaborated with fashion designer Anya Ayoung Chee to transform "Leave Me Alone" into a political movement. W...
Afropop Divas - Live
May 17, 2018 15:04 - 59 minutes - 108 MBIn honor of Afropop's 30th anniversary on public radio, we are proud to present "Afropop Divas - Live." These are artists of extraordinary artistic talent and larger than life personalities - recorded by Afropop Worldwide. Featured artists include Oumou Sangare from Mali, Cesaria Evora from Cabo Verde, Uum Kulthum from Egypt, and Marie Daulne born in Congo. Produced by Sean Barlow. [APWW #778]
Lagos and the Rise of Nigerian Afrobeats
May 10, 2018 14:49 - 1 hour - 124 MBLagos and the Rise of Nigerian Afrobeats Heavy, percussive club beats with irresistible hooks and street-wise raps in Yoruba, Igbo or pidgin English—Nigerian pop music, increasingly known by the much-debated term Afrobeats, is the sound that moves Lagos and the sound of Lagos that moves the world. But it wasn’t always this way! Starting in the early 1990s, a new musical movement was born in Nigeria. Ten years into a series of military dictatorships that almost completely destroyed the Nigeri...
Lagos Roots: Fuji, Juju and Apala
May 03, 2018 14:33 - 59 minutes - 108 MBBeneath the gloss of Nigeria’s contemporary pop, older roots styles, mostly derived from Yoruba tradition, still thrive. In this program, we meet four top stars of fuji music, the percussion-driven, message-heavy, and occasionally profane trance music that animates weddings and parties on a daily basis in hidden corners of Lagos. Rival “kings” K1 da Ultimate and Saheed Osupa, and a rare woman of fuji, Salawa Abeni, take us inside the rough and tumble of an exciting musical subculture little k...
Congolese Music - The Fifth Generation
April 26, 2018 15:23 - 59 minutes - 108 MBIn the early 2000s, Afropop told the story of “Four Generations” in Congolese music—from rumba and rumba-rock to soukous and ndombolo. Now time has marched on, and once again, thrilling new sounds are emerging from Kinshasa and its global diaspora. We’ll hear hyperkinetic roots-rock from Jupiter and Okwess, Fally Ipupa’s embrace of the current Afrobeats trend, experimental innovations from Pierre Kwenders in Montreal, and more. We’ll also speak with Congolese music connoisseur Lubangi Muniani...
Cooking with Georges Revisited
April 19, 2018 14:29 - 59 minutes - 108 MBOne of the glories of Afropop’s 30-year run has been joining our host Georges Collinet in the kitchen as he creates delicious concoctions, while grooving to his favorite tunes. This episode looks back on two classic “Cooking with Georges” episodes: Yassa Chicken from Senegal, and Yoruba soul food with guest chef Baba John Mason—all accompanied music to make you move, from wherever George’s insatiable culinary curiosity takes him. Get your apron and your dancing shoes ready! Produced by Banni...
Barbados at 50: From Soca to Spouge
April 12, 2018 14:18 - 59 minutes - 108 MBBarbados recently celebrated its 50th anniversary of independence. We look into the rise and mysterious fall of the funky Bajan spouge beat which ruled the island in the ’70s, and discover a few underground musicians who are trying to keep it alive. Calypsonians Mighty Grynner and Red Plastic Bag detail their contributions to the lyrically potent kaiso scene. Soca stars Alison Hinds and Edwin Yearwood talk about the pros and cons of the island's competition circuit, and we learn about the hot...
Crabs with Brains
April 05, 2018 14:58 - 59 minutes - 108 MBCrabs with Brains In the early 1990s, mangueboys and manguegirls stimulated fertility in the veins of Recife, Brazil. They were interested in hip-hop, the collapse of modernity, chaos and marine predator attacks (mainly sharks). Armed with boundless creativity, they turned one of the world’s most poverty-stricken cities into one of Brazil’s greatest centers of culture. Mangue artists mixed hip-hop, Jamaican raggamuffin and punk rock with traditions from Brazil’s northeast like maracatu and e...
Roots and Future: A History of UK Dance
March 15, 2018 14:26 - 59 minutes - 108 MBLook around today’s musical mainstream, and you’ll quickly realize that dance styles are everywhere, filling stadiums, topping charts, and gathering tens of thousands in festivals around the country. Yet few know their full history. Building on prior Hip Deep explorations of the origins of house and techno in the American Midwest, “Roots and Future” explores how a community of (primarily) black British musicians, fans, DJs and radio pirates recreated dance music in the United Kingdom during t...
Plenty Bacchanal: Carnival in Flux
March 08, 2018 17:02 - 59 minutes - 108 MBTrinidadians call their annual Carnival festivities "the greatest show on earth" and with good reason. The Carnival season is overflowing with art and music: steelpan, calypso, soca and extravagant masquerade costumes. On this Afropop program, we take a look at how the Carnival arts are kept alive in today's Trinidad, in an untidy, evolving cultural, economic and political landscape at home and abroad. Open your ears to some life-giving music and conversations about Trinidad and its brillian...
Jamaica - Big A Yard, Big Abroad
March 01, 2018 15:38Since the 1960s in Jamaica, iconic figures such as Bob Marley have gathered in backyards to write reggae anthems that conquered world charts. The yard remains a cornerstone in Jamaican culture. Musicians withdraw from the violence of the city to create and play songs in their yards. In Jamaican patois, “mi yard” means “my home,” and many songs, proverbs and colloquialisms hinge on the word “yard.” More even than the music itself, the yard evokes a state of mind and a physical space wherein ar...
Highlights From Afropop Closeup: Season Two
February 22, 2018 15:42 - 59 minutes - 108 MBSince the launch of the second Afropop Closeup season in the summer of 2017, we’ve taken you through the stories of producers, lovers, activists, poets and musicians from Africa and the diaspora finding their respective ways in the world and connecting through music. Since this series is only available online, we are bringing you highlights of some of the most captivating stories in this season. You will hear the voices of our regular Afropop producers and some newcomers narrating these stori...
Africa and the Blues
February 15, 2018 14:11 - 59 minutes - 108 MBWhen this episode first aired, the recent death of Malian guitar legend Ali Farka Touré inspired a new round of speculation about the roots of the blues in Africa. Touré famously argued that the beloved American genre was "nothing but African", a bold assertion. Among scholars, Gerhard Kubik's book Africa and the Blues has gained recognition as the most serious and penetrating examination of the subject. This program in our Hip Deep series will be produced in collaboration with Kubik, allowin...
With Feet in Many Worlds
February 08, 2018 16:14 - 59 minutes - 108 MBAs the 21st century rolls on, more and more of the musical artists who are making a difference cannot be pinned down to any one national identity. Migration, inter-marriage, and the hurly burly of our globalized planet are creating a new and growing generations change-makers with hyphenated identities. In this program we hear from Ayo (Nigerian-Roma-German), Meklit Hadero (Ethiopian-American), Weedie Braimah (Ghanaian-American), La Dame Blanche (Cuban-French), Pascal Danai of the band Delgres...
What's in a Nigerian Name?
February 06, 2018 20:53 - 25 minutes - 47.4 MBMusicians everywhere adapt stage names. They can be profound, grandiose or simply humorous, but they always represent a way of distinguishing the artist from the person. In Nigeria, there’s something special going on with stage names. For one thing, they are nearly universal. They can also change over the course of an artist’s career. And they reflect the realities of Nigeria’s complex history, under British colonialism, military rule and the recent democratic period. Stage names riff on the ...
Reimagining Jazz in Africa: Cape Town Cosmopolitans and Beyond
February 01, 2018 18:13 - 59 minutes - 108 MBIn recognition of the recent death of South African maestro Hugh Masekela, we revisit a program that touches on one of his earliest musical landmarks, The Jazz Epistles. It’s no secret that the distant roots of American jazz lay in Africa. But how did Afro-America’s revolutionary sound reshape African music? On this Hip Deep edition, we examine how African artists found a modern, global voice using jazz as inspiration. Author Carol Muller tells the story of Abdullah Ibrahim, whose prolific ...
Afropop at 30: Live in the '90s
January 25, 2018 20:13 - 59 minutes - 108 MBAs we begin our year of celebrating Afropop Worldwide's 30th anniversary on the air, we take a special look back at some highlights of our long run on public radio. We return to our past visits to South Africa, Congo, Senegal, Mali, Cuba, and check in with the hippest hip-hop artists we caught performing at Nuits d'Afrique and Mawazine. Produced by Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre. Follow Afropop Worldwide on Facebook at www.facebook.com/afropop, on Instagram @afropopworldwide and on Twitter @...
The Voice of Protest: Betsayda Machado Sings Against Hunger in Venezuela
January 23, 2018 22:06 - 23 minutes - 43.6 MBThe songs of Betsayda Machado, the leading voice of Afro-Venezuelan music, address many of the most painful topics of daily life of her country: hunger, poverty, shortages of basic medicine, and deadly street riots – stemming from the current economic and political crisis in Venezuela. They talk about its consequences on a gut level: empty store shelves, and the devastation of parents unable to feed their children. Some in Venezuela who have spoken out have faced retribution, but that hasn’t ...
Time Travel Through Afro-Paris
January 18, 2018 15:38Since at least the 1980s, when this program first aired, Paris has been one of the most important incubators of African music on the planet. That’s why we’ve visited there to take the pulse so often. On this program, we look back on 30 years of adventures with African music in Paris. We’ll hear studio sessions with Congolese guitar ace Diblo Dibala and zouk stars Kassav, interviews, live concerts, and that special ambiance that only Paris can provide. Produced by Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow...
“For My Ayeeyo:” Learning Somali Poetry From a Distance
January 12, 2018 17:12 - 24 minutes - 43.9 MBAmal Hussein and Hamdi Mohamed have a lot in common. Both were born in Kenya, where their parents fled as refugees during the Somali Civil War, and both came to Boston when they were just a few years old. They’re both poets — and equally important for this story — both their grandmothers are poets. But there’s one crucial difference in the two women's stories. Hamdi grew up with her grandmother ("ayeeyo" in Somali") in the house, whispering poems in her ears. Amal has only known her grandmoth...
Hip Deep in Mali: Growing Into Music in 21st Century Bamako
January 11, 2018 16:13 - 59 minutes - 108 MBThis program presents a musical portrait of Bamako in the wake of crisis. In 2012-13, Islamists occupied the north and a coup d’etat threatened a recent history of functioning democracy. With borders restored and a new elected government in place, we find musical life returning with festivals, nightclub shows and street weddings. But that picture hides darker realities. Ethnomusicologist Lucy Durán has been studying the oral transmission of music in various countries, notably among griot fami...
Santo Domingo Blues: The Story of Bachata
January 04, 2018 15:39Bachata is a music of the people. Recalling the American blues, bachata was infamous as the anthem of the hard-drinking, womanizing, down-on-his-luck man, vilified as the entertainment of the brothels and the cabarets, and worshipped by the down-trodden poor as the deepest expression of their feelings. Today it is an international sensation. Alex Wolfe, director of the film "Santo Domingo Blues: The Story of Bachata" brings us live ambience and stories of bachata stars Luis Vargas, Antony San...
Ghana: Celebration Sounds
December 28, 2017 16:12 - 59 minutes - 108 MBIn hard times and boom times, people in Ghana know how to party. In this program, we hear the regional pop and neotraditional music that animates festivals, funerals and community celebrations across the county. We travel to the lush Volta region in the east to hear Ewe borborbor, agbadza and brass band music. In the northern city of Tamale, we hear Dagbani traditional music, hip-hop and pop, and visit the vibrant Damba chieftaincy festival in nearby Yendi. Back in the bustling metropolis, Ac...
Underground
December 26, 2017 19:53 - 16 minutes - 29.4 MBUnderneath the streets of New York City, in the tunnels and stations of the busiest subway system in the country, there is a thriving music scene. Amidst the noise of passing trains, we meet Papa Fara, a Cameroonian xylophonist and singer, who plays for tips and captures the love of strangers and makes friends with his quick, warm smile. But, behind the smile and beautiful melodies, something is troubling Papa Fara. There’s a reason he’d rather be underground. Produced by Morgan Greenstreet...
The (New) Sound Of Afro Paris
December 21, 2017 16:28 - 59 minutes - 108 MBParis has been a thriving capital for African music for decades. Since the 1980s, many major musicians such as Mory Kanté, Khaled and Amadou and Mariam launched their international careers there. Today, as migration patterns evolve, borders tighten and the world becomes increasingly connected via the Internet, Paris remains more than ever a city of encounters and innovations for artists of African origin. With new generations experimenting and new audiences emerging, the term “world music” ha...
Thomas Mapfumo 2: The Mugabe Years
December 14, 2017 18:28 - 59 minutes - 108 MBIn recognition of the end of Robert Mugabe's 37-year rule in Zimbabwe, we are rebroadcasting our program on the career of Thomas Mapfumo during the Mugabe years. Part two of the story of Zimbabwe’s most consequential singer and bandleader picks up at the dawn of the country’s independence in 1980. The program focuses on key songs from Thomas Mapfumo’s vast post-independence catalogue, beginning with his celebration of victory, and his warnings about “dissidents” out to destabilize a young na...
Biafra at 50: A Wound That Does Not Heal
December 12, 2017 20:02 - 31 minutes - 57.4 MBDuring the 2016 U.S. presidential election, some foreign observers were puzzled by groups of Nigerians who showed support for Donald Trump’s campaign. The most prominent supporters were the IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra), a controversial, fervently Christian, mostly Igbo, nationalist organization that is still fighting for independence from Nigeria. On Jan. 20, 2017 a rally in Port Harcourt celebrating the inauguration of Donald Trump turned violent, and a number of people were shot dead ...
Stocking Stuffers 2017
December 07, 2017 17:30 - 59 minutes - 108 MBIt's time once again for Georges Collinet and Banning Eyre to spin through our favorite African and African diaspora releases of the year. 2017 has been a knockout, with spectacular new albums, including a collaboration between Mali's Trio da Kali and Kronos Quartet (Ladilikan), the debut of Madagascar's super trio Toko Telo (Toy Raha Toy), Oumou Sangare's comeback (Mogoya), a killer live set of Garifuna pop from Aurelio (Darandi) and the long-awaited second album from Zimbabwe's hottest youn...
Cuts from the Crypt III
November 30, 2017 16:13 - 59 minutes - 108 MBBack in the day, host Georges Collinet and producer Sean Barlow (A.K.A. Prince Segue Segue) dragged stacks of vinyl all over the country to deejay for station-produced Afropop Dance Parties. We'll dig into the past to retrieve some of our favorite gems from the Congo, Zimbabwe, Colombia, Brazil and Cote d'Ivoire. Produced by Sean Barlow. Follow Afropop Worldwide on Facebook at www.facebook.com/afropop, on Instagram @afropopworldwide and on Twitter @afropopww. Subscribe to the Afropop Worl...
Kizito Mihigo and the Politics of Music in Post-Genocide Rwanda
November 28, 2017 18:07 - 19 minutes - 36.5 MBKizito Mihigo is one of Rwanda’s most beloved singers, yet he is currently imprisoned, serving a 10-year sentence for treason. In 2014, Mihigo released a song which criticized the wartime actions of Rwanda’s governing political party. The song went viral, sparking a nationwide dialogue around the genocide, and weeks later, Mihigo was arrested on charges of conspiracy to assassinate the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame. Is Mihigo truly guilty of conspiracy, or only of speaking (and singing) tr...
A Brief History of Funk
November 23, 2017 14:47 - 59 minutes - 108 MBFunk is a perennial favorite. In this panoramic history of the grooviest of genres, we hear track after track of absolute boogie-down classics. Everything from Sly and the Family Stone to James Brown, with a few stops to hear legends like the Meters, Kool and the Gang, and Parliament. We’ll also hear the great Bobby Byrd explain the rhythmic motor behind the JB’s, and Georges Clinton talk about the roots of his funk. Produced by Ned Sublette. Follow Afropop Worldwide on Facebook at www.fac...
Afropop Live! 2017
November 16, 2017 17:25 - 108 MBHere’s Afropop’s annual roundup of great live recordings we’ve captured over the past year but haven't found time to air. We'll hear live tracks from our recent fieldwork in Nigeria, highlights from the Nuits d’Afrique festival in Montreal, the Sacred Music Festival in Fes, Morocco, and the Africa Now! festival at New York’s Apollo Theater, as well as intimate recordings of the kora/cello duo Ballake Sissoko and Vincent Segal. From a Hausa traditional jam in northern Nigeria to rowdy Congoles...
Night at the Clash
November 15, 2017 15:07 - 24 minutes - 44.9 MBSound clashes have been a mainstay of reggae culture for decades. Mobile sound system teams face off to see who can best move the crowd with their selections of records and exclusive "dub plate" jingles. On a recent late night in Queens, seven sounds competed for the U.S. champion title, and many were surprised by the winner. We meet the sound-system operators and talk to fans about why they love the clash scene. About the producer: Noah Schaffer is an award-winning music journalist based ...
Hip Deep Angola Part 2: Kuduro and Beyond
November 09, 2017 16:15 - 59 minutes - 108 MBJoin producer Ned Sublette on the streets of Angola’s big, smoggy, oil-booming capital city of Luanda. Peace came to Angola in 2002 after 42 years of war, and now everything is different, with construction under way everywhere. The post-war generation of the last 10 years communicates via text messaging and electronic music: The biggest of which is the techno-meets-rap-meets-African-dance style known as kuduro (literally, “hard-ass”). But there’s also the zouk-like couple dance of kizomba, a ...
Hip Deep Angola part 1: Music and Nation in Luanda
November 02, 2017 15:30 - 59 minutes - 108 MBWe explore the role music played in the creation of a uniquely Angolan consciousness as the country struggled toward independence in the 1960s and ‘70s after centuries of colonialism. Our guides will be producer Ned Sublette, on the ground in Angola, and Dr. Marissa Moorman, historian of southern Africa, and author of Intonations: A Social History of Music in Luanda, Angola from 1945 to Recent Times. We’ll hear the pathbreaking group Ngola Ritmos, who dared sing songs in Kimbundu publicly whe...
Shackled Love: LGBT Asylum Seekers in the U.K.
October 31, 2017 15:41 - 21 minutes - 40.2 MBSibo Dube and Maureen Nabisere met inside the U.K.’s most notorious immigrant detention centre, Yarl’s Wood. In the midst of captivity and uncertainty, the two women bonded in the detention center choir group; they had come to the U.K. seeking liberation from the emotional imprisonment they had faced in Zimbabwe and Uganda respectively, where their sexuality is illegal. Their relationship would be their emotional salvation, and potentially, their ticket to freedom in the U.K., which places a ...
Lagos and the Rise of Nigerian Afrobeats
October 26, 2017 14:37Heavy, percussive club beats with irresistible hooks and street-wise raps in Yoruba, Igbo or pidgin English—Nigerian pop music, increasingly known by the much-debated term Afrobeats, is the sound that moves Lagos and the sound of Lagos that moves the world. But it wasn’t always this way! Starting in the early 1990s, a new musical movement was born in Nigeria. Ten years into a series of military dictatorships that almost completely destroyed the Nigerian music industry, artists including Junio...
Riqueza del Barrio: Puerto Rican Music in the United States
October 19, 2017 16:11 - 59 minutes - 108 MBFor almost a month, the fate of Puerto Rico and its inhabitants has remained unknown due to the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria during the unusually active hurricane season of 2017. There are still many people on the island living without electricity or potable water and in desperate need of assistance. This week we are airing a special Hip Deep encore presentation of “Riqueza del Barrio: Puerto Rican Music in the United States” produced by Ned Sublette to help raise awareness and cele...
Black, Greek and Proud: Negros Tou Moria
October 17, 2017 16:56 - 17 minutes - 40.4 MBAs Europe closes Greece’s borders in an attempt to stem the seemingly never-ending flow of refugees, immigrant artists are finding it tough to survive in an increasingly xenophobic environment. Ghanaian-Greek rapper Negros Tou Moria is carving out new territory and challenging stereotypes with rap music that is deeply rooted in Greek language and culture. Produced by Heidi Fuller-love. About the producer: Heidi Fuller-love is an award-winning freelance travel writer and radio producer base...
Remembering Fela
October 12, 2017 14:41Fela Anikulapo-Kuti would be 79 years old this month, had he not died from complications of AIDS in 1997. By the time of his death, Fela was the inventor of the enduring and influential Afrobeat music style, the composer of an enormous body of music, and one of the bravest political voices in 20th century African music. It is fair to say that no African musician before or since has sacrificed more for the principles he believed in. Nigerian history and music have barreled forth during the two...
Accounting for Taste: Dire Straits, Jim Reeves and Death Metal in Africa
October 05, 2017 14:39 - 59 minutes - 135 MBWhen we talk about the influence of American performers on African music, we usually think about a few obvious examples, legends like Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix or James Brown. In this episode, we go beyond these stars to explore the legacy of some lesser-known inspirations. We’ll learn how the fluid guitar playing of ’70s rock band Dire Straits became massively popular in the Sahel, influencing Tuareg rockers like Tinariwen and Tamikrest. We’ll hear about the American country superstar Ji...
Afro-Symphonic Folk: From the Coasts of Africa to the San Francisco Bay
October 03, 2017 14:56 - 17 minutes - 32.2 MBThe San Francisco Bay Area is a unique cultural space that has given birth to some of the most iconic countercultural American music. It is a place where identities can be fluid and hyphenated, where new voices emerge to speak to their times. Two very different Bay Area artists, Meklit Hadero and Zena Carlota, use their music to explore what it means to live on two sides of a hyphen: African-American, black-artist, Ethiopian-American, female-musician, to name a few. Produced by Lisa Bartfai ...
Lagos Roots: Fuji, Juju and Apala
September 28, 2017 18:10Beneath the gloss of Nigeria’s contemporary pop, older roots styles, mostly derived from Yoruba tradition, still thrive. In this program, we meet four top stars of fuji music, the percussion-driven, message-heavy, and occasionally profane trance music that animates weddings and parties on a daily basis in hidden corners of Lagos. Rival “kings” K1 da Ultimate and Saheed Osupa, and a rare woman of fuji, Salawa Abeni, take us inside the rough and tumble of an exciting musical subculture little k...
San Francisco: Afropop by the Bay
September 21, 2017 15:27 - 108 MBIt turns out that the first American city to host a roster of local African bands was not New York, Miami or Chicago, but the San Francisco Bay Area of northern California. Hugh Masekela brought Hedzoleh Soundz from Ghana, and they settled in Santa Cruz. Nigerian maestros O.J. Ekemode and Joni Haastrup lived in Oakland in the 1970s. South African musicians from the touring stage show Ipitombi also settled in the Bay Area and started the band Zulu Spear. By the early ‘80s, the Bay Area “worldb...
Rushin’ to Bacchanal: When Caribbean Festivals Collide
September 19, 2017 16:50 - 20 minutes - 37.3 MBJunkanoo, an annual communal parade held in the Bahamas, is a labor of love for the Bahamian people that dates back centuries. The parade, which has Akan cultural roots, emerged in the time of slavery, but it has since moved from the margins to the very center of society, becoming the bedrock of national culture. When the government wanted to invest millions into the development of a major cultural festival designed to attract tourists, Junkanoo seemed like the obvious choice. In this podcast...
Fania Records at 50
September 14, 2017 15:17 - 59 minutes - 108 MBNew York City is home to the earthshaking Latin dance music known as salsa. From the mid-1960s through the 1980s, Fania Records released many of the landmark albums of the era, creating a salsa boom that reverberated around the world. In 2014, Fania celebrated 50 years in the business; and to celebrate, we dug into the label’s history. We’ll hear from some of the principal players, including Aurora Flores, Nicky Marrero and Larry “El Judio Maravilloso” Harlow, and tell a few Afropop-centric s...