Tiwa Savage arrived in Malawi expecting to cry. She had prepared herself for it. As she later recalled, she had even packed extra tissues because she expected the stories of women and girls who had experienced violence to overwhelm her. Instead, after spending four days meeting survivors, activists, students, creatives, government officials and representatives of…
Across cinema, music, literature, fashion, food and art, the second edition of MAMA AFRICA offered something more consequential than another European celebration of “African culture”: a meeting point shaped around Africa’s Portuguese-speaking cultural worlds and the diasporic city they have helped build. African culture has never spoken in one language. Yet as African music and…
Nigerian pop star Ayra Starr linked up with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, bringing together two young public figures whose careers occupy entirely different worlds but whose trajectories contain an intriguing point of convergence. One became a global Nigerian pop star. The other became New York City’s first African-born, Muslim and South Asian mayor….
As social media users turn to artificial intelligence to imagine themselves in the 1980s, Chaka Khan has responded with something better: the archive. The internet is busy imagining itself in the 1980s. Chaka Khan has receipts. Across social media, a new AI-driven nostalgia trend has users transforming present-day photographs into imagined portraits from the decade…
Afrobeats Heat Different continues to document what those sounds are doing while the map is still changing. From Young Jonn and Rema to Yemi Alade, FOLA, The Cavemen., Gyakie, Medikal, Octopizzo and a closing South African movement, this week’s 19-track Afrobeats Heat Different documents an African music ecosystem becoming increasingly difficult to contain within a…
With KAESTYLE on the cover, this week’s Custodian Gems moves through 6uff, Kayode, Taene, Pabrymo, OluwaMillar, Ef Moon, Abefe, Sigag Lauren, Lil Frosh, Lasmid and Hunnyboy – a selection interested less in who already commands the conversation than in where attention might be moving next. Discovery becomes less useful when everybody has already agreed on…
Created by Martell and curated by Africa House, Swift Academy has selected 25 emerging creatives and music professionals for its inaugural Nairobi cohort. Behind the mentorship, grants and industry access sits a larger question: what can global brands contribute to African music once sponsorship moves beyond visibility and begins investing in the people and infrastructure…
Bringing together Maa, Swahili, Sesotho and Amharic alongside musical traditions stretching from Kenya and Ethiopia to Lesotho, Mozambique and North Africa, on Eshi, Jua’s latest CHIKKA experiment asks a more interesting question about Pan-African music: what if connection does not require sameness? Africa has spent generations being described through its differences. Different languages. Different borders….
From Blaqbonez and Seyi Vibez to KiDi, Sarkodie, Sofiya Nzau, Phyno and King Paluta, Music Custodian’s latest playlist update captures African music moving confidently across scenes, borders and generations. The final New Music Friday of August does not arrive with one dominant story. That might be its most interesting quality. This week’s Afrobeats Heat Different…
From Whitney Houston’s transformation of “I Will Always Love You” to Beyoncé’s reimagining of “Jolene,” Dolly Parton ’s relationship with Black artistry offers another way to remember a songwriter who understood ownership without confusing it with possession. Dolly Parton belonged unmistakably to country music. Born in rural East Tennessee, raised in Appalachia and eventually transformed…
