Music
From a Cameroonian village to New York’s jazz stages: Richard Bona and the bass
Richard Bona, born in Minta, Cameroon, in 1967, grew up in a family of musicians and switched to…
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The Queen of African Rumba: how Mbilia Bel became Afrisa International’s star voice
Mbilia Bel, born Marie-Claire Mboyo Moseka in Kinshasa in 1959, joined Tabu Ley Rochereau's Afrisa International in 1981…
Arts + Culture
Students in Abidjan turned their frustrations into dance music: the story of zouglou
Zouglou was born in the early 1990s among university students in Abidjan, who sang humorous and critical songs…
Arts + Culture
The records Ethiopia almost lost: how the Éthiopiques series brought “Swinging Addis” to the world
In 1997, the Paris label Buda Musique, with producer Francis Falceto, began the Éthiopiques series, reissuing Ethiopian popular…
Arts + Culture
From Luanda’s parties to dance schools in Lisbon and London: how kizomba grew out of semba
Kizomba emerged in Angola in the late 1970s and 1980s as an evolution of semba, softened by the…
Arts + Culture
His songs got him exiled from Côte d’Ivoire: Tiken Jah Fakoly, Françafrique and a concert for every school
Ivorian reggae singer Tiken Jah Fakoly, born Doumbia Moussa in Odienné, released his internationally successful album Françafrique in…
Arts + Culture
Still singing on stage past 100: Bi Kidude, the queen of Zanzibar’s taarab
Bi Kidude, born Fatuma binti Baraka in Zanzibar around 1910, was called the queen of taarab and unyago…
Arts + Culture
Three strings, iron castanets and a trance that lasts all night: Gnawa music of Morocco
Gnawa is a Moroccan musical and spiritual tradition with roots in sub-Saharan Africa, brought north by enslaved people.…
Arts + Culture
Born in a Paris nightclub, raised in wartime Abidjan: how coupé-décalé began with Douk Saga and La Jet Set
Coupé-décalé began among Ivorians in Paris around La Jet Set, a group founded in 2001 whose leader Douk…
Music
The king of coupé-décalé died at 33: DJ Arafat and the stadium that sang for him all night
Ivorian star DJ Arafat, born Ange Didier Houon and known as the king of coupé-décalé, crashed his motorbike…