Fantastic new videos keep flooding in at Afropop Central. Here’s a new set to brighten your weekend.
Buena Vista Social Club veteran Eliades Ochoa is still delivering sweet, sensuous guajiro at age 77. His new album, aptly titled Guajiro, drops on May 26. Here’s a taste.
Gotopo is a dynamic young Venezuelan singer/songwriter based in Berlin. Her expressions of Afro-Venezuelan identity are explored in this song, “Malembe.” Her debut cd is out on Waxploitation later in May.
Last year’s collaboration between Malian singer Rokia Koné and producer Jacknife Lee made a lot of top 10 lists. Their first track since, “Fanga,” is just out. Here Rokia draws on the wisdom of Mali’s griots to share the message that every life on earth has a purpose and a destiny. From the great elephant to the tiny ant, each has their own strength and power, or fanga. The song invites us to step forward and face our destiny.
Afrobeats sensation Adekunle Gold needs no introduction. He has one of the warmest touches of all the major artists in the genre. His latest “Party No Dey Stop” is no exception.
Egyptian protest rocker Ramy Essam has been at the center of his country’s tumultuous artistic history since he rallied crowds at Tahrir Square in 2011. On his latest track, “In My Silence Is My Death,” he once again adapts poetry of Galal El-Behairy (in Badr Prison, Egypt). Galal released the poem when he started a hunger strike on March 5, 2023, which marked five years since his arrest.
Last but not least, two ground-breaking kora albums. Senegalese kora maestro Sekou Keita has been touring the world with Cuban pianist Omar Sosa. Here, he joins forces with the BBC Concert Orchestra in “The Future Strings Variation.”
And finally, for now, the world’s best-known madly collaborative kora man, Mali’s Toumani Diabaté, joins forces with Kayhan Kalhor, virtuoso of the Iranian kamancheh fiddle. The performance goes back to 2016, but has just been released by Real World Records on the album, The Sky Is the Same Colour Everywhere. Blissful!
