Afropop Worldwide

This week we proudly drop a new Hip Deep show titled Africa in East Asia: Shanghai Jazz to Tokyo Rastafari. Afropop will look at how music from the African diaspora has reached Asia, and created some fascinatingly impressive new styles and artists in the process. Amidst our research we stumbled upon another example of two cultures colliding to create something totally unusual and awesome. This time it involves anime. Boxing Kid is a Japanese dancehall artist featured in our new program who runs with Mighty Jam Rock, just one of the many soundsystem outfits hailing from Japan. On this 2007 track, “Big Wave,” Boxing Kid is transformed into a high-tech, blunt-smoking anime character who finds himself driving across some nether-world Japanese desert in a tricked-out Jeep. In the horizon, Boxing Kid sees a pretty dancehall queen with a bag full of pilfered goodies looking for a ride. We’ll leave it at that and let you watch the rest. We immediately dug this mash two gigantic parts of creative culture (anime and dancehall) from seemingly opposing countries (Japan and Jamaica) effortlessly blending together resulting in something unheard and unseen. http://youtu.be/tvWRL-OLHcI Be sure to download or stream our new show Africa in East Asia: Shanghai Jazz to Tokyo Rastafari for similar surprising cultural blends.