Afropop Worldwide
Afropop Worldwide is an internationally syndicated weekly radio series, online guide to African and world music, and an international music archive, that has introduced American listeners to the music cultures of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean since 1988. Our radio program is hosted by Georges Collinet from Cameroon, the radio series is distributed by Public Radio International to 110 stations in the U.S., via XM satellite radio, in Africa via and Europe via Radio Multikulti.
Episodes
April 25, 2024 • 59 mins
The Malawi Broadcasting Corporation recorded a goldmine of local music in the 1960s and 70s, but the tapes were neglected and close to ruined when broadcaster Waliko Makhala raised the alarm. With help from the Norwegian embassy and Norwegian broadcaster Sigbjorn Nedland, digitization got underway. In this program, we sample the results guided by Waliko, Sigbjorn and Martin White, curator of African Poems, a website dedicated to pr...
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April 18, 2024 • 59 mins
In 1991, Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited made their second tour of the United States. It was a fascinating transitional moment in the band’s history. Mapfumo had recently added two musicians playing the metal-pronged, Shona mbira, enriching the band’s lineup of guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, brass and percussion. The band had now evolved into a kind of folk orchestra in which everyone sang, allowing for beautifully layered...
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April 16, 2024 • 51 mins
In this episode, producer Elodie Maillot in Paris reviews the career of mercurial Algerian-French singer, composer and activist Rachid Taha, who died in 2018. With remembrances from producers Steve Hillage, Justin Adams and others, the podcast brings to life a singular life and musical career. Taha merged rock and rai music, love poetry and fierce critique, gentle sensitivity and world-weary toughness. Today, his impact continues t...
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April 11, 2024 • 59 mins
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 mater...
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April 4, 2024 • 59 mins
In this episode, we'll trace the history of country music, highlighting the often-overlooked contributions of Black artists and fans. We'll travel to Kenya to meet rising country stars who are bringing their own unique sounds to the genre. Hear their takes on the hits of Don Williams, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, and more. We'll also explore the history of Black country music with music historian Elijah Wald. Tune in for an intervie...
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April 2, 2024 • 42 mins
In this episode, Planet Afropop’s Lagos correspondent Fay Fay profiles a unique multi-generational band on the Nigerian scene: Alternative Reflective Beats (ARB). True to their name, ARB's music embodies the vibrant rhythms of Afrobeat intertwined with a fusion of other genres. Their mission is to maintain their distinct musical identity while creating songs that appeal to both live audiences and streaming enthusiasts. By staying t...
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March 28, 2024 • 59 mins
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 v...
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March 21, 2024 • 59 mins
This program focuses on four female artists whose music is full of challenging messages for a challenged world. Climate change, womens’ empowerment, police brutality, official corruption… All that and more in new work from Angelique Kidjo, Dobet Gnaore, Fatoumata Diaouara and Shungudzo, plus a dive into Octavia Butler’s prescient cautionary tales with Toshi Reagon. Produced by Banning Eyre.
APWW #827
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March 19, 2024 • 54 mins
Afropop Worldwide took 24 adventurous listeners to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and Zanzibar in February. In this episode, Dar music veteran and aficionado John Kitime takes us through highlights, including the frenetic and risqué singeli music-and-dance craze currently electrifying the country. We also get Kitime's unique insider perspective, and some deep history, on Swahili rumba, still going strong in Dar Es Salaam nightclubs.
PA...
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March 14, 2024 • 59 mins
In West Africa, women are on the cutting edge of musical and cultural progress. This program looks at four singer/composers with roots in tradition and unique ideas about how to keep them current in the fast-changing milieu of today’s African music. Mali’s Fatoumata Diawara keeps her focus on messages, mixing traditional sounds and rock idioms to reach young audiences. Senegal’s Aida Samb is finding new avenues for that country’s t...
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March 7, 2024 • 59 mins
Cheikha Rimitti was certainly a queen. For some, she was the queen of raï (pronounced RYE), which means “opinion" in Arabic. For others, she was the queen of freedom, an Algerian Statue of Liberty wielding the fire of independence, as she sang daringly and frankly about love, sexuality, poverty, drinking and oppression. She defied taboos and her music was often banned. She used to say that "misfortune was her teacher” but she becam...
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March 5, 2024 • 44 mins
Bongeziwe Mabandla is a maverick South African singer-songwriter whose music draws on many of his country’s rich styles, but cannot be reduced to any of them. Along with his Mozambican producer Tiago Correira Paulo, he has developed a unique, keyboard-driven sound with deep, meditative textures. Planet Afropop’s Mukwae Wabei Siyolwe calls it “music you can dance to, pray to, cry to, and celebrate to.” In this episode Mukwae speaks ...
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February 29, 2024 • 59 mins
To kick off Women's History Month, DJ Kix returns with Georges Collinet to take us on a musical journey across Africa, showcasing some of the continent’s formidable women who are quickly rising in the industry and making their presence known. In this episode, we’ll hear from: top Namibian MC, Lioness; Zimbabwean Afro-fusion artist, Gemma Griffiths; as well as Kaleo Sansaa from Zambia with her “sun-drunk” sounds and “solar-based” hi...
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February 22, 2024 • 59 mins
There’s been a lot of speculation about the chain of musical events that link the blues back to Africa. Most of that chain is unrecorded and shrouded in mystery. But there is one chapter, just before the blues, that we do know quite a lot about. That’s the history of African-American string bands. This program explores the history, with music and memories from a special guest: the late string maestro Howard Armstrong. Along the way...
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February 20, 2024 • 45 mins
The season of Carnival (Carnaval), in Guadeloupe brings the unmistakable sounds of music from the local culture clubs to the streets like no other carnival in the world. Every Sunday from the new year to Ash Wednesday, The islanders take turns showing off their cultural traditions. Enslaved Africans, were prohibited from assembling because of Article 16 of the “Code Noir” promulgated by the King of France, Louis XIV, in 1685. Afte...
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February 15, 2024 • 59 mins
This program traces the history of this most American of instruments from its ancestors in West Africa through the Caribbean and American South and into the present, as a new generation of Black women artists reclaim the banjo as their own. Rhiannon Giddens, Bassekou Kouyate, Bela Fleck and more talk claw-hammers, trad jazz, Appalachian folk, African ancestors and the on-going story of American music, which would be woefully incomp...
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February 8, 2024 • 59 mins
Foundational for Broadway and the movies, intertwined with jazz, tap dancing is a Great American Art. Strap on your shoes and shuffle along as we trace the history of tap and celebrate the Black artists and innovators who built--and continue to build--this art form. From its murky origins melding African percussion and Anglo-Irish step dancing, to tap's golden age and its ongoing evolution. Produced by Ben Richmond.
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February 6, 2024 • 52 mins
Every winter, starting in February, the organizers of the annual Nuits D’Afrique festival put on a battle of the Afropop bands. Bands face off, three a night at Club Balatou, and the audience votes a winner for the night. Eventually, the field comes down to nine finalists, and that’s when we at Afropop are asked to pick the winner of the Afropop prize from those nine acts. So as the festival is about to kick off again this year,we...
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February 1, 2024 • 59 mins
This Hip Deep episode presents the stunning radio premiere of "Oh, David," the traditional song of the annual Easter Rock in Winnsboro, Louisiana. The Easter Rock is in fact a surviving ringshout—the oldest known form of African American music—but it's about 600 miles west of the ringshout's heartland in Georgia. It's located across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg in the Louisiana Delta, where they don't call it a "ringshout,"...
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January 25, 2024 • 59 mins
In today’s pop music, everybody is a composer. But what about the classics? The songs that last? In this program we survey African musicians reinterpreting each other’s songs, as well as songs from far outside their traditions. And we hear foreign takes on African diaspora music. From Louis Armstrong’s “Skokiaan” to Alpha Blondy’s “Whole Lotta Love,” it’s a journey of discovery and rediscovery. Produced by Banning Eyre.
APWW #854
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