Arts + Culture
Pedro Almodóvar heard “Tajabone” and put it in All About My Mother. Ismaël Lô, Senegal’s Bob Dylan
Ismaël Lô, the Senegalese singer and guitarist often called Africa's Bob Dylan for his harmonica and guitar, found…
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Arts + Culture
Bob Marley sang “Zimbabwe” as the new nation was born. The night of 17 April 1980 in Salisbury
On the night of 17 to 18 April 1980, Bob Marley and the Wailers performed at Rufaro Stadium…
Arts + Culture
The kora had always been played by men. Sona Jobarteh, from a Gambian griot family, changed that
Sona Jobarteh, born in London into one of The Gambia's great griot families, is widely described as the…
Arts + Culture
They called him the Rainmaker: Majek Fashek, “Send Down the Rain” and Nigeria’s reggae moment
Majek Fashek's "Send Down the Rain", from his 1988 album Prisoner of Conscience, made him Nigeria's biggest reggae…
Music
Barack Obama danced the Lipala with Sauti Sol in 2015. How four Nairobi friends became Kenya’s biggest band
Sauti Sol, the Kenyan band formed by four friends in Nairobi in 2005, became East Africa's most successful…
Music
Bongo Flava was never waiting for the West
Diamond Platnumz, Alikiba, Zuchu, Harmonize and Marioo: a guide to Tanzania's pop machine and why it never needed…
Arts + Culture
Seventy-one generations of griots, one kora: Toumani Diabaté, who died in 2024
Toumani Diabaté, the Malian kora master from a long line of griots, won Grammys with Ali Farka Touré…
Arts + Culture
Mulatu Astatke mixed Ethiopian scales with jazz and Latin grooves. Jim Jarmusch put Ethio-jazz in Hollywood
Mulatu Astatke, the father of Ethio-jazz, blended Ethiopian modes with jazz and Latin rhythms in the 1960s and…
Arts + Culture
“Umqombothi” was a 1986 party song about home-brewed beer. Hotel Rwanda put it on screens worldwide
Yvonne Chaka Chaka, known as the Princess of Africa, became one of South Africa's first black teenage pop…
Arts + Culture
Lucky Dube sang about prisons and apartheid and sold reggae to a continent. A carjacker killed him in 2007
Lucky Dube, South Africa's biggest reggae star, began in mbaqanga before switching to reggae in the 1980s. Songs…