Some of the best stories in African music have never fitted into a three-minute song. They need two hours, archive footage and the people who were there. From apartheid-era freedom songs to a band of Kinshasa street musicians in wheelchairs, these African music documentaries show where the music came from and what it cost the people who made it.
Here are ten worth watching, with what each one covers and why it matters.
1. Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony (2002)
“Amandla” means power in Zulu and Xhosa, and this film is about the songs black South Africans sang to fight apartheid, from the 1940s to the 1990s. It mixes interviews, archive footage and performances, with Miriam Makeba, Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela and Vusi Mahlasela among those taking part.
It won the Audience Award for documentary at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, and its soundtrack of freedom songs was executive produced by Dave Matthews. If you watch only one film on this list, make it this one.
2. Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love (2008)
Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi followed the Senegalese star as he released Egypt, a Grammy-winning album of Sufi songs, and worked to promote a more tolerant view of Islam. Bono and Peter Gabriel appear.
The film screened at Telluride and Toronto in 2008 and won a Special Jury Prize at the Middle East International Film Festival. It is as much about faith as it is about music. See also our Youssou N’Dour story.
3. Benda Bilili! (2010)
French filmmakers Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye first saw Staff Benda Bilili playing on the streets of Kinshasa in 2004. Most of the band’s core members were disabled by polio. “Benda Bilili” means “look beyond appearances” in Lingala.
Filming took five years, following the band from the streets to a European tour. It opened the Directors’ Fortnight at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, where it drew standing ovations with the band in the room. Read the Staff Benda Bilili story.
4. Kinshasa Symphony (2010)
Kinshasa again, but a completely different sound. This German film follows the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste, an orchestra of ordinary Kinshasa residents who rehearse Handel, Verdi and Beethoven in one of Africa’s biggest and busiest cities. It is a film about what people manage to build with very little, and a reminder that Congolese music is far more than rumba.
5. Mama Africa (2011)
Finnish director Mika Kaurismäki’s portrait of Miriam Makeba uses archive footage and interviews to tell the story of the singer who spent 31 years in exile from South Africa. It includes archive footage of her band, among them the Brazilian accordion player Sivuca.
Makeba died on 9 November 2008, after collapsing on stage in Italy. Our story on her exile covers the background.
6. Searching for Sugar Man (2012)
This is not about an African musician, but it is one of the great stories about African music fans. Sixto Rodriguez was a Mexican-American singer who flopped in the United States in the 1970s. In apartheid South Africa, cut off by censorship and sanctions, his records became huge and most fans believed he had died.
In the late 1990s two Cape Town fans, Stephen “Sugar” Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, set out to find the truth. The film won a BAFTA and the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2013.
7. Finding Fela (2014)
Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney tells the life of Fela Kuti alongside the making of the Broadway musical Fela!, with interviews with its director Bill T. Jones. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 17 January 2014.
Reviews were mixed: The Hollywood Reporter called it “absorbing if not quite definitive”. It is still the easiest way into Fela’s story on film. Pair it with our piece on Fela! on Broadway and Afrobeat vs Afrobeats.
8. Birth of Afrobeat (2019)
Filmmaker Opiyo Okeyo made this documentary about Tony Allen, the drummer Fela said Afrobeat could not exist without. It screened at the American Black Film Festival, won an award at the BlackStar Film Festival and premiered on American public television, PBS, on 20 January 2020. Allen died three months later, on 30 April 2020, which gives the film extra weight.
Read our Tony Allen story.
9. Bobi Wine: The People’s President (2022)
Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo filmed the Ugandan singer turned opposition leader over five years as he took on Yoweri Museveni in the 2021 presidential election. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 1 September 2022, won a Peabody Award and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
Rotten Tomatoes lists 100% positive reviews from the 42 critics it counted.
10. Afrobeats: The Backstory (2022)
Nigerian lawyer, music executive and filmmaker Ayo Shonaiya spent years inside the scene he documents. His series, released on Netflix on 29 June 2022, traces Afrobeats from its early-2000s roots to Wizkid, Burna Boy and Davido filling arenas, with the legacy of Fela in the background.
It is a history of the genre told by someone who was there.
Which of these African music documentaries should you start with?
For history and politics, start with Amandla! and Mama Africa. For the sheer joy of music beating the odds, Benda Bilili!. For the modern sound, Afrobeats: The Backstory. And if you only have an evening, Searching for Sugar Man is the one that will make you call a friend afterwards.
