Afropop Worldwide

#719 Inside The Nile Project Produced by Banning Eyre and Ian Coss Airdate: Nov 19th 2015 The Nile Project is an ambitious and imaginative attempt to bring about better stewardship of one of the world’s longest rivers by fostering collaboration among artists from the 11 countries the river traverses. It’s an endeavor that spans the Muslim north and the Christian south, as well as the diverse languages, cultures, and music styles in between. This program takes listeners inside the Nile Project's creative process, letting us hear how artists find common ground and create songs--from first encounters through rehearsal and refinement, all the way to the concert stage.

[APWW PGM #663] [Originally aired in 2013] "African Sounds of the Indian Subcontinent" In this Hip Deep program, Afropop explores musical connections between Africa and India. First up is the story of the Afro-Indian Sidi community. 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. Their descendants continue to live in India today, performing African-influenced Sufi trance music at shrines to the Black Muslim saint named Baba Gor. Next, we dive into the swinging jazz era of 1930s Bombay, when African-American jazz musicians arrived by the dozen to perform at the glitzy Taj Mahal Hotel. They trained a generation of Indian jazz musicians who would become instrumental in the rise of India’s Hindi film music industry. Then we head south to the island of Sri Lanka, where Africans have had a presence for almost 500 years. We explore their history through the groovy Afro-Indo-Portuguese p

[APWW PGM #676] [Originally aired in 2013] Technology is one of the great drivers of musical change, and often one of its least understood. In this episode, we will explore the synthesizer, looking closely at the history of this ubiquitous (and often debated) piece of musical technology, and investigating how and why it was first used in a variety African musics. Enabled by groundbreaking reissues of synth pioneers like William Onyeabor (Nigeria) and Hailu Mergia (Ethiopia), disco stars like Kris Okotie, and South African bubblegum superstars like Brenda Fassie, we will take you back to the ’70s and ’80s, listening to the birth of a distinctly African electronic sound.

Producer Jake Hochberger brings us to the southernmost island in the Caribbean, Trinidad. Trinidad is the birthplace of the steel drum, calypso and soca music, and is home to the largest Carnival celebration in the world. Here we encounter the musical and philosophical movement called rapso--an infectiously danceable rhythmic oration style that comes with a philosophy championing a Trinidadian identity in the face of a colonial history and a globalized present. We meet three generations of artists, from the founding King of Rapso, Brother Resistance, to the emerging musicians behind the American hip-hop influenced trapso sound. Brother Resistance shares stories of how local rhythms and participation in Trinidad’s Black Power movement influenced him to define his music as the most recent manifestation of an ancient oral tradition, as passed down from the West African griot. Omari Ashby of Kindred, Wendell Manwarren of 3Canal, and Ataklan bring us into the Trinidadian cultural matrix, where speed-rapping Carniv

[APWW #718] It's our annual roundup of live recordings Afropop Worldwide has made in the past year. This program includes highlights from the 29th Nuits d'Afrique festival in Montreal including a performance by Cuba's Los Van Van. We'll also hear a selection from Angolan music pioneer Paulo Flores's U.S. debut at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City--rare sound, as this was Paulo's only appearance here so far (though certainly not his last). We'll also hear live sounds from Tal National of Niger recorded at Le Poisson Rouge: Put on your dancing shoes and crank it up! Produced by Banning Eyre and Jesse Brent.

Show number: 692 encore: Oct 22nd 2015 original airdate : 8/14/2014 North African music receives very little coverage in the United States. There are no high-profile mixes of recent Tunisian underground dance music from hip DJs, and no young Algerian musicians with major distribution deals in the U.S. So we decided to explore what exactly is going on today in this part of the world. We trace the origins of some of the region’s most interesting current music to the banlieues of Paris, like raï ’n’b--a new Autotuned and synth-heavy offshoot of raï. We also explore the Gnawa reggae movement, which finds common ground between Sufi trance and the message of Marley. Returning to familiar traditions, we present a live recording of Kabyle mandole player Hamid Ouchène from Montreal’s Nuits d’Afrique festival, backed by a group of Montreal-based musicians with origins throughout the African continent. We next turn to the North African metal scene that developed during Algeria’s civil conflict to meld Berber folk music

Producer Morgan Greenstreet follows the trail of West African Vaudou spiritual music to a very unlikely place--Utrecht, Netherlands--for the first edition of the Voodoo To Go Festival. The three-day festival, pioneered by Togolese entrepreneur Leopold Ekué Messan, set out to demystify Vaudou/Vodun/Voodoo spiritual practices by featuring music and dance from Togo, Benin, Haiti, Cuba and Suriname and bringing people together for films, food and a panel discussion about "Good and Evil in Voodoo." From the opening ceremony, to the climactic final moments of the festival, the music at Voodoo To Go was filled with the spirit: Trance-inducing traditional music from Togolese/Beninois diaspora group Djogbé; heavy, retro Vaudou funk from Togolese musician Peter Solo and Vaudou Game, based in Lyon, France; Surinamese Kawina music from Rotterdam-based dance band Dray-ston; Late-night Haitian Vaudou-jazz from Erol Josué; and, finally an intense collaboration between Cuban jazz maestro Omar Sosa and Togolese musician and d

[APWW PGM #706] [Originally aired April 2015] In this program, we follow producer Morgan Greenstreet on a musical tour of Benin’s roots-pop music and Afro-jazz, while exploring the deep cultural and spiritual traditions that inspire contemporary musicians. We will visit a midnight album launch party for a star of roots-pop music in Abomey, meet Norberka, an acclaimed singer, drummer and dancer, at the home of her patron, his majesty Hounon Behumbeza, a vodun priest. We’ll visit the rehearsals, studios and homes of some of Cotonou’s most creative Afro-jazz musicians, including Jah Baba, Fifi Finder and Vi-Phint; we’ll visit Ouidah for the recently established Vodun Festival, and Porto Novo to meet a living legend, Sagbohan Danialou. Along the way, we’ll hear original live recordings from Les Freres Guedehoungue, Gangbé Brass Band, and some previously unrecorded groups. (Produced by Morgan Greenstreet)

We profile three African musicians who have created significant careers in the face of daunting challenges in their countries. Paulo Flores, champion of semba and kizomba in Angola, came of age in the midst of that country's long post-independence civil war. He's probably done more for Angola's spiritual health during these difficult decades than anyone alive. Emmanuel Jal faced still worse as a child soldier who escaped Sudan under horrific circumstances to become an internationally acclaimed singer and rapper. Today, he must watch as his homeland--now called South Sudan--descends into another brutal, senseless war. The masked man of Nigerian pop, Lágbájá, has created diverse, socially conscious music through a series of military regimes in his homeland, and has new advice for his countrymen in a fragile democracy. We'll meet all three artists and hear an awesome variety of music.

We're back with another installment in our Afropop exclusive mixtape series! This one comes courtesy of Ricardo Vergara, who put together a mix of some terrific Venezuelan music in styles ranging from the African influenced tambor to the folk styles gaita and llanera. Track List: 0:00 Tambor Urbano - El Hacha 5:17 Los Amigos Invisibles - Loco Por Tu Amor 8:59 VHG - La Voy a Tocar a Pie 12:30 María Rivas - El Manduco 15:36 Oscar D'León - Llorarás 19:21 Las Chicas del Can - El Negro No Puede (Waka Waka) 23:24 Reynaldo Armas - La Muerte del Rucio Moro

Africa Now! Join us for a whirlwind tour to hear the hottest artists in Lagos, Accra, Nairobi, Kinshasa, Jo'burg and Cairo. We'll check out the hits shaking the dance floors for today's youth. And we'll get the inside stories and scandals.

[APWW PGM #317] [Originally aired in 1998] Juju maestro Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey recently made a rare U.S. tour in the summer of 2013 which made us want to hear more! In this program, Chief Obey breaks down his band’s sound instrument by instrument—traditional percussion, horns, guitars–which makes his version of juju all the more enjoyable. And he tells us stories behind some of his hit songs. Also telling stories is the other maestro of Nigerian juju, the legendary King Sunny Ade. Continuing our celebration of Afropop’s 25th anniversary, we pay special tribute to KSA whose celebrated 1982-83 U.S. tour played a huge role in inspiring Afropop producer Sean Barlow to develop Afropop Worldwide.

[APWW PGM #681] [Originally aired in 2014] We unravel the complex history of how Jamaican music in the United Kingdom became a major component in navigating the cultural and racial landscape for many blacks in a post-imperial Britain while pushing the genre into new musical soundscapes.

As work continues on the vast Afropop archive, producer Banning Eyre takes a deep dive and comes up with some gems. On the vinyl front, the focus is on South African and Zimbabwe, where the Afropop team collected a good deal of rare vinyl in the 1980s. Then Banning samples some his favorite field recordings from Zanzibar to Mali. In the age of YouTube, Pandora and Spotify, you might have the impression that all the music ever recorded is there at your finger tips. Here's proof that's not so. You'll hear music on this program you can't find anywhere else.

[APWW PGM #669] [Originally aired in 2014] Hiplife, a fusion of hip-hop and highlife, has come of age, spawning subgenres tilting to roots culture, international rap, and boldly humorous satire, not to mention azonto, a dance craze that has rocketed to global renown in just over a year. But for all that, the biggest-selling music in the country, by far, is gospel. On this whirlwind Hip Deep tour of Accra, we meet stars like Reggie Rockstone, M.anifiest, Efya, Soul Winners, and the genre-bending FOKN Bois. Jesse Weaver Shipley, anthropologist and author of the book Living the Hiplife: Celebrity and Entrepreneurship in Ghanaian Popular Music, helps untangle the complex world of award ceremonies, corporate endorsements, live music in church, and the emergence of women in Ghana’s male-dominated pop world.

[APWW PGM #458] [Originally aired in 2005] Aug. 29, 2015 is the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and the catastrophic failure of the Mississippi River levees that put the city of New Orleans under water. In tribute to the city’s struggles of the last 10 years, we are rebroadcasting our Hip Deep program made in spring 2005, a few short months before life in New Orleans was turned upside down. “Living in New Orleans, Part 1″ takes you to the rambunctious street music scene in the Crescent City around Mardi Gras time. This is one town where kids still pick up tubas, and young brass bands have lots of work, parading along the same funky streets where jazz was born. We’ll get inside the world of the Mardi Gras Indians as Hip Deep producer Ned Sublette, who is spending the year on the ground in New Orleans, talks with musician and educator Big Chief Donald Harrison; Sylvester Francis of the Backstreet Cultural Museum; scholar and former New Orleans resident Joseph Roach of Yale University, author of Cities

[APWW PGM #693] [Originally aired in 2014] Afropop launched a new and improved podcast, making your favorite world-spanning radio show available in a whole new way. To celebrate, we’ve put together a show featuring some of our favorite moments from the podcast. Previously available only online, these segments are airing for the very first time. We’ll share the story of soul man Geraldo Pino, the “African James Brown.” You’ll hear the musical visions of the eccentric Jamaican guitarist Brushy One String. And much more!

Kadongo Kamu, which literally means "one guitar," is a lyrical genre of Ugandan pop music dating back to the 1950s. For this podcast, producer Ian Coss sits down with the Boston-based DJ Paddy to talk about the music's history and learn the significance of some of its classic tracks.

[APWW #713] [Originally aired 2015] It turns out that the first American city to host a roster of local African bands was not New York, Miami, or Chicago, but the San Francisco Bay Area. Hugh Masekela brought Hedzoleh Soundz from Ghana, and the settled in Santa Cruz. Nigerian maestros O.J. Ekemode and Joni Haastrup lived in Oakland in the 1970s. South African musicians from the touring theatre show Ipitombi also settled in the Bay Area and started the band Zulu Spear. By the early ‘80s, the Bay Area “worldbeat” scene was in full swing, and along with it came Kotoja, Mapenzi, Big City, The Nigerian Allstars and more. Join us for a tour through the sounds and stories of the Bay Area’s catalytic African music scene.

The first Brazilian Underground mix was one of our favorites in the Afropop Exclusive Mix Series, so we asked Rio-based journalist Marcelo Monteiro of Amplificador if he could make us one more. We are very excited to be once again featuring some incredible new songs from the new generation of Brazil. Enjoy! Track List: 01. Ava Rocha - Hermética 02. Metá Metá - Atotô 03. Ive Seixas - Praia no Inverno 04. Mohandas - Your Eyes 05. Abayomy - Obatala 06. Bixiga 70 - Mil Vidas 07. Fukai - Soma 08. The Baggios - Esturra Leão 09. Far From Alaska - Mama 10. Boogarins – Doce 11. Cícero - Camomila 12. Graveola - Lembrete 13. Iconili - Nego Preto 14. Siba - Marcha Macia 15. Carne Doce - Preto Negro 16. Bruna Mendez - Pra Ela 17. Quarto Negro - Orlando 18. Maglore - O Sol Chegou 19. O Terno - Ai, Ai, Como Eu Me Iludo 20. Chapa Mamba - Beleléu 21. Câmera - Till Life Do Us Apart 22. Amplexos - Cai pra Dentro 23. Frevotron e Jorge Du Peixe – Travessia 24. Astronauta Marinho - Negord! 25. I.F.Á. Afrobeat - Suffer 26. The Out