Afropop Worldwide

Even by the impossibly high standards of the Apollo Theater, this year's Africa Now! lineup exudes cool. The annual celebration of African culture takes place March 26 at the legendary Harlem venue, and features a number of Afropop favorites including Tuareg guitar hero Bombino, and the retro East African pop of Alsarah and the Nubatones. Tickets are on sale now via Ticketmaster, and you may want to buy sooner rather than later. Fans of African music packed the Apollo to capacity when the Ghanaian rapper Sarkodie was in town in August and there's every reason to believe this show could sell out as well. As mentioned, the fleet-fingered master of the desert blues, Bombino is headlining. A newer artist from Ghana, Jojo Abot, is also bringing her genre-bending music to the stage. We're all pretty pumped for Mokoomba, described by Afropop's Banning Eyre as “quite simply the most impressive band Zimbabwe has produced in recent memory.” And coming from not so far away, Alsarah and Nubatones will be venturing uptown from Brooklyn to play what the bandleader describes as East African retro-pop, which comes “from the taarab sounds of Zanzibar, to the music of Central Sudan, to the Nubian songs of return from southern Egypt and North Sudan.”