Afropop Worldwide
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After The Quake: Music, Politics, and Spirituality in...
For this exclusive Afropop Worldwide Hip Deep report, producer Ned Sublette travels to Port-au-Prince, where he checks in with bandleader Richard Morse of RAM, and with Lolo and Manzandeacute; Beaubrun of Boukman Eksperyans, both of whom produced hotly controversial carnival songs this year. In a country where the president, Michel Martelly, was formerly the #1 dance-music singer, the complexities of politics are felt in music. We'll look at how vodou and carnival interact to provide a...
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Afropop roadshow: Spotlight Sierra Leone
Afropop's Roadshow series continues with a focus on new music and interviews from Sierra Leone. Electric Bubu music from Janka Nabay, hip hop from Bajah and The Dry Eye Crew, the latest from Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars, and introducing Sorie Kondi. Israeli maestro Idan Raichel talks about his collaborations with Mali's Vieux Farka Tourandeacute; and musicians from Sudan. Also, new Madagascar salegy boogie from Jaojoby, the arrival in the US of exiled Cameroonian legend Lapiro de Mbanga,...
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Afropop Roadshow: Spotlight Sierra Leone
Afropop's Roadshow series continues with a focus on new music and interviews from Sierra Leone. Techno Bubu music from Janka Nabay, hip hop from Bajah and Dry Eye Krewe, the latest from Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars, and introducing Sorie Kondi. Also Israeli maestro Idan Raichel talks about his collaborations with Mali's Vieux Farka Tourandeacute; and musicians from Sudan. Also, new Madagascar salegy boogie from Jaojoby, the arrival in the US of exiled Cameroonian legend Lapiro de Mbanga,...
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African Sounds of the Indian Subcontinent
In this Hip Deep program, we explore musical connections between Africa and the Indian subcontinent. First, we hear the story of the Afro-Indian Sidi community. Starting in the 13th century, Africans arrived in India as soldiers in the armies of Muslim conquerors. Some were able to rise through the ranks to become military leaders and even rulers in India. Their descendents continue to live in India today, performing African-influenced Sufi trance music at shrines of a black Muslim saint...
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Africa In America 2013
It's been more than two years since APWW last surveyed the African sounds making waves in America. This program plays catch-up by putting the spotlight on a few standouts. From hip-hop and reggae to roots grooves and Afropop revival bands, spiced with remixes, collaborations, and off-the-wall connections--music drawn from across the African continent is thriving in US towns and cities. Including afrobeat from the Souljazz Orchestra, Cheick Hamala Diabate's experimental traditionalism, Alec...
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Big Night in Little Haiti, Miami Style
Big Night in Little Haiti is a lively monthly party showcasing top Haitian musical talent that happens in the courtyard of the Haitian Cultural Center in Miami's Little Haiti. BNLH and our local affiliate WDNA invited Georges Collinet and the Afropop crew down to celebrate our 25th anniversary on public radio. What a blast! You'll hear highlights the classic compas Magnum Band featuring Dadou Pasquet on guitar and vocals. Fortified by a punchy three-piece horn section, the band pleased the...
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Celebrating Afropop's 25th: From Mexico City to Cuba and...
We start out at the Vive Latino Festival in Mexico City to hear local legends Cafe Tacvba as they perform for 60,000 hysterical fans singing along to every word, enjoy the refreshing alt-norteño of Juan Cirerol, soul-stirring tunes from the captivating Carla Morrison, and driving electro-cumbia from Sonido San Francisco, just to name a few. Plus, exclusive interviews with Chilean sensation Astro, and Hello Seahorse frontwoman Lo Blondo. Then we jump to Cuba, to a special Afropop visit to...
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Celebrating Afropop's 25th!
Afropop is celebrating 25 years on public radio! With some of our favorite live concert recordings made over the years in Zanzibar, Morocco and New York City. We'll travel to Stone Town for the Sauti za Busara Festival as well as to festivals in Fes and Rabat Morocco. And of course to our home base, New York City
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Celebrating Congo's 50th Anniversary of Independence:...
Congo, one of the epicenters of contemporary African music, became independent in June of 1960. We celebrate with a portrait of Franco--a towering figure in the cultural life of Africa. Guitar wizard. Prolific composer. Bandleader who groomed the who's who of Congolese singing royalty. Called the Balzac of Africa for his ear and way with a story. Franco passed in 1989. We'll talk to veteran singer and former Franco collaborator, Sam Mangwana, about Franco. And we'll relish recording...
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Fela! Hits the Road
Part 3 of our special 3-part series celebrating Nigeria's 50th anniversary of independence. The musical Fela! opened on Broadway in January 2010, and won eleven Tony nominations and three actual awards later in the year. It is an unprecedented landmark for African music in mainstream American culture. This is all the more amazing when you consider what an edgy, controversial character Fela Analukapo Kuti really was. In this program, we hear excerpts from the cast recording, and new Fela...
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King Sunny Ade: Hip Deep Portrait
Many fans in America first got hooked on Afropop through the landmark 1982-83 tour by Nigeria's King Sunny Ade and his African Beats: the propulsive polyrhythms of traditional drums mixed with sophisticated guitar arrangements and pedal steel. Topped by graceful choreography and the beaming presence of the "Chairman" himself. Totally intoxicating. In this program, we travel to Lagos to talk to people there who help us fill in the picture of King Sunny Ade's earlier career in the 1960s and...
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La Bamba: The Afro-Mexican Story
Much has been made of Mexico's rich blend of Spanish and indigenous customs, but recently, there's been a surge of interest in exploring Mexico's "Third Root": Africa. Slavery existed Mexico much like in the rest of the Americas, but for a variety of reasons, black history in Mexico has been silenced over the years. In this Hip Deep episode, we use music to uncover that history as travel around Mexico in search of Afro-Mexican sounds. First we'll visit the Costa Chica of Guerrero, where...
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New Guitar Voices: Vieux Farka Tourandeacute; and...
This program, originally aired in 2007 as "New Guitar Voices," features two amazing guitar innovators, new on the international scene that year. Vieux Farka Tourandeacute; had recently made his highly acclaimed debut in North America. Afropop.org Senior Editor, Banning Eyre wrote Vieux's self-titled debut album "both honors and extends the life work of his father, Ali Farka Toure." We hear highlights from one of Vieux's first New York City concert, an exclusive intimate live session, and an...
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Thomas Mapfumo: The Mugabe Years
Thomas Mapfumo: The Mugabe Years Part 2 of the story of Zimbabwe's most consequential singer and bandleader picks up at the dawn of the country's independence in 1980. The program focuses on key songs from Thomas Mapfumo's vast post-independence catalogue, beginning with his celebration of victory, and his warnings about "dissidents" out to destabilize a young nation struggling for unity. The 1988 song "Corruption" officially opens Mapfumo's rift with the regime of Robert Mugabe, turning a...
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Punk in Africa
When you think punk, a few locations tend to come to mind- New York, London, LA. But Durban? Jo'Burg? South Africa? In this program, we are taking a trip to a time and a place where punk had a very different meaning, exploring the music and the legacy of the mixed race bands that challenged apartheid. Little known to the outside world, and often overlooked even within South Africa, groups like National Wake, The Genuines, and The Kalahari Surfers used music to articulate their disgust with...
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Thomas Mapfumo: The War Years
This Hip Deep edition explores the legendary early career of Thomas Mapfumo, a singer, composer and bandleader whose 1970s music set the stage for the birth of a new nation, Zimbabwe. Using rare, unreleased recordings, and recollections by Mapfumo, key band members, and prominent Zimbabweans who lived through the liberation struggle, this program traces the development of "chimurenga" music. Central to the program, are research materials gathered by Mapfumo biographer Banning Eyre, and...
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New Baktun(es) - Latino Sounds for 2013
Brush up on your post Mayan apocalypse roots and join us for trip through the Latino music that will rock your world in the coming year. Co-Host Nadia Reiman (of NPR's Latino USA) pulls out her crystal ball (and industry contacts) to give us an exclusive sneak peek. We are going to hear from Cilantro Boombox, Empresarios, and Raul y Mexia- the sons of Los Tigres del Norte (really!)- and look ahead as we share songs from some of our absolute favorites who are rumored to putting out new tracks...
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An Afropop Journey to Central America, Part 1: The...
Central America, a narrow, mountainous, and largely impoverished stretch of land spanning seven countries, is a surprising and under-exposed Latin American musical hot zone. The region's bizarre and tumultuous history has led to a fascinating mix of cultural influences - Spanish conquistadors, British pirates, and American banana companies have at one time or another vied for power. Add to this mix presence of large indigenous enclaves, Anglo-Caribbean migrants, the Afro-Arawak Garifuna and...
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The Trans-National African Hip Hop Train
From the Bronx to Africa and beyond, hip-hop has proven since its creation to have the exceptional ability to transcend borders, resonating in communities and cultures far from it origins. The result has often been an intriguing social experiment in music consisting of imitation, reinterpretation and entirely new sounds. With our ever-increasing interconnected world, hip-hop has proven to be a music force that demands attention. Through a pastiche of various artists like Ghanaian-born,...
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The Soul of So Paulo: Rock, Rap and Future Music from...
In this episode, Afropop Worldwide travels to So Paulo, the 20-million person Brazilian megalopolis, to report on the explosive music scene stirring among the city's cosmopolitan youth. So Paulo is hardly the Brazil you see on the postcards - it's a city of endless high-rises that stretch on into the horizon, covered in colorful graffiti and snarled with traffic. But it's also a place where people, ideas, sounds, and technologies come together and get scrambled-up like nowhere else in South...
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Gospel Live: From South Africa to Alabama
In Bessemer Alabama, an extraordinary concert took place featuring two vocal traditions with African roots--South Africa's internationally celebrated Ladysmith Black Mambazo and from Alabama and Tennesee, four leading groups--The Four Eagle Gospel Singers, The Birmingham Sunlights, The Gospel Harmonettes, and The Fairfield Four. In Afropop Worldwide's exclusive concert recording, you will hear soul-stirring harmonies and innovative arrangements. For the finale, the South African and American...
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Hip Deep Angola 4: The Cuban Intervention in Angola
The 27 year-long Angolan civil war was also an international crossroads of the Cold War as well as a regional resource war, involving Cuba, the Soviet Union, Zaire, South Africa, and the U.S. When it was over, Namibia was independent, apartheid had fallen, Angola was a nation, and the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Through music, interviews, and historical radio clips, producer Ned Sublette, author of Cuba and Its Music, tells the story of Cuba's massive commitment in Africa, from the...
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Scenes for Adventurous Armchair Travelers
Dear winter bound listener: over the years, Afropop's intrepid reporters have brought you vivid audio scenes from Mali to Morocco to Tanzania to Zimbabwe to Cuba to Brazil to Ecuador and beyond (complemented by our gorgeous photo essays.) Let your imagination take you with us as we travel to some of the most exciting musical destinations anywhere.
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Afropop Worldwide's Stocking Stuffers 2012
[APWW #652] Join us for a festive Afropop Worldwide ritual, as Georges Collinet sits down with Banning Eyre to mull over the best new releases of 2012. We'll hear from K'Naan, Staff Benda Bilili, Sierra Leone's Refugee Allstars, Mokoomba, Ondatropica, Alex Cuba, The Very Best, Janka Nabay.... As usual, Georges and Banning will run out of time long before they run out of tunes. But a dense hour of great new music is guaranteed.
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Hip Deep Angola Part 3: A Spiritual Journey to...
To make this unprecedented program, producer Ned Sublette traveled to Mbanza-Kongo, the ancient seat of the Kongo empire located in present-day northern Angola, where he spoke to Dr. Brbaro Martnez Ruiz, professor of art and art history at Stanford. We'll learn about the simbi, the spirits that Martnez Ruiz describes as "the multiple power of god"; hear Antonio Madiata play the lungoyi-ngoyi, the two-stringed viola of the Kongo court; attend a session of the lumbu, the traditional tribunal...
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LAMC 2012!
In the latest in our annual pilgrimage to New York City for the Latin Alternative Music Conference we meet artists from all over Latin America who make their marks as creating genre bending mash ups using local roots and international sounds. Highlights include 3ballMTY doing Tribal Guarachero - a type of increasingly popular club music from Monterrey, Mexico; Chilean Ana Tijoux and her politically-heavy hip-hop; Las Acevedo, a sleeper hit of the 2012 LAMC who does simple, soft acoustic...
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The Story of Bembeya Jazz
Guinea's legendary dance band, Bembeya Jazz, are a pillar of modern West African history. Begun in 1961 in the flush of Guinea's independence and Sekou Toure's maverick presidency, the band played 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 recent solo work by Sekou Diabate. In the current age of hip hop and digital production that is helping to supplant dance bands...
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Crate-Diggers and Remixers
A vast, new world of DJs, record collectors and producers are going to far reaches of the Earth to find forgotten records and new styles of music. Their discoveries are then brought back home, remixed, repackaged and re-released to be heard by an entirely new audience. We speak to some globetrotting DJ and producers Chief Boima and Geko Jones to hear about their experiences, the music they've discovered and how they go about remixing some of these styles in order to create a new and...
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Afro-Montreal and the Progress of Love
"AFRO-MONTREAL AND THE PROGRESS OF LOVE" [APWW PGM #650] This double-header explores two little-known Afropop stories. First, producer Banning Eyre visits Montreal during the 26-year-old Nuits dAfrique festival and meets great world musicians whove made that northern city home, including Zal Sissoko (Senegal), Syncop (Algeria and more), and Romel Ribiero (Brazil). Then, we preview a unique art exhibit, The Progress of Love, a collaboration between museums in the US and Nigeria. Well...
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Egypt 3: Cairo Underground
Egypt's revolution has brought much to light, including a lot of music that's been percolating in hidden corners there, largely ignored by nearly all broadcast and print media. It turns out a musical revolution has been going on in Egypt well before the political uprisings of 2011. On this program, guided by historian and musician Mark LeVine, we hear music that either was or still is "underground." We meet Cairo rock musicians from the band Wust Al Balad, and also from widely stigmatized...
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Oumou, Abdel, Miguel - Live on Afropop Worldwide!
Afropoppers have come to be on a first name basis with many of the superstars we've introduced you to over the years. The first sound out of their mouths is instantly recognizable--much like Stevie, Aretha, Mick, Louis, Paul, Bonnie. We'll enjoy some of Afropop Worldwide's finest live recordings of Youssou N'Dour, Baaba Maal, Oumou Sangare, Thomas Mapfumo, and Khaled plus some under-recognized artists we've pulled from our concert recording archive.
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Hip Deep Angola: Music and Nation in Angola
We explore the role music played in the creation of a uniquely Angolan consciousness as the country struggled toward independence in the 1960s and '70s after centuries of colonialism. Our guides will be producer Ned Sublette, on the ground in Angola, and Dr. Marissa Moorman, historian of southern Africa, and author ofIntonations: A Social History of Music in Luanda, Angola from 1945 to Recent Times. We'll hear the pathbreaking group Ngola Ritmos, who dared sing songs in Kimbundu publicly...
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Nollywood: Nigeria's Mirror
Nollywood: Nigeria's Mirror takes us to Nollywood, the third largest film industry in the world. Scholars Jonathan Haynes and Onookome Okome serve as guides as we negotiate the intricacies and eccentricities of Nollyood's past and digital future. Nollywood films dramatize key tensions in contemporary Nigerian life, such as the relationship between tradition and cosmopolitanism. Distributed through pirate DVD networks across Africa, the Caribbean and the Diaspora at large, Nollywood films are...
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The Immortal 1970s
The 1970s was a golden age for pop music around the world, and certainly in Africa. A recent flurry of re-releases have for the first time made some of this music available again. Georges plays songs from some of his favorites--including artists and styles unknown by most Afropop fans including the Green Arrows, Ebo Taylor, Sorry Bamba, Balla and Ses Balladins and others.
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Afro-Dominicana: Music from the Other Dominican Republic
In the 1930s, infamous Dominican dictator Rafael Truillo ordered the burning of the country's palos drums, hoping to erase the powerful vestiges of African culture in the Dominican Republic. Luckily for us, the breakneck, trance-inducing sound of palos still reverberates at Afro-syncretic religious parties across the island nation almost a century later. This week, Afropop revisits the home of styles such as merengue and bachata, but this time we'll be looking towards the most deeply African...
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Rio 2: Samba Strikes Back
Part two of our Hip-Deep series on the music of Rio de Janeiro picks up the samba story where we left off in the 1960s, tracing the rhythm as it transforms and re-appears throughout the many popular music forms that developed in Rio in the later 20th century. Scholar Frederick Moehn, author of a book about samba and pop music titled Contemporary Carioca, shows us how samba's shadow re-appears in the youth music of MPB-stars Pedro Luis and Marcos Suzano, and how a samba revival led by young...
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Rio 1: Samba at the Dawn of Modern Brazil
In Part One of our 2012 Hip Deep Brazil series, we travel back in time to Rio De Janeiro in early 20th century to explore the birth of Brazil's most iconic sound: samba. Beginning with the arrival of poor nordestinos in the city after the end of slavery in 1888, we follow the exploits of the early sambistas as they forged the genre that would come to represent the nation. Brazilian scholar Carlos Sandroni shows us how Afro-Brazilian religious music and popular styles like the modinha...
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Afropop Summer Serenade
Time to kick back and enjoy a variety of summer tunes from around the globe!
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Getting Down in the Guyanas
We visit one of the world's last untamed natural and musical wildernesses: The Guyanas. Riding along bumpy jungle roads and in dug-out canoes, Afropop producer Marlon Bishop travels from Suriname to French Guiana for the Transamazoniennes Festival, located in the remote border town of Saint-Laurent-Du-Maroni. We enjoy the region's fascinating cultural stew, where French Creole, maroon, Amerindian, Hindu, Javanese, and Dutch elements all mingle together on the outer fringes of the Amazon and...
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Summer Concerts Preview 2012
Heads up! The summer Afropop concert season is right around the corner. This is the most active season of the year for touring African, Caribbean and Latin artists. At press time, several festivals have not announced their line-ups but we do know that Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo, Amadou and Mariam, Johnny Clegg, Debo Band, Jimmy Cliff, Celso Pia, Omar Souleyman, are touring. This just may inspire a road trip!
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Follow the Drum - Fuji, Mbalax, Samba, Rumba
We tune up our ears to some of the Africa's great drumming voices--fuji and juju in Nigeria, sabar in Senegal--and to the travels of the drum to the Americas--samba in Brazil, rumba in Cuba, salsa in Puerto Rico and more. This show takes us into the polyrhythmic, multiple voices of live performances and into the homes of some of the world's greatest percussionists.
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Mexico Rock City: Vive Latino Festival 2012
Every year in Mexico City, tens of thousands of music fans flock to Vive Latino, one of Latin America's biggest music festivals. Cutting edge artists from across the Americas and beyond perform on four massive stages, showcasing some of the most exciting new music being made anywhere today. For the first time, Afropop Worldwide makes a pilgrimage to the biggest city in the Western Hemisphere to bring listeners a taste of the festival. We experience local legends Cafe Tacvba as they perform...
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Mali: A History in Music
From the ancient time of hunters to the rise of the 13th century Empire of Mali, from the coming of Islam to the era of French colonialism, from the celebration of Independence in 1960 to the rise of Malian music stars to the world stage--Mali is unique among all the nations of Africa. On the 50th anniversary of Malian independence, this program takes a step back to look at the sweep of its history. There are reasons why this landlocked region of West Africa has been the cradle for so many...
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The Hip Hop Generation in Africa: Ghana and Ivory Coast
We explore the current pop music of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, two countries where elements of hip-hop and international pop music have grafted themselves onto local styles to create whole new genres-ones robust enough to not only take over the local youth culture but also spread beyond their borders. In Ghana, hip-life--a synthesis of hip-hop and highlife--dukes it out with gospel music on the airwaves. In Cote d'Ivoire, music has blossomed despite a stubborn political crisis. The...
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Egypt 5: Revolution Songs
Afropop's 5-part, Hip Deep series on Egypt concludes with a look back at the songs that fueled the Tahrir Square uprising in 2011, and ahead at where music is headed in post-revolutionary Egypt. We meet Dylanesque Tahrir Square troubadour Ramy Essam, Egyptian pop legend Mohamed Mounir, silenced political singer Azza Balba who rediscovered her art in the midst of revolution, and Karim Rush of Egypt's leading hip hop group Arabian Knightz. We hear new work from emerging artists: Eskenderella,...
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Spring Dance Party 2012
Time to shake it up to kuduro from Angola, soukous from Congo, Retro- chicha from Peru, techno brega from Brazil, retro-funk from Nigeria, and lots of genre bending sounds. Featured artist include Titica, Black Bazar, Bonga, Chicha Libre, Josandeacute; Conde, Amadou and Mariam, the Funkees.
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Timbuktu, Dakar, Fes Flight Plan
Attention all frequent flyers, we are heading to some of our favorite festivals! We will hit up the Ebony Festival in Dakar, the Sacred World Music Festival in Fes Morocco, and the Festival in the Desert in Timbuktu to hear highlights from these inspired extravaganzas.
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Scenes from Mali and Senegal
Two favorite Afropop destinations are Mali and Senegal. We have enjoyed the active club scene in Senegal and marveled at the powerhouse singing of Thione Seck and other local stars. We have ventured to Timbuktu in northern Mali for the internationally renowned Festival in the Desert. And in the capital, Bamako, we've hung out with the internationally celebrated pioneers of roots pop such as Habib Koite and Oumou Sangare. On today's program, armchair travelers, come with us to some of our...
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A (Jazzy) Visit to Barranquilla, Colombia
We check in at the fifteenth annual Barranquijazz Festival in Barranquilla, Colombia, a very hip and international Latin jazz festival with a decided Caribbean flavor. We'll talk to some of the artists featured in the festival and hear new recordings by them: from Cuba, young piano superstar Harold Lpez-Nussa; from Brazil, grandmaster pianist Joo Donato; from Venezuela, drummer Alberto Naranjo; from Spain, flamenco superstar Diego El Cigala; and from Noo Yawk, the one and only Eddie...
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21st Century Troubadours
On this show we take a look at the 21st Century Troubadours, musicians that tour the world tirelessly. We catch some of them in NY for exclusive interviews, like the charismatic singer-songwriter Vusi Mahlasela, young singer-guitarist Joan Soriano--the Duke of Bachata--from the Dominican Republic, and the three amazing musicians who are touring North America with the concert "Acoustic Africa": Habib Koite, Afel Bocoum and Oliver Mtukudzi. On top of that, we'll hear songs of Johnny Clegg and...
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globalFEST 2012!
Every year in the dead of winter, the much anticipated world music extravaganza globalFEST lights up New York City. This year the line-up was especially tantalizing. We'll hear the samba sensation Joo Nogueira from Rio, conscious rapper Bandeacute;lO from Haiti, Afro-rappers SMOD featuring Sam, son of Mali's Amadou and Mariam, the M.A.K.U. Soundsystem of Colombia, the brassy Debo Band channeling 1970's Addis Ababa, and others.
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Carnival Jump Around
It is carnival time all across the Caribbean and South America (and do not forget New Orleans.) We will jump around to some of our favorite carnival scenes in Curacao, Haiti, Brazil and Martinique. The language might be Dutch, Creole, Portuguese or French but the message is the same: time to party! Armchair Travelers--do not let Ash Wednesday come and go without enjoying this proven antidote to the winter blues.
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Egypt 1: Cairo Soundscape
Hip Deep's Egypt program series kicks off with a sonic tour of Cairo from the chatter of car horns on jam-packed streets to the lulling waters of the Nile. We start with a focus on the city's spiritual life, the persistent call to prayer broadcast from mosques city wide, koranic recitation, Coptic hymns sung in ancient churches, and a Zar healing ritual in a working class Cairo neighborhood. This program introduces the themes and central characters for this unique Afropop program series,...
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A Tribute To Cesaria Evora
The beloved, Grammy Award winning singer Cesaria Evora from Cape Verde passed away late last year at the age of 70. We celebrate Cesaria's life and art with an encore of our 1995 recording of her magnificent New York City debut at the Bottom Line. Cesaria, known as the "Queen of the morna" is backed by her classy group--piano, acoustic bass guitar, cavaquinho and lead acoustic guitar. As a special bonus, two accomplished protandeacute;gandeacute;s of Cesaria's--Fantcha and Mayra Andrade--pay...
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The Mixtape Special
Riffing off our popular online mixtape series, Afropop culls some of the best tracks from these free digital mixes to put a spotlight on some of the best new music dropping from Africa and beyond. The eclectic array of colorful sounds showcases something for every Afropop listener from 8 to 80 including Malian blues, Latin electronic mash-ups, Afro-Peruvian rhythms, hip-hop, neo-cumbia, and whole lot more.
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Brazilian Soul
Explores the rich period in the 1970s when soul flourished in Brazil. Co-hosted and co-produced by author Christopher Dunn as part of Afropop Worldwide's Hip Deep series.
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Caribbean Christmas
How do they celebrate the holidays in Trinidad? Venezuela? Nigeria? South Africa? We'll find and enjoy the music and stories from these countries and more. Wear your hippest holiday gear.
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Stocking Stuffers (2011)
Georges Collinet and Banning Eyre take a lightning tour through the best new music from Africa and the African Diaspora in 2011. Classic sounds from Orchestra Polyrhythmo, Hakim, Tinariwen, Seun Kuti and Vusi Mahlasela. Edgier new sounds from Blitz the Ambassador, Buraka Som Sistema and Baloji. New Latin music from Los Rakas, Daniela Mercury, Aurelio Martinez and much more.
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Tales from the Latin Alternative Music Conference in New...
Every year, the hippest new sounds from South of the border invade New York City for the Latin Alternative Music conference, and every year, Afropop is here to tell you about it. Latin Alternative is psychedelic cumbia, Chilean hip-hop, Mexican indie-rock, Panamanian dancehall, and just about anything that fails to fit into the typical Latin pop formats. The conference brings acts large and small from around the Americas to perform, from well known-favorites such as Ozomatli, to promising...
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Egypt 2: Cairo - Hollywood of the Middle East
By the mid 20th century, Cairo had become the unrivaled center for music and film production in the Middle East. Producers, writers, composers, actors, musicians, star singers, and creators of every stripe flocked here to take part in the city's fervent, international, progressive artistic milieu. This was the heyday of the diva Umm Kulthum, Mohamed Abdel Wahab, and the beloved singer and composer Abdel Halim Hafez. But events of the 50s and 60s signaled an inward turn for Egypt and Cairo....
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Roots Reinvented in Mali and Egypt
Grammy nominated ngoni virtuoso Bassekou Kouyate and his 8 piece band Ngoni Ba wowed the crowd recently at Lincoln Center. Ngoni Ba re-wired the ancient ngoni to create a dense, 21st century sound. We'll hear the concert and talk with Bassekou about hunters, his precocious son, and his future plans. We hear a very different take on the ngoni from Sidi Tourandeacute; who made his U.S. debut recently at BAM in Brooklyn. Side Tourandeacute; also has the honor of being the first artist here from...
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Sonores Mayores - Beny Morandeacute; and Ismael Rivera
Beny More and Ismael Rivera are national heroes in their home countries, Cuba and Puerto Rico respectively. They were soneros of the highest order, masters of the art of improvised singing. We'll hear some of the songs that made them famous and follow their development as artists.
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Aurelio, Badian, Damily, and the Kid From Timbuktu
This guitar-focused program presents a series of mostly acoustic sessions with Garifuna star Aurelio Martinez, griot guitar master Aboubacar "Badian" Diabate, Malagasy tsapika phenom Damily, and Abdramane Toure, the 17-year-old guitarist for Khaira Arby of Timbuktu. These four uniquely talented players talk about their careers, their learning process, and their highly personal guitar styles. Along the way we catch up with a rich selection of beautifully guitar-filigreed music, from Honduran...
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Africa in East Asia: From Shanghai Jazz to Tokyo...
In the 20th century, music and culture from the African Diaspora traveled all over the world.... and East Asia is no exception. In this Hip Deep episode, Afropop explores the different ways that Black music has influenced culture and society in places like China, Japan, Korea and Thailand. China scholar Andrew Jones takes us into the decadent underworld of 1930s Shanghai, where a hybrid form of jazz that mixed African-American sounds with traditional Chinese melodies challenged notions of...
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The Golden Age of Cuban Music
On January 8, 1959, Fidel Castro and his ragtag army marched into Havana and proclaimed victory in the Cuban revolution. Much of the world knew Cuba primarily from its 1930 megahit "El Manicero" ("The Peanut Vendor") and from the mambo craze of the 1950's. After Castro came to power, the economic, political and cultural doors between Cuba and the U.S. would soon be shut. In this broadcast, we savor sounds from the pre-Revolutionary golden age of Cuban music that sets the scene for the...
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Journeys with the Oud
The oud is the ancestor of many modern string instruments, including the lute and the guitar. Its origins may lie in Persia or Mesopotamia, but now, it is played all over the world, used in spiritual and secular music, in classical, pop, and jazz settings. In this program, we hear oud music from Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Morocco, Iraq, and elsewhere, exploring the instrument's history, lore, and rich variety of styles and sounds. We talk with oud virtuoso Simon Shaheen, and innovator...
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Blues Reflections
On Blues Reflections we dive into a celebration of the blues--for some, the essence of the American experience and for others a link back into a lost history in Africa. We'll hear the reflections of Bo Diddley, Robert Plant, Corey Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Lobi Traore, Amadou of Amadou and Mariam and enjoy their music.
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The Music of Black Peru: Cultural Identity in the Black...
The "Black Pacific" is a term coined by our guide, ethnomusicologist Heidi Carolyn Feldman. She describes the circumstance of African descendants displaced not only from their ancestral homes in Africa, but also from the Atlantic coast nations where their enslaved ancestors were originally brought. This Hip Deep edition explores the sonically vibrant realm of Afro-Peruvian music, a young genre identification that has flourished since the 1950s and has now produced artists of international...
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Afropop Worldwide Goes To Dakar, Senegal For The Third...
This is only the third time since independence that such an ambitious, pan-African, pan-Diaspora, multi-disciplinary extravaganza has been mounted. The first was in Dakar in 1966. The second was in Lagos in 1977 for the legendary FESTAC. And now, it's back to Dakar for the World Black Arts Festival. We'll hear the stars on opening night--Youssou, Baaba, Ismael Lo, Angelique, the Mahotella Queens. We'll catch the awesome Haitian rock and roller Wyclef Jean. The kids loved Wyclef and he...
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Afropop Soundsystem 5: Neo-Cumbia Sounds From Colombia
Around Latin America, Colombia is known as the heartland of cumbia, one of the most-listened-to styles in the Americas. But in Colombia itself, cumbia's popularity came and went in the 60s and 70s. Until now. A new generation of young Colombians are digging into Afro-Colombian roots music as a rich source for modern musical fusions. We speak with some of the hottest young Colombian artists in this movement today, including Sistema Solar, Bomba Estereo, Choc Quib Town, and many more. Plus, we...
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The Cumbia Diaspora: From Colombia to the World
Move over salsa and merengue - cumbia is the most popular music in Latin America. Today, cumbia is played from the borderlands of Texas down the spine of the Andes to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. In this Hip Deep edition, we find out how cumbia left Colombia in the 60s and 70s and traveled to other countries. Everywhere it went, it transformed itself, adapting to its new environment. In Peru, it mixed with psychedelic guitar effects and Andean sounds to become chicha. In Argentina, it became...
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Reimagining Jazz in Africa: Cape Town Cosmopolitans and...
It's no secret that the distant roots of American jazz lay in Africa. But how did Afro-America's revolutionary sound reshape African music? On this Hip Deep edition, we examine how African artists found a modern, global voice using jazz as inspiration. Author Carol Muller tells the story of Abdullah Ibrahim, whose prolific career was launched with "Duke Ellington Presents the Dollar Brand Trio" followed by "Anatomy of a South African Village Suite." We dig into the political significance of...
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Fula in the House
As they led their livestock herds through West Africa in search of greener pastures, the Fulbhe--also Fula, Fulani, or Peul--spread a powerful music culture as well. Fluttering bluesy flutes, keening vocal melodies and bubbling percussion rhythms are strong elements in Fulani music, but the sounds are as varied as the deserts, forests, mountains, and riverside towns the Fulbhe have made their homes. On this program, we explore Fulbhe music from Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and elsewhere,...
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Africa In America 2010-11
We hear stateside African hip hop from Blitz the Ambassador, RandB gone Ethiopian from Debo Band and Tommy T, Afropop meets indie rock from San Francisco's Aphrodesia, and the latest Mande rock from Toubab Krewe of Ashville, North Carolina. Also featured, Max Wild's bubbling Zimbabwe boogie out of New York City. Plus new work by African artists resident in the US, including Thomas Mapfumo (Zimbabwe), Abdoulaye Alhassane Toure (Niger), Malika Zara (Morocco), and Razia (Madagascar).
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Afropop Soundsystem 3: Nu-Whirled Music
Afropop Worldwide takes us into the world of the globalistas, a far-flung grouping of polyglot hipsters, bass freaks, and digital beatsmiths who rally around the sounds of the 21st century dancefloor - rhythms such as Angolan kuduro, Brazilian funk carioca, reggaeton and dancehall, Indian bhangra and Argentine electro-cumbia. Ethnomusicologist/DJ/Blogger/Writer Wayne Marshall calls this music World Music 2.0, highlighting how digital production technology and the internet has created new,...
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Midwest Electric: The Story of Chicago House and Detroit...
It's been over thirty years since house and techno music exploded out of South Side Chicago and inner-city Detroit, and most Americans still don't know their dance music history. In 1977 a DJ named Frankie Knuckles moved to Chicago to spin and remix disco records at an underground club called The Warehouse. Out of a fringe subculture that formed there - gay and African-American - house music would emerge to become one the biggest club music genres in the world. Meanwhile, young black...
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Summer Concert Previews 2011
Time to crank it up for what is shaping up to be a fantastic summer season of touring Afropop artists! You'll hear Baloji from Congo/Belgium, Freshly Ground from South Africa, Novalima from Peru, Choc Quib Town from Colombia, Yemen Blues from Israel, Tiken Jah Fakoly, Aurelio Martinez from Honduras, Sierra Maestra from Cuba, Seun Kuti from Nigeria, Hakim from Egypt and many others. These concerts are a great excuse for making a trek to New York City for Central Park SummerStage, Celebrate...
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Treasures of Benin
Nestled between Ghana, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Nigeria, Benin is a rich sliver of West Africa too often overlooked. This program puts Afropop's spotlight on Benin for the first time, starting with the country's favorite daughter. International star Angelique Kidjo looks back on her musical education in the Benin capital, Cotonou, as she walks us through the songs on her new album Oyo, which spans covers of songs by James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Miriam Makeba, and Benin's own Bella Bellow....
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Discover and Record: The Field Recordings of Hugh Tracey
In this Hip Deep edition, Afropop producer Wills Glasspiegel heads to South Africa to reveal the story of the inimitable Hugh Tracey, a field recordist born at the turn of the 20th century in England. A wayward youth, Tracey found himself in Africa in the 1920s where he became fascinated with music from Zimbabwe. Tracey became a pioneer field recordist, making over 250 LPs of traditional African music for the Gallo label in South Africa. Like John and Alan Lomax in the US, Tracey was...
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Live Latin Extravaganza!
Time to hit the dance floor and earn some frequent flier miles as well as we jet between three continents to enjoy some of Afropop Worldwide's favorite recordings of Latin stars--starting in London for Colombia's Joe Arroyo at the Empire Ballroom in London to Quito, Ecuador where Paulina Tamayo sings passionate love songs at a large open-air ampitheater to Havana where timba stars Los Van Van get the dance floor busy to New York where rumba maestros, Los Muequitos de Matanzas, play their...
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Reimagining Africa: From Popular Swing to the Jazz...
Everyone knows jazz: blues, improvisation, syncopated rhythm, all firmly rooted in Africa via Congo Square in New Orleans. But how have American jazz masters addressed the African ancestry of their music? On this Hip Deep edition, jazz historian Lewis Porter tells the early story of finding the African spirit in Duke Ellington's "Jungle Nights In Harlem" and exotic Africana in the era of Jim Crow. Author Ingrid Monson sheds light on how innovators like Max Roach and Art Blakey channeled...
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Berber Rising II
The long awaited follow-up to Afropop's popular 2002 program "Berber Rising" brings listeners up to date on music being made by the original inhabitants of North Africa, the Imazighen, or Berber. The program will include interviews and music from Takfarinas, Malika Zarra, Idir, Amazight, Fatima Tabaamrant, Iness Mezel, Najat Atabou and more. We'll take the pulse of the Berber village, the push for rights and recognition in Morocco and Algeria, and the global Amazigh community at a moment of...
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Best of Womex 2000-2010, part 2
Part 2 of our WOMEX extravaganza opens with one of our top favorites from WOMEX 2010 in Copenhagen--tsapika guitar virtuoso Damily from Madagascar. We carry on with a giant of Congolese music, Papa Wemba, Malian star Fatoumata Diawara, Brazilian Chula Samba de Sao Braz and others. In addition, we continue visiting with the artists and hear special acoustic performances off-stage.
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Muslim World Music Day
On April 12, 2011, a virtual community around the world, spearheaded by the Archive of Contemporary Music in New York (ARC), will attempt to catalogue all known recordings of music inspired by or connected with Islam. This program samples the results from a 17-piece, all Muslim, 1950s jazz band in Chicago, to Sufi chants in sacred ceremonies, Senegalese superstar Youssou N'Dour, ecstatic instrumental performances of Arab art music, and Muslim rap. We also hear from ARC founder Bob George and...
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Off the Beaten Path
For this show we head off the beaten path to bring you the music of Ghana, Martinique, Morocco, Ethiopia, Suriname, Las Vegas and beyond! Artists featured include Aster Aweke, Sabah Fakhri, Mohamed Mournir and more.
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The Fertile Crescent: Haiti, Cuba and Louisiana
In 1809, the population of New Orleans doubled almost overnight because of French-speaking refugees from Cuba. You read that right-- French-speaking refugees from Cuba-- part of a wave of music and culture that emigrated from east to west in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. We'll look at the distinct African roots of these three regions, and compare what their musics sound like today. In this Hip Deep edition of Afropop Worldwide, our colleague Ned Sublette, author of "Cuba and Its Music:...
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Umm Kulthum: The Voice of Egypt
Umm Kulthum has been called the greatest singer in the Arabic speaking world in the 20th century. Born in 1904 the humble daughter of an Egyptian village imam, she went on to become a glamorous Cairo celebrity in her 20s, and soon after that, a cultural icon whose monthly live radio broadcasts brought much of Egypt to a standstill. She turned high poetry into popular culture. She extended musical forms with her virtuoso, extended vocal improvisations. Combining historical, religious,...
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Sudan: A Musical History
In advance of the coming fateful secession vote after decades of civil war, Afropop Worldwide gives you some historical perspective in this Hip Deep edition. Sudan presents a uniquely complex of Afro-Arab history and culture, and this program tells the country's story through music. A vibrant tradition of pan-Sudanese music was flowering in 1989 when an oppressive, Islamist government came to power. Many major artists then left the country, creating a far flung musical diaspora. Others--such...
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Afropop Soundsystem
Afropop Soundsystem has one eye on Africa and one on the world. We dig deep into the African digital domain to uncover songs and artists little known across the Atlantic. We plunge into sexy kuduro music from Angola; bubu music from Sierra Leone, jagwa from Tanzania as well as the latest sensations in the kwaito scene in South Africa and the hyperactive ndombolo sounds from Kinshasa. Get ready to enjoy some of the continent's choice hot spots--from Lagos to Dar Es Salaam. Guided by deejay...
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Seize the Dance: The BaAka of Central Africa
A new season of Hip Deep kicks off with a remarkable journey among the forest people of the Central African Republic. The polyphonic, hocketing vocal style of this region's forest peoples ("pygmies") is one of the most singularly beautiful musical expressions in Africa, one that has entranced outsiders since the time of the pharaohs. Ethnomusicologist Michelle Kisliuk has spent nearly 25 years immersing herself in this music, and wrote a landmark book about the lives and music of the BaAka...
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Afropop Goes to Womex 2010 Part 2!
Continuing our coverage of WOMEX 2010 in Copenhagen, we enjoy concert recordings, live studio sessions and interviews with fantastic artists we already know and love such as Papa Wemba and Dobet Gnahorandeacute; as well as artists we've never met including Nathalie Natiembandeacute;, Fatoumate Diawara and the winner of the prestigious annual WOMEX award, Danyl Waro from La Randeacute;union. Plus we'll pick tracks from some of the choice choice 100+ CDs we bring home.
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Stocking Stuffers 2010
Georges Collinet and Banning Eyre work their way through a formidable stack of the best new CD releases of 2010. King Sunny Ade, Angelique Kidjo, Konono No 1, The Spanish Harlem Ochestra, Joan Soriano, Lobi Traore, Bassekou Kouyate, Johnny Clegg, AfroCubism... It's a loooong list. Plenty of gift ideas for the music lovers in your life.
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AFROPOP GOES TO WOMEX 2010!
Every year a unique gathering of some 3,000 delegates from around the world converge at WOMEX for four non-stop days and nights of music from around the world. Your trusty Afropop guides will be amongst them and bring back live concert recordings, intimate studio sessions and interviews with the likes of Oudaden from Morocco led by the soaring voice of Abdellah el Fouah, Damily bringing his rollicking tsapiky from southern Madagascar, Samba Chula de So Brazil playing a primordial version of...
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Chaba Fadela and Cheb Sahraoul Live
Every once in awhile we like to dig into the Afropop archive of our exclusive live recordings and play one of our favorites for you. This is one, featuring the rai singing stars Chaba Fadela and Cheb Sahraoui live at SOB's in New York City in the early 1990's. The singing is out of this world, the North Africans in the crowd are ecstatic and the band is smoking.
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The Voice of the Leopard
Part 2 of our special 3 part series celebrating Nigeria's 50th anniversary of independence. The leopard cult of ekpe in Calabar, in present-day Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon, has one of the most unique performance traditions in all of Africa--a complex theatrical tradition, referred to in calabar English as "play," which encompasses a cycle of sacred dramas that takes many years to execute. The music of this society is almost completely unknown outside the region, because it was not...
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Nigeria Celebrates 50 Years of Independence!
This is the first of a three part series celebrating Nigeria's 50th anniversary of independence this November. Nigeria celebrates the 50th anniversary of independence from the British this month and Afropop Worldwide celebrates Nigeria's rich musical heritage--juju, afrobeat, apala, highlife, fuji as well as many many distinctive traditional music cultures. We'll hear Afropop's recordings of and interviews with the greats--Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey, juju pioneer I.K. Dairo, fuji...
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Samba, Forro, Candomble, Tropicalia-The Sounds of...
There's a lot of fantastic music being made by Brazilian artists living in the U.S. They entertain an estimated 1.5 million Brazilian immigrants here as well as a growing number of other fans. And Brazilian music is enjoying a resurgence here--on Mazda commercials, endless bossa nova soundtracks played in upscale restaurants; inter-cultural collaborations and so on. We'll hear many of the best: Jorge Alabe, the godfather of many samba schools; Bebel Gilberto, daughter of bossa pioneer Joao...
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Beneath the Music: An African History of Bass
This week, Afropop celebrates one of the true unsung heroes of African music: the bass. Join us as we slap, pop, and thump our way across the African Diaspora with our ears tuned to those fat sounds beneath the music and the funky men who make them. Our tour of the global low-end will bring us to some of Africa's bassiest nations - Cameroon, Congo, Zimbabwe and South Africa - as we look at how local bass innovators combined international and traditional influences to forge new ways of...
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Berber Rising
Before Arabs ever set foot in North Africa, the majority population was Berber. Berber musicians today provide a rich but often overlooked contribution to the musical landscapes in countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Niger, and Mali. This program spotlights some leading contemporary Berber artists including Takfarinas and Tayfa, and legends like Matoub Lounes and others in the international Berber Diaspora such as Houssaine Kili. The Berber story is one of intrigue, controversy, and...
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Unearthed Treasures
Continuing our musical treasures theme, we unearth some gems--Senegal's Royal Band of Thies, classic King Sunny Ade from Lagos, Konimo from Ghana, sublime recordings by Hugh Tracey nearly 50 years ago of villagers in Mozambique, plus a song from the same era by Edith Pinder and accompanied by her beloved brother Joseph Spence in the Bahamas, Banjo Ikey Robinson and his Bull Fiddle Band, tsapika music from Madagascar from one of the first commercial recordings in 1999, and others.
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The Prehistory of New Orleans: Treasures from the Hogan
To mark the 5th anniversary of the Katrina disaster, we go way way back to honor New Orleans as the unique American treasure it is. This program tells the story of how jazz emerged in the context of all the other African American musics that proliferated in late 19th and early 20th century New Orleans: blues, ragtime, Mardi Gras Indian music, vaudeville and minstrelsy, spiritual church music, and more. With our guides Bruce Boyd Raeburn and Lynn Abbott, we'll comb through a vast world of...
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Afropop Vignettes: Guitar Heroes
The guitar is at the center of so many Afropop styles we love. And it's still going strong even in the age of hip hop in African youth culture. In this program we'll hear from some well known guitar heroes--Djelimady Tounkara from Mali, Jaojoby from Madagascar, Dr. Nico and Diblo Dibala from Congo and others--as well as some less well known but superb artists such as Louis Mlanga from South Africa, Colbert (long lost relative) from Madagascar, and others.
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Musiques Metisses Festival in France
This is an Afropop lover's dream come true--on three stages in four days we caught Bembeya Jazz, King Sunny Adandeacute;, Lokua Kanza, Tinawaren, Amadou and Mariam, Habib Koite, Hasna el Becharia, the Gangbe Brass Band, D'Gary, Cesaria Evora, Abdel Gadir Salim, and more! Enjoy these gorgeous live recordings and visits with the musicians.
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The Mandandeacute; Diaspora In New York City, Part 2
In the second part of Afropop's exploration of New York's Mandandeacute; community, we look at the lives Mandandeacute; artists have made for themselves in America. This program deals with the urge to escape community, to experience American life and music. We also explore the strains of being undocumented and unable to travel. We'll hear more from ethnomusicologist Ryan Skinner, and focus on music by Balla Kouyate, Balla Tounkara, The Mandingo Ambassadors, Fula Flute, Brewed by Noon,...
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The Mandandeacute; Diaspora In New York CIty, Part 1
New York's Mandandeacute; community has blossomed over the past 20 years. The story that begins with the rise of the king Sunjata Keita in 13th Century Mali now extends to music-filled social gatherings among West African diplomats and businessmen in the Bronx and Harlem, not to mention electro-griots, and of course, fusion! Musicians like Mamadou Diabate, Papa Suso and Yacouba Sissoko (all kora players), Famoro Diabate and Bala Kouyate (balafon players), and the golden-throated griot...
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The Other Afro-Latino - Hidden Sounds from Ecuador,...
Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian musical giants have long enjoyed the spotlight, yet throughout Latin America there are other black enclaves producing some of the New World's most vibrant music. Their stories have gone untold for far too long. In this episode, Afropop explores these lost sounds, starting in an Ecuadorian desert valley where African and Andean traditions have mixed seamlessly into fiery dance music. Then we're off to mangrove-studded Esmeraldas to search out the last marimba...
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Afropop All Stars--Live!!
Sit back--or get up--and enjoy this fabulous hit parade of Afropop stars recorded live by Afropop Worldwide. South Africa's joyful Mahotella Queens (inductees into the Afropop Hall of Fame) performing at SOB's in New York open the show, followed by their one and only partner, the "groaner" Mahlathini (RIP). Next is an exquisite, mbira heavy set by the Lion of Zimbabwe, Thomas Mapfumo, Grammy Award winner Youssou N'Dour in a powerful set including his hit, "Set," a smoldering set by Khaled at...
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Afropop Soundsystem, Part 4: Soundsystem Goes to South...
We head to Jozi (Johannesburg) to meet cutting edge South African artists that don't usually get recognized internationally. We check out the story of Shangaan music in an exclusive interview with producer Nozinja in his Soweto studio. We'll hear his latest hits and check in with Foster, the king of Shangaan electro gospel. It's on to meet upstart rappers Dirty Parafin at the Nike shop in the northern suburb Mellville. He has been sampling lately from late 80s / 90s SA bubblegum...
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Four Generations of Congolese Music
Congo has always played an oversize role in entertaining dance lovers on the continent and beyond--Franco, Tabu Ley, Doctor Nico, Zaiko Langa Langa, Papa Wemba, Pepe Kalle, and others. We start in pre-independence Congo with the beloved "Papa" Wendo Kolossoy (RIP), the grandfather of rumba, as he talks with us at his home in Kinshasa. We talk to the man and listen in on a recording session. After sitting out most of the 3-decade Mobutu era, Wendo put together a band of veterans with stories...
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World Cup South Africa: South Africans Remember the...
In part 2 of our marking of South Africa hosting the World Cup, we get some perspective as we celebrate one of most exhilarating events of the 20th Century, the peaceful transition from the evil system of apartheid to a democratic, non-racial country. The extraordinary wisdom and forgiveness of Nelson Mandela as he led South Africa to freedom is a miracle that we should not forget. The music of this era is a vivid reflection of the emotions and hopes of the moment. We will hear conversations...
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Cooking with Georges in Cape Town
Cape Town is one of the most beautiful cities on earth. At the southern most tip of the continent, South Africa is a vast melting pot of peoples and cultures including Bantus, San, Indonesians, Indians, Dutch and English. And the cuisine reflects that. Georges Collinet goes to the home of Faldela Williams who invites us into her kitchen as she cooks sugar bean curry and roti. Faldela warns that you can't cook curry too quickly. It needs time to sweat and blend so we have plenty of time to...
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Reclaiming Africa: Susana Baca And Lazaro Ros
The "African-ness" from country to country in the Americas is very different. Afro-Peruvian artist Susana Baca and Afro-Cuban artist Lazaro Ros artistically and spiritually reclaim their heritage from strikingly different starting points. We hear Susana Baca tell her story and the story of the previously unrecognized African side of Peru. This program features Susana's high spirited New York debut performance. Lazaro Ros, RIP, was a revered singer in Cuba who performed and recorded songs...
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DUB: The Medium is the Message
In the 1970s and 80s, while Jamaican reggae was becoming just about the most successful music ever to emerge from the African Diaspora, the genre was being transformed at its source in Jamaica's Kingston slums. "Dub" is a magnificent, jury rigged appropriation of reggae music, a remarkable nexus of technological evolution and cultural paradigm shift. From its origins in the late '60s, dub led directly to early rap and hip hop, and the post-modern, sample-based DJ culture that has reigned...
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Ten Tunes that Shook Kingston
(First of a two part mini-series on the phenomenal story of music in Jamaica.) This program features rare classic recordings from Jamaica--50's Jamaica RandB, ska, rock steady, toasting, dub--and inside stories from the prolific Jamaican record industry about how new styles were born.
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Sounds of the Cities: Dakar, Bamako, Harare, Kinshasa,...
In Afropop's book, the coolest cities in the world have a sound. You hear it in the nightclubs, you hear it coming from the radio. It could be from the past or the present. That sound becomes the soul of the city. We'll travel from Dakar to Bamako to Harare to Kinshasa to Santo Domingo to New York to soak up the sounds that make these cities one of a kind.
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World Funk
How could you not like funk? There are reasons why funk is a mainstay at weddings, college reunions, and more--everyone can dance to it, it's sexy, and the nostalgia is powerful. Many streams fed funk in America and the world has returned the funk favor. Appearing in Afropop's Funk Dome, are funky sounds from Brazil, Nigeria, Algeria, and elsewhere including a segment on Angelique Kidjo's latest work, "Oyo," an homage to the American funk idols she grew up with back home in Benin, West...
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Celebrating Senegal's 50th Anniversary: Mbalax...
Afropop Worldwide travels to Dakar to celebrate the country's 50th anniversary of independence with a Hip Deep history of the nation's signature music style: mbalax. On radio, on television, from boom boxes on the street to the city's legendary nightclubs, this rhythmically explosive dance music is the defining sound of modern Senegal. MIT ethnomusicologist Patricia Tang takes us through the history, from the polyrhythms of Wolof hand-and-stick sabar drumming, through the pan-Africanist...
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Celebrating Nigeria's 50th Anniversary with Juju Pioneer...
Seventeen countries in Africa celebrate their 50th anniversary of independence this year. We will put the spotlight on the countries whose music is best known such as the West Africa powerhouse Nigeria and some we almost never hear from such as Chad and Niger. Representing Nigeria is juju pioneer I.K. Dairo who introduced electric guitar, accordion and talking drum into the music. We will hear I.K. in Afropop Worldwide's recording of his New York City debut concert backed by his Blue Spots...
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Honoring Sam Mtukudzi: Afropop at Home and Abroad
Sam Mtukudzi, the 22 year old son of Zimbabwe great Oliver Mtukudzi and himself and up and coming star, died tragically in a car accident a few weeks ago. To honor him, we reprise an exclusive interview from Zimbabwe and play songs from his debut release. Timely also is the return of banjo maestro Bela Fleck and his critically acclaimed touring Africa Project. We go on the road with Bela and catch up with traditional pop star Anania and his Zanzibar-based group. Afropop.org Senior Editor...
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Brazil: The Northeast-So Paulo Connection
Afropop Worldwide travels to the sprawling megalopolis of So Paulo. Experiencing the city's 22 million inhabitants is overwhelming at first, but music helps you put things in perspective. You'll hear the story of the relationship between the musically rich but impoverished northeast of Brazil and its people who have traveled to So Paulo looking for work. We hear different takes of northeastern forr, very popular in So Paulo--forr universitario and forr electronico. We visit with Chico Cesar,...
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Reggaeton Roundup: New Moves in Latin Youth Music
When Daddy Yankee released his hit single, "Gasolina," in 2005, nobody suspected what was about to happen. Reggaeton, that rollicking Caribbean dance-rap, traveled like an uncontained blaze around the world - crossing over from the Latin charts to pop and hip-hop from the U.S to Australia, thrilling and/or shocking those that came in its path. Reggaeton was the sound and swagger of a new generation of urban Latin Americans, and a whirl around Latin America in 2009 will show you that the...
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AFROPOP WORLDWIDE GOES TO COPENHAGEN FOR WOMEX 2009,...
Every year WOMEX attracts some 3,000 individuals working in the world music field--artists, record label people, festival presenters, media personnel and others. And we always return loaded with cool CDs new to us, interviews with artists we've never met before, live concert recordings, and more. From the most recent WOMEX at the end of last year, we'll hear artists that really exited us--Hasna el Becharia (Algeria/France), Kenge Kenge (Kenya), Choc Quib Town (Colombia), Addis Acoustic...
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Afropop Worldwide Winter 2010 Dance Party
It's that time of year again to dust off your dancing shoes, oil your creaky joints, liberate yourself from cabin fever and join Georges for a rollicking good time on your own personal dance floor. We'll boogie to the latest roots rai, rumba, rhumba, mbalax, kwaito, Musiki wa dansi, Brazilian soul, boogaloo, old school reggaeton, electro cumbia, baille funk and who knows where that all leads us. And it's all good for your soul and inspirational for your booty shaking. See you there.
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Music and the Story of Haiti
From Vodou to Compas to Racine to Rara and Beyond Haiti became the first black-ruled republic in the Americas in 1804, and music has mirrored, and at times shaped, the twists and turns of Haiti's politics and culture ever since. A primary source of Haitian culture is Dahomey, the birthplace of vodou--the most commonly held world view among Haitian people today. We explore how each of Haiti's rulers has championed his own preferred music. The Duvalier dictators favored compas dance music, and...
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The French Caribbean--Cosmopolitan, Colonial, Complicated
In the music of the French Antilles - the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe - you can hear influences that range from the traditional bl and gwo ka drumming of the islands' rural communities, to European additions like polka and French chanson. But when these islands produced a pop genre that took much of the Caribbean and African world by storm - the smooth and sexy dance music zouk, which exploded in the 1980s - it was an entirely new blend that uniquely reflected the complex layers of...
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Afropop Road Show 2009
This is the latest in our continuing series following our favorite touring artists on the road including those who wowed the Afropop public for the amazingly rich summer season that just passed--Vieux Farka Tourandeacute;, King Sunny Adandeacute;, Femi Kuti, Alpha Blondy, Najat Attabou, Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara, BLK JKS, and others. We'll hear their music and chat with them backstage
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The Latin Alternative Music Conference 2009 in New York...
Electro-cumbia-hop, plena-reggae, mambo-ghettotech - just some of the hybrid grooves and genre-bending experimentations on display at the 2009 Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC) in New York City, now in its 10th year, that has long been a showcase for cutting edge bands from Bogota to Buenos Aires, and this year is no different. Join the Afropop team with in-depth coverage of the festival, as we sample the sounds of a new generation of cosmopolitan, transnational Latino and Latin...
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AFROPOP GOES TO COPENHAGEN FOR WOMEX 2009, PART 2
Our annual pilgrimage to WOMEX always yields too much great material to jam into one program. We'll pick up our report from WOMEX 2009, Part 1 with more concert highlights, backstage visits, and fresh CDs.
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Stocking Stuffers 2009
Drum roll please...Here's the moment you've been waiting for, the moment we open the envelopes to see who wins Afropop's honors for the best African CDs, Latin CDs, reissues, and "Africa in America" releases of the year. It's a wide-ranging tour of the best music released in 2009. Live from Georges Collinet's home studio in Washington, DC, Georges sample winners and near-winners with Afropop producer Banning Eyre.
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Afropop Soundsystem 2
Soundsystem is at the crossroads. What used to be exotic is standard fare: now you hear cumbia in the West Village of New York City. Now you can hear the West Village in West Africa. For part 2 of Afropop Soundsystem, we'll be digging back into the digital Diaspora to uncover songs and artists making waves across the Atlantic (in both directions). From Uproot Andy to the electric root of Akan music in Ghana, Soundsystem 2 charts the movement and flux of Africa as it infiltrates new...
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Baaba Maal Acoustic, Live in New York City
Concert highlights from Baaba Maal's rapturous North American debut of his acoustic string and vocal focused ensemble, recorded at Joe's Pub in New York City. Baaba performs solo, in trio and sextet--joined by longtime musical companions Mansour Seck on guitar and vocals, Kowding Cissokho on kora, Mama Gaye on guitar, Barou Sall on hodu (African guitar), and El Hadj Niang on bass. Also feature is the powerful Ethiopian singer Gigi.
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Afropop's Travels in Cuba
In this program, we experience musical personalities and styles from the capital Havana in the west to Santiago de Cuba in the east and places in between--Cienfuegos and Matanzas. In Cienfuegos, the home of the beloved singer Beny Morandeacute;, we visit with 80-something son singer Felito Molino. In Santiago, we hear the effects of another revolution, the Haitian revolution from 1791 to 1804, and the aftermath that saw Haitian planters, their slaves and free people of color flee to Cuba. We...
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Traveling Spirit Masters: The Gnawa of Morocco
Gnawa musicians have carved out a unique niche within Moroccan society as people with revered spiritual power, who use music and movement to heal the sick. The Gnawasand#39; ancestors came to North Africa as slaves. Today they are an elite class of musicians and spiritualists, celebrated in an annual festival that attracts some 400,000 fans, and invited to collaborate with such notable international artists as jazz legend Randy Weston. In this program, author and scholar Deborah Kapchan...
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Diaspora Encounters: Kriolu in New England, The Cape...
Of all contemporary Cape Verdeans, Cesaria Evora, "the Queen of the Morna" has made the biggest impression internationally. However the first Cape Verdean to grace the American imagination was the harpooner Dagoo in Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851). Cape Verdeans first arrived in United States as whalers in the late 1700's and have been coming ever since, bringing a distinctive Portuguese-African Kriolu flavor to communities across Southern New England and beyond. We'll take a step back in...
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The Coca-Cola Ebony Festival in Dakar, Senegal
We go to the lively capital of Senegal, on the furthest-out tip of West Africa for three days of concerts by an extraordinary line-up of African stars, starting with Senegalese royalty--Youssou N'Dour, Baaba Maal and Didier Awadi. Other heavyweights include Meiway from Cote d'Ivoire, Rachid Taha from Algeria, Alpha Blondy from Cote d'Ivoire and many more. Live concert highlights plus visits with the artists.
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Under the Radar: 2009
An Afropop tour of sounds you have not heard, music found by our field correspondents, small independent labels, and music sent to us directly from artists in Africa. We'll dig into the early West African releases from the new fair trade label Akawaaba Music, hear new sounds from Brazil and Tanzania, a hot marimba band from South Africa, and a dazzling, young griot guitarist, as yet unsigned to any label. All that and more as Afropop goes under the radar!
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Afropop Summer 2009 Dance Party
What's hot on the dance floors in Luanda? Jo'berg? Lagos? Dakar? Cairo? Havana? Rio? Caracas? New York City? Find out on this hip-swiveling, ass-shaking, cheaper-than-therapy edition of the show.
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Afropop Vignettes: Puerto Rico
From the early days to the present, Puerto Rico has always been a creative, prolific epicenter of Latin music. And the music traveled to New York with the large immigrant Puerto Rican community. We'll hear roots styles such as bomba and plena, salsa maestro Tito Puente, the contemporary leading sonero Gilberto Santa Rosa, as well as today's reggaeton superstars out of San Juan.
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Afropop Worldwide Concert Highlights
Over the years we have recorded many extraordinary artists passing through New York City--some well known favorites of Afropop fans and some less well known. The common denominator is a unique voice and mastership of their style. Our recordings catch these artists and their bands at golden moments in their careers. Featured are Adewale Ayuba (Nigeria), Baaba Maal (Senegal), Willie Colon (Puerto Rico/USA), The Four Stars (Congo) and others. Get ready to clear the floor, crank it up and dance...
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Summer 2009 Concert Previews
This is our annual peek at which African, Caribbean and Latin artists will be wowing us with tours this summer--some return favorites, some new. At press time, almost no festival has published their roster so we don't have much by way of specifics. Just know that by show time, you'll be buzzing with excitement about who you can see this summer.
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Afropop Worldwide's Visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
In our visit Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, we go beyond the handful of artists who have achieved international careers and dive into the local scene. We visit azmaribets, down home music clubs featuring vivacious women artists and their ensembles of traditional players. We catch Mimi and Besat live. Competition between the leading music producers in Addis is fierce. We visit the studio of recording studio of Abegasu Shiote who breaks down the Ethiopian pop sound track by track. And for the finale...
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Cesaria Evora, Live
Part 2 of our focus on Cape Verde is the phenomenal Cesaria Evora, making her sold-out New York City concert debut at the Bottom Line. You'll hear why they call Cesaria "the Queen of the Morna." Cesaria is backed by the lush sound of her classy group--piano, acoustic bass guitar, cavaquinho, and lead acoustic guitar. Cesaria sings her hits "Petit Pays," "Miss Perfumado," "Angola" as well as less well known songs in her repertoire.
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The Best of The Latin Alternative Music Conference in...
"Say it loud, I'm Latino and proud!" So says DJ Raf. Join us for highlights from the annual gatherings of the Latin Alternative Music Conference in New York City that span old ska, rock, hip, electronica, rock, bugal, and old school boleros. The common theme is the excitement of experimenting with fusions of international pop and roots from home countries--Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Los Angeles, New York and beyond.
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Afropop Vignettes: The Caribbean
The Heads of State of the 34 countries of the Americas (except Cuba) are meeting this April in Port of Spain, Trinidad to discuss common issues. President Obama will deliver the keynote address. Afropop takes this occasion as a jumping-off point to explore intriguing musical destinations--some well known, some barely known--and musical hot spots throughout the Americas. In part 1, we go to Trinidad, Cuba, Haiti, Martinique and the Dominican Republic. Hear Trinidad's pan orchestras, action on...
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Zaragoza Nights, Iberian Dreams
Afropop travels to Zaragoza, Spain for the Strictly Mundial Festival. A hot spot is the Pea Flamenca club where we saw Falo, a hugely popular flamenco singer of gipsy heritage. We'll hear music and stories from Galician artists in northwestern Spain where a featured instrument is their version of...bagpipes, of course! A twisted story from Galicia is that the fascist dictator Franco was Galician but forbid the Galician language to be used in schools and business so as to encourage the use of...
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Bugalu
Singer, composer and bandleader Joe Cuba passed recently. We honor him with this encore portrait of bugalu, also variously described as "Latin soul," that hit the scene in 1966 with an original and organic concept of combining black and Puerto Rican music. The dance club crowd went crazy and then the fad quickly faded. But what a ride along the way! Joe Cuba was one of bugalu's most popular artists, best known for the major hit "Bang Bang" that his band created on the spot one night at a...
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Afropop Worldwide Winter 2009 Dance Party
This week we debut the 2009 Winter Dance Party produced by Wills Glasspiegel with tracks from across the world AND the world wide web. Expect a carnival: rara from Haiti, Kwaito house from South Africa, bubu from Sierra Leone, soca from Trinidad and the hardest hitting African rap straight from New York. The party highlights exclusive mixtapes from the Africa blogosphere: new mashups from Chief Boima's Ghettobassquake, DJ Zhao's NGOMA, DJ Geko + Uproot Andy at Dutty Artz, and a song from the...
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Ethiopia Part 2: Diaspora and Return
(As part of Afropop's celebration of Black History Month, this is the first of a three part mini-series on the stories of three very different African and Brazilian Diaspora communities in the U.S.) Afropop Worldwide's Hip Deep takes us into Ethiopian Diaspora communities in the United States and Israel, and also in Addis Ababa itself, where new winds are blowing. Harvard's Kay Kauffman Shelemay and Ethiopiques CD producer Francis Falcetto provide expert insights. We visit Dukem Reastaurant...
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Adventure in Madagascar
In an encore of our extraordinary 2001 musical journey across this most extraordinary musical island, we travel from the capital Antanarivo ("Tana") in the highlands to the southwestern coastal city of Tulear to experience guitar-driven tsapika dance music (that the rowdy emerald miners love) to the southeastern city of Fort Dauphin for surf roots music, then back to Tana for a finale.
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A Visit to Madagascar
Madagascar is a big island with a big heart, occupying a special place in Afropop's musical imagination. We have visited this one-of-a-kind island in the Indian Ocean several times and brought back joyous music and fascinating stories. We'll hear Dame of the ground-breaking roots revival group Mahaleo give us a musical landscape of different Malagasy instruments--kabosy, valiha-- and styles--salegy, tsapika, sova, hiragassy--in the amazingly diverse Malagasy cultures. We'll visit other...
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The Rise of the Religious Music Industry in Kenya:...
Missionaries and nationalists rubbed shoulders in Kenya as early as 1906, when Kenya was a young, British colony. Christianity has long been closely allied with local, cultural expressions: however, it was only with the spread of radio in the 1940s that choral makwaya groups began to be heard by mass audiences. Hymns, arranged in 4-part harmony and translated into African languages, mark the humble beginnings of what has become a robust industry in Kenya. Today, Christian-themed music...
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Afropop Roadshow 2008
With new visa fees, a weak dollar, and the decline of the CD business, it's not easy for foreign musicians to mount a successful U.S. tour these days. And yet they keep on coming! On this program we catch up with an exciting collection of hearty, traveling Afropop musicians. We'll hear insights, memories and fabulous music from Zimnbabwe's Chiwoniso, Umalali and The Garifuna All-Stars, Lobi Traorandeacute;, Joep Pelt, and more.
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Afropop Artists Celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the...
In this special edition of Afropop Worldwide, cutting edge African artists Emmanuel Jal from Sudan, K'Naan from Somalia, Angelique Kidjo from Benin, El Hadj N'Diaye from Senegal as well as Michael Franti from the U.S. celebrate the 60th anniversary of the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed on Dec. 10, 1948 in the wake of the horrors of World War II. The artists share their thoughts and feelings about the fight for human rights in their countries and around the world,...
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Stocking Stuffers 2008
Here it is--the moment you've been waiting for! It's the moment we open the envelopes to see who wins Afropop's honors for the ten best African, Caribbean, and Latin albums of the year. Plus we'll play selections for the guitar lover, dance fanatic, Arab music lover, percussion discussionist, etc. on your holiday shopping list (including yourself)!
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Afropop Vignettes: Festivals Around the World
In the next installment of our ongoing celebration of Afropop's 20th anniversary, we travel to our favorite African music festivals. In terms of ambience and fantastic artists not yet known on the international world music festival circuit, they can't be beat. We travel to festivals in Stonetown, Zanzibar; New York City; Detroit; Dakar, Senegal; Fes, Morocco; Recife, Brazil and others to enjoy concert highlights and soak up the scene.
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Venezuela: The Rise of Afro-Venezuelan Music to the...
Venezuela has the longest Caribbean coastline of any nation, and yet the vibrant African musical heritage thriving along that coast has been largely ignored by the nation's media and music industry, and remains under-recognized internationally. That is now changing rapidly. Long sidelined as a realm of quaint relics and exotic folklore, Afro-Venezuelan culture is becoming a larger part of the national life of this petroleum-rich nation. The controversial Hugo Chvez Fras is Venezuela's first...
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Africa In America 2008
Amazingly, some of the most creative and interesting African music acts springing onto the scene are not based in Africa. For years, Afropop Worldwide has spotlighted the work of Africans making bands in the United States, and talented American musicians creating African music. The crop keeps getting better. This music-rich edition samples the techno roots fusion of Burkina Electric, the Kenyan benga meets rock 'n' roll fusion of Extra Golden, desert blues innovations from Markus James, new...
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Megaconcert In Dakar, Senegal
In our continuing celebration of Afropop Worldwide's 20th anniversary, we return to one of our favorite cities--Dakar, Senegal--to hear an extraordinary all-night concert in front of 70,000 fans at the national stadium. Featured are Senegal's artistic royalty--Youssou N'Dour, Baaba Maal, Thione Seck--as well as lesser-known artists. We also visit the home of the one and only Baaba Maal.
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Music and Islam: From Prohibition to the Science of...
Islam's complex relationship with arts and culture across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia presents special paradoxes and intrigue in the realm of music. Islam has been used both to nurture and curtail musical expression. This program delves into the historic roots of this debate, all the way back to Baghdad in the early centuries of Islam. Case studies highlight sublime and ecstatic music from Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan and more. Author and Middle East specialist Joseph...
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Afropop Worldwide Celebrates 20 Years on Public Radio!!
It is almost exactly 20 years ago that the very first Afropop program, "Music from South Africa", hit the air on public radio stations all across the country. In celebration, we've put together some of our favorite moments from over the past 20 years, including special appearances by artists who have gone on to internationally acclaimed careers!
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Zambia - Rumba Roots to RandB Renaissance
From rootsy, copperbelt guitarists to electric guitar dance styles like kalindula, to roadside skiffle, and now, a powerful new wave of RandB, Zam-raga, and rap, Zambia offers a rich and generally overlooked world of popular music. This program will delve deeply into the history with hot combos of the past like The Big Gold Six and Emmanuel Mulemena, as well as sample the fruits of Zambia's current musical renaissance with acts like Black Muntu, JK and Danny. We'll get the inside line from...
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A Capella Night - Live from the Melkweg
Zap Mama, led by Marie Daulne, is a force to be reckoned with. Their fierce vocal power and poise is always delivered with a sense of theatrical whimsy. Zap Mama deliver a brilliant set at the Melkweg Club in Amsterdam followed by Black Umfolosi, the powerful 12-man group from Zimbabwe. Other a capela wonders include Cuba's Vocal Sampling with an impressive percussion sound, all done through vocals.
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Afropop Vignettes: Madagascar, Mozambique, Zimbabwe,...
We make a grand swing through southern Africa, stopping at musical hot spots in Jo'burg, Harare, Antananarivo and Maputo. We'll hear timbila maestro, Vinenzio Mbande, in Mozambique, two of the ebullient dance bands--Leonard Dembo and the Four Brothers--from happier times in Zimbabwe, our live recording of S.A. jazzers the Elite Swingsters in Jo'burg, and more.
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GlobalFest 2008 and Looking Down the Road Ahead
We go to New York City for the annual globalFEST concert marathon, the biggest one day global music extravaganza in the country, to take in some choice concerts by: Fallou Dieng, a rising star of Senegalese mbalax; 84-year-old Dominican son maestro Puerto Plata; master accordionist Chango Spasiuk playing Argentina's chamamandeacute; style; and others. Plus we hear some of our favorite new projects by major artists such as Orchestre Baobab, Toumani Diabatandeacute; and other landmark African...
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Afropop Worldwide's August Dance Party Marathon, Part 3:...
Our August dance party continues with a new twist. Georges invites us into his home where he's cooking n'dolandeacute;, the national dish back home in Cameroon. And of course what's cooking without cooking music?! We'll be swinging to tunes from Kinshasa, San Juan, New York City, Paris, Lagos, Addis Ababa, and beyond.
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Afropop Worldwide's August Dance Party Marathon, Part 2
Don't stop. The dance party continues with soukous Congo style, soukous Dar es Salaam style, Ricardo Lemvo with Congo-meets-Latin in Los Angeles, Hugh Masekela's update of his smash hit "Grazing In the Grass," Manu Chao's anti-globalista jump-up, Vieux Farka Tourandeacute;, Daddy Yankee's massive reggaeton, and more.
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Afropop Worldwide's August Dance Party Marathon Kick Off
August is a flat out dance party marathon on Afropop Worldwide. We'll groove for three weeks in a row, starting with handpicked gems from summer dance parties past. Get ready for a fast-paced set sure to make your heart smile and your hips swivel. Featured artists include a Papa Wemba classic from a 1996 set, Eddie Palmieri at the heart of the New York salsa scene, the African-Latin boundary breakers Africando (featuring Guinea's Sekouba "Bambino" Diabate on soaring vocals), Cheb Mami...
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Afropop Worldwide's Shout Out to New Orleans
Longtime Afropop Worldwide correspondent Ned Sublette joins host Georges Collinet, as we talk to guest New Orleans DJ T.R. Johnson on the ground in the Crescent City, where the music goes on every night. We'll get an check at how this great American music city is doing in the summer of 2008. We'll hear music by Dr. John, Dr. Michael White, Terence Blanchard, Brother Tyrone, Big Sam's Funky Nation, Dumpstaphunk, and more.
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Diaspora Encounters: The Indo-Caribbean World
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...
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Sfinks Festival 2001 Highlights
Our two-part special on summer festivals continues with highlights from the Sfinks Festival near Antwerp, Belgium in summer high season. This annual three day Afropop and world music extravaganza has a soft spot in its heart for Brazilian music, and today we'll hear from the edgy artist Pedro Luis and his roots rock band. Also featured is Mbulu from Mozambique with their updated, multi-generational version of marabenta music. Ghana checks in with classic, joyful highlife from the African...
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Afropop's Summer Extravaganza Live in Concert
Nothing beats a beautiful summer day for enjoying Afropop live. We have recorded many magical moments of Afropop artists in concert at summer festivals around the U.S. and Africa. Today, we present the best of the best to you.
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A Visit to Mombasa, Kenya and Zanzibar
We start in the Indian Ocean port town of Mombasa to hear the one-of-a-kind taarab music of the Swahili people that combines African, Arab and Indian influences. Featured are top stars such as Maulidi Juma and Musical Party. We also drop in on one of the raucous women-only wedding parties. Then it's south to Tanga, on the Tanzanian coast, to hear Golden Star and Zahira Swale. And we wind up on the famed island of Zanzibar to enjoy Culture Musical Club and the irreplaceable 90-something Bi...
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Shout Out: Colombia and Cuba
In our next installment of our "shout out" series, where we talk with leading deejays in Africa and Latin America about what's rocking their country's airwaves and dance floors, we're going to Colombia and Cuba. Banda la Republica, Colombiafrica the Mystic Orchestra, Manolito Simonet y su Trabuco, Gente de Zona and more are featured. Noted author Ned Sublette is our producer.
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The Zulu Factor
Beginning in 1815, under Shaka Zulu, the Zulus began a campaign of conquest that would subsume so many other groups that today, the Zulu are South Africa's largest ethnic population, numbering at least six-million. Ethnomusicologist Louise Meintjes, author of Sounds of Africa! Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio writes that the Zulu reputation for courage and style has given them "empowering significance as a defiant, self possessed, royal, and artful African people." This program...
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Summer 2008 Concert Previews
The summer season is always the best time to catch touring Afropop and Latin stars. As always, in this 2008 edition of our annual summer concerts program, we pick our favorites so you can plan your summer around when these artists come to your town. Seun Kuti and Egypt '80 from Nigeria, Vieux Farka Tourandeacute; from Mali, Bajofondo and others. We'll check in with some of our favorite free summer music festivals--Central Park SummerStage, Celebrate Brooklyn, Detroit's Concert of Colors,...
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Sierra Leone: Celebration, War and Healing
When Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961, Freetown swayed to the beguiling, breezy lilt of palm wine guitar and danced to the funky pop of Geraldo Pino and the Heartbeats. Once a center of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Sierra Leone became an improbable amalgamation of indigenous peoples and repatriated Africans freed from slavery. Thirty years of political and economic disintegration led to a horrific civil war that claimed tens of thousands of victims and created a generation of...
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Afropop Vignettes: Puerto Rico
From the early days to the present, Puerto Rico has always been a creative, prolific epicenter of Latin music. And the music traveled to New York with the large immigrant Puerto Rican community. We'll hear roots styles such as bomba and plena to salsa maestro Tito Puente and the contemporary leading sonero Gilberto Santa Rosa to today's reggaeton superstars out of San Juan.
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Africa in America 2008
Amazingly, some of the most creative and interesting African music acts springing onto the scene are not based in Africa anymore. For years, Afropop Worldwide has spotlighted the work of Africans making bands in the United States, and talented American musicians creating African music. The crop keeps getting better. This music-rich edition samples the techno roots fusion of Burkina Electric, the Kenyan benga meets rock 'n' roll fusion of Extra Golden, desert blues innovations from Markus...
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Afropop Travels to Brazil for Old School and New School...
We go to Rio, Salvador de Bahia, Recife and Sao Paulo to visit with some of the greats--Gilberto Gil, Joao Bosco, Gal Costa, and others. Brazil is exceptional in how new generations of artists incorporate the work of their elders and at the same time add their own flavor for exhilarating results. We'll enjoy the conversation between Luis Gonzaga and the roots revivalists such as Chico Science in Recife and then hear the latest from Carnaval 2008. And in this year that marks the 50th...
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Fula in the House
As they led their livestock herds through West Africa in search of greener pastures, the Fulbhe--also Fula, Fulani, or Peul--spread a powerful music culture as well. Fluttering bluesy flutes, keening vocal melodies and bubbling percussion rhythms are strong elements in Fulani music, but the sounds are as varied as the deserts, forests, mountains, and riverside towns the Fulbhe have made their homes. On this program, we explore Fulbhe music from Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and elsewhere, and...
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Africa and the Blues
The recent death of Malian guitar legend Ali Farka Tourandeacute; has inspired a new round of speculation about the roots of the blues in Africa. Tourandeacute; famously argued that the beloved American genre was "nothing but African," a bold assertion. Among scholars, Gerhard Kubik's book Africa and the Blues has gained recognition as the most serious and penetrating examination of the subject. This program in our Hip Deep series will be produced in collaboration with Kubik, allowing a rare...
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Baaba Maal and Ali Farka Toure, Live Acoustic
Senegalese superstar Baaba Maal and his longtime musical companion Mansour Seck (both inductees into the Afropop Hall of Fame) perform an absolutely sublime set at the Hackney Ballroom in London. Grammy Award-winner Ali Farka Toure, rest in peace, takes the stage at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival with a set that evokes his beloved northern Mali. This program is dedicated to the memory of the one and only Ali Farka Toure who, sadly, passed in March 2006 at the young age of 66....
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Jewish Communities of Sub-Saharan Africa
Once-substantial Jewish enclaves of Morocco, Algeria and other North Africa states have dwindled steadily since World War II, mostly through migration to Israel. In sub-Saharan Africa, lesser known Jewish communities provide strikingly different narratives. Guided by ethnomusicologist and Rabbi Jeffrey A. Summit of Tufts University, this program focuses on the history and music of a small but robust community of Jewish converts in Uganda, the Abayudaya. Summit's own recordings include the...
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Afropop Worldwide Stocking Stuffers 2007
Get ready for the 2007 edition of Afropop Worldwide's picks of the ten best albums of the year of artists from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Plus the also-rans and our favorite re-issues.This program will inspire ideas for the music lovers on your holiday shopping list. Press embargo for now--you will be surprised!
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Afropop Worldwide Travels to Seville Spain for WOMEX 2007
Every year, the Afropop Worldwide team goes to WOMEX in the heart of old Al-Andalus, Seville, to gather interviews, live recordings and mountains of new CDs available nowhere else. This is the most important pow-wow for artists and world music pros anywhere. Over 30 artists will perform. Some of our favorities include: 3Canal (Trinidad and Tobago), Aman Aman (Spain), Kasai All Stars (Congo); Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 (Nigeria); and Siba (Brazil). It's tough to boil all that into one hour of...
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Uganda: Singing for Life
HIV/AIDS and Music In just fifteen years, Uganda lowered its HIV/AIDS infection rate from 30% to just 5%. The life-saving info was best channeled by grassroots theater groups, and especially, women's choirs who turned health advice, sometimes blended with religion, into entertainment that could move freely to even the most remote regions of Uganda. Ethnomusicologist and medical anthropologist Gregorgy Barz helps us get below the surface in a country where a person might visit a Catholic...
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Creole Currents In The Caribbean
In 1896, Haitian President Florvil Hyppolite--a man known for his trademark Panama hat--was overthrown in a coup. The song "Panamam' Tombe" ("My Panama Hat Fell") was quickly composed as commentary on the event, and the song remains popular throughout the Haitian diaspora today. This historical survey of the urban dance music, from Haiti, the Antilles and Dominica, is based mostly on rare mid-20th Century recordings primarily Haitian meringue and Antillean beguine. It shows how the artists...
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Cuban Connection 17: Oriente Express
Oriente in eastern Cuba is the birthplace of the son, that traveled to Havana and grew into the worldwide salsa movement. Oriente also received some of the exodus of the Haitian Revolution 200 years ago, and Oriente today reflects that lively mix of Franco-Haitian, African and Spanish sources. This program, we head to Oriente visit places where musicians gather in Santiago de Cuba, Baracoa, Holguin, and Guantanamo to play traditional son, as well as antique cousins of son--changui and nengon.
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Musical Conjurers
This program takes an imaginative look at the way musicians conjure fantastic realities--the past, the future, transformed cultural worlds--in their music. Habib Koite uses musicians from outside his own tradition to conjure ancient Mali. Canadian singer Loreena McKennitt collaborates with musicians from the UK, Syria and elsewhere to journey into the Andalusian past in the awesome surround of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. In Congo, Konono No1 generate the ambiance of a village funeral in...
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The Best of The Latin Alternative Music Conference in...
The Afropop Worldwide team has covered the Latin Alternative Music Conference for the last two years. Latin Alternative gets hardly any airplay or ink because it falls outside any conventional category--being a mix of Latin roots styles, rock, funk and electronica. But there are some very hip Latin Alternative artists from Los Angeles, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and elsewhere making original music. We'll dig into our archives for our favorite live recordings from the 2004 and 2005 and 2006...
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Concert of Colors 2007 in Detroit, Michigan
Our annual pilgrimage to this three day world music extravaganza takes us to the Motor City to enjoy concerts by Hugh Masekela, Tish Hinajosa, Black 47, Lola Morales, Nawal, DJ Delores, Basiks, the Neville Brothers, and others.
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Afropop Second Acts
In the world of Afropop, there ARE second acts. Think of Cesaria Evora, the Mahotella Queens, the Buena Vista Social Club and other artists and styles forgotten or neglected in their home countries who receive a second wind to their careers from international attention. We'll hear the classic Congolese rumba sound of Kekele and the Rumbanela Band and visit with the artists. Cuban pianist Bebo Valdez joins forces with Spanish flamenco singing star Diego "El Cigala." Eusebe Jaojoby from...
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A Brief History of Funk
Funk is a perennial favorite. In this panoramic history of the funkiest of funk we hear classics and some rarities. And George Clinton clues us into the deeper meaning of funk.
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A Tale of Two Rebellions
Over a thousand years ago, two large revolts by disaffected Africans--one in the marshes of southern Iraq, another in the mountains of present--day Tunisia-sent shock waves through a young Islamic empire and forever transformed Islamic politics. These uprisings set the stage for the crystalization of the Sunni-Shi'ite divide. Author and scholar Joseph Braude guides us through the African-led Zanj rebellion, and the Fatimid revolution a few decades later--fast-paced narratives loaded with...
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Afropop's Summer Extravaganza Live in Concert
Nothing beats a beautiful summer day as far as enjoying Afropop live. We have recorded many of the most magical moments of Afropop artists in concert at summer festivals around the U.S. and Africa. Today, the best of the best for you.
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Afropop Worldwide's Visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
In our first ever visit Addis Ababa Ethiopia, we go beyond the handful of artists who have achieved international careers and dive into the local scene. The azmaribets are downhome music clubs featuring vivacious women artists and their ensembles of traditional players. We catch Mimi and Besat live. Competition between the leading music producers in Addis is fierce. We visit the studio of recording studio of Abegasu Shiote who breaks down the Ethiopian pop sound track by track. And for the...
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