Not music, but important... (IMHO)
What Nollywood owes the ancestors
https://africasacountry.com/2026/10/what-nollywood-owes-the-ancestors
Masquerade custodians in Lagos keep saying no to Nollywood. Nollywood keeps returning to masquerades anyway.
aiac
Beats, borders, and the struggle for freedom
"Amid global political turmoil and restrictive visa policies, artists are redefining resistance—on the dance floor and beyond."
https://africasacountry.com/2025/02/beats-borders-and-the-struggle-for-freedom
Four Days in Faso - Kwame Brenya & Legon Palmwine Band
Read: On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/05/a-migrants-tale
Listen: Poetry, Storytelling, Drama & Music https://kwabrenyame.bandcamp.com/album/four-days-in-faso
Discussing African border issues through Palmwine music, based on true life experiences.
Bring back Ngonnso
"A 2023 research article estimates that 40,000 objects from Cameroon are in German museums, a far cry from the roughly 6,000 pieces in the state collections in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. The artifacts in Germany consist of musical instruments, ritual masks, textiles, manuscripts, weapons, and tools, many of which were acquired through violent raids."
Davido’s appearance at 'Amapiano’s biggest concert' turned a night of celebration into a study in Afrophobia, fandom, and the fragile borders of South African cultural nationalism.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/11/davidos-jacket
#SouthAfrica #Nigeria #AfroHouse #Amapiano #Racism #AfroPhobia #AIAC
The politics of South African sound
From #Kwaito to #Amapiano, South African music is a bridge between past and present, where cultural memory, resistance, and reinvention collide on the dancefloor.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/03/the-politics-of-south-african-sound
How Not to Go to Jail for Making Art
Published by the Pan-African Network for Artistic Freedom, the first issue of PANAF Voices is a testimony to persistence in the face of artistic repression across the continent.
https://www.theelephant.info/analysis/2026/05/08/how-not-to-go-to-jail-for-making-art/
Black Rio! Black Power!
"In Brazil, soul music dances gave rise to the Black Rio Movement after they became spaces for the political affirmation and resistance of the young Black community in Rio de Janeiro in the 70’s."
Trailer (EN): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK5BN-Gy90s
Read: The sound of black identity https://africasacountry.com/2025/07/the-sound-of-black-identity/
Edited 1y ago
If you already watched "Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat", or want to, this is a #MustRead interview with Johan Gimonprez
Making films against amnesia
"The director of the Oscar-nominated film 'Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat' reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently."
https://africasacountry.com/2025/04/making-films-against-amnesia
The trouble with “showing the real Africa”
iShowSpeed’s Africa tour is widely celebrated as respectful and refreshing, yet it operates within a long tradition of racialized spectacle that turns Africa into content and Blackness into performance.
https://africasacountry.com/2026/02/the-trouble-with-showing-the-real-africa
When food becomes poison
In Nigeria, the drive to cut corners has turned food and drink into vectors of illness, sacrificing health and heritage at the altar of profit.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/09/when-food-becomes-poison
"[...] Fruits are forced to ripen with calcium carbide, a toxic substance that has no place near human consumption. Cooking oils are recycled endlessly, breaking down into harmful compounds long before they reach the plate."
Tanzania’s national sound?
What happens when singeli, a genre born in Dar es Salaam’s working-class underground, becomes a symbol of national culture, embraced by the very state that once distrusted it?
https://africasacountry.com/2026/05/tanzanias-national-sound
As you probably already know, following the posts here, I would never write this phrase: "his [Fela Kuti] influence persisted in contemporary Nigerian music, now called Afrobeats." Never...
https://africasacountry.com/2026/03/afrobeats-after-fela
BTW, Amapiano, used extensively in Wizkid's album, is from South Africa...
Always searching
Abdullah Ibrahim was difficult, suspicious, and brilliant. And beneath all of it, he was searching for home.
The resurgence of Benin sound
[Don't mix the Beninese Republic, with Benin City in Edo State in Nigeria]
Read: Musical traditions and language from Edo State have moved from the margins of Nigeria's national (and international) culture to the center.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/06/the-resurgence-of-benin-sound
Listen: Respect Ur Elders By 2Rymce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plmB4GmCYlE (link not broken)
On AMF: Edo Funk Explosion https://amf.didiermary.fr/edo-funk-explosion/
Edited 66d ago
About African music, Music industry, Afrobeats, etc.
1 - The music is not yours
On the latest AIAC podcast [+ transcript], the gang from the Nigerian Scam explores how Afrobeats got globalized, who captured the value, and why the party may be ending.
https://africasacountry.com/2026/04/the-music-is-not-yours
2 - Global Sound, Local Loss: Africa's Music Money Gap
African music dominates global charts, but less than 0.4% of industry revenue returns home.
https://www.okayafrica.com/global-sound-local-loss-africas-music-money-gap/1427679
From colonial storage to open access
For a century, African musical heritage was recorded, boxed, and shipped to museums abroad. In Nairobi, a new generation of archives is bringing cultural memory home — and putting it online.
https://africasacountry.com/2026/07/from-colonial-storage-to-open-access