African Music Podcast

In the next edition of our ongoing Afropop Vignettes series, we focus on South American powerhouse, Brazil. We go to Recife and Salvador de Bahia in the Northeast and Rio and Sao Paulo in the South. Concerts by master musicians Joao Bosco and Gilberto Gil and more.

Afropop Worldwide travels to Angouleme France for the legendary Musique Metisses Festival, which has given many Afropop stars their European debuts. This stellar line-up--c'est incroyable! Bembeya Jazz, Habib Koite, Cesaria Evora, Ismael Lo, Amadou and Mariam, Sgt. Garcia, Wendo Kolosoy, Papa Noel, Tinariwen, the Gangbe Brass Band, Hana El Bacharia. Visits with the artists and live concert highlights.

Competition between communities of Indian and African descent has been a mainstay of politics and culture in the former British colonies of Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana. This rivalry plays out in institutions from the University of the West Indies to the West Indies cricket team, and of course, popular music. At the time of Trinidad's Independence, the Afro-Caribbean political elite of the day sought to enshrine calypso as the country's national music, but new genres have emerged, from the steel-pan jazz and calypso of the 1960s to soca and its successor, chutney-soca, which for the first time in the 1980s fully integrated Indian and African influences in a local popular music. This Hip Deep edition explores all of these styles, and also the music of diaspora communities in the U.S. and the U.K.. Ethnomusicologist Peter Manuel of the City University of New York shares his ground-breaking research on Indo-Caribbean music in all of its geographic and social contexts. His music and insights reveal a fascinating, overlooked story of hybrid Caribbean culture.

Volumes have been written on the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its consequences, but there has been far less attention paid to the forced migration of black Africans into the Mediterranean world of Islam, and the Arab lands beyond. From the ninth to the early twentieth century many black Africans were forcibly taken across the Sahara, up the Nile valley, and across the Red Sea, perhaps as many as were transported across the Atlantic in a much shorter period. Guided by Eve Troutt Powell, (a MacArthur Fellow who has written extensively on 19th century Egypt and Sudan), Chouki el Hamel (a historian at Arizona State University), and author Joseph Braude, we will consider musical aspects of this often overlooked legacy in Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, and the Persian Gulf.

In the latest of our ongoing vignettes series, we dig into the Afropop Worldwide archives for some choice, compelling moments from our programs profiling music scenes in Peru, Equador, Brazil and Venezuela.

Back to back with our summer concert preview show, we hit the dance floor with classic tracks from Afropop Dance Parties down through the years.

This is our annual heads-up about outstanding artists touring in the U.S. for the summer season. The roster includes Congolese rumba maestros, Kekele, the idiosyncratic Lagbaja from Nigeria, Refugee All Stars, and Haitian diva Emeline Michel.

Viewed through the lens of music, the Congo presents a stark contrast. From the ravages of the slaving Portuguese, to King Leopold's virtual slave state in the late 19th century, through the monumental corruption and ruthless oppression of the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko that ended in 1997, this African heartland has known a history of unrelieved brutality and sadness. And yet, its cities have produced some of the most innovative and ebullient popular music the continent has known in the past century. Beginning in the 1950s, when Congolese music began to be distributed on vinyl records, it found admirers and imitators throughout East, West and Central Africa, and in much of southern African as well. With Congolese-born ethnomusicologist and author Kazadi wa Mukuna and arts educator and community scholar Lubangi Muniania as guides, this Hip Deep program will delve into the untold stories and messages disguised within the lyrics of Congolese songs.

Robert Farris Thompson, the groundbreaking scholar of African art at Yale University, has recently published a splendid new book, "Tango: The Art History of Love" (Pantheon). On this very special episode of Afropop Worldwide's Hip Deep, Thompson talks to Afropop's own Ned Sublette, author of "Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo," about the erotic Afro-Argentine dance whose Kikongo-derived name he renders as "moving in time to a beat." With musical examples galore.

Guinea's legendary dance band Bembeya Jazz are pillar of modern West African history. Begun in 1961 in the flush of Guinea's independence and Sekou Toure's maverick presidency, the band still plays today under the inspired leadership of guitar giant Sekou "Bembeya" Diabate. This program delves into Bembeya history with a focus on the band's 60s and 70s heyday, right up to new solo work by Sekou Diabate, due for release in 2004.