World Music of Africa

A Personal History of African Music

I wasn’t planning to write this but I thought, after the World Cup had tried to celebrate the African dimension in football, I would comment on and play some African music, that I liked and influenced me, as a chronology (non-stop playlist on YouTube here). It is also Nelson Mandela Day today so as well as singing Nkosi Sikeleli Africa, here is a chance to say God Bless Nelson Mandela and enjoy some of the music from Africa. As Mendela said “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Currently I am a huge fan of West African music from Sub-Saharan Mali, Senegal and Nigeria, as well as North African Rai and Arabic music. However during the World Cup I discovered that Ghana has a vibrant and developing music scene around blingy hiplife and both Cameroon and the Cote d’Ivoire have great dance music, you can follow new developments at AfroPop online. I live in London and apart from Ginger Johnson’s African Drummers, who played on Sympathy For The Devil at the Rolling Stones Concert in the Park in 1969, the first out and out African band I saw were Osibisa; criss-cross rhythms that explode with happiness. In our typical student house in London we used to play The Dawn off the first album to get us out of bed, but here is one of their minor UK hits from the YouTube Osibisa playlist by voycha; this is what they were like live. Music for Gong-Gong;  

World Cup of Music A-D

Groups A-D

World Cup of Music is a series of blog posts following the World Cup in South Africa through the music of each country. I’m not an expert on the music of the 32 countries, but I am interested in it. I will provide links to the wikpedia page for each national football team which are constantly updated. I will respond to each country’s music in the way that it interests me; historic, Pop or World. I intend to “play” each match by getting you to vote on the videos selected which will change for each “match.” There is a very good overview of South African Music by Neil Spencer with a link to related online musical resources at Spotify. I wanted to use one of the Township whistlers tunes as a theme tune for these posts but The Solven Whistlers aren’t on YouTube and Tom Hark is poorly served. So straight into Group A.

Group A; features South Africa, Mexico, France and Uruguay; perm any two from four. This is tough for South Africa but French manager Domench is in a private battle with Maradona on who can do worst with the best resources. South Africa are at home and did well in the Confederation Cup last year, Uruguay are one of my dark horses as Diego Forlan scores great goals in the World Cup and won the Europa Cup for Atletico Madrid, and Mexico usually get out of the group they are in, so a very evenly poised group. Can France leave out Nasri and ace forward Benzema and still survive? I doubt it! So June 22nd at 3pm will be shootout time. Interesting? Very interesting!

South Africa v Mexico; June 11th.

South Africa has a great musical history. Even before Paul Simon highlighted some of the township jive musicians on Graceland, Johnny Clegg had toured Europe and Hugh Masakela was well-known in the USA and UK. The Indestructible Beat of Soweto highlighted more  grassroots music in the 80s, and some of the current music is covered on Ayobaness; South African House. So here is DJ Mujava from Pretoria with the ‘Township Funk’ of Mugwanti;