NEW YORK, March 30, 2012 – About.com announced today that Afropop Worldwide has been selected as the
About.com 2012 Readers' Choice Award for both Best World Music Radio Show and Best World Music Website. Now in its fifth year, the About.com Readers' Choice Awards honor the best products, features and services across more than a dozen categories, ranging from technology to hobbies to entertainment to parenting and more, as selected by its readers. Owned by the New York Times, the About.com network sees over 75 million visitors per month.
Megan Romer, the World Music Guide for About.com said "I was pleased, but not the least bit surprised, to see my regular readers and Afropop Worldwide fans turn out in such large numbers in support of the show and the website. The weekly broadcast is a staple in my house, and I've spent many hours digging deeper and deeper into the Afropop website -- I count myself among one of their biggest fans!"
moreFor 24 years, Afropop Worldwide, hosted by broadcast personality
Georges Collinet from Cameroon, has stood at the cutting edge. From its first broadcast in 1988, the public radio series coined a new term, Afropop, and fostered a new understanding of the African continent and its cultural diaspora. Afropop broadcasts gave Americans their first exposure to now-legendary artists: Youssou N’Dour, Salif Keita, Franco, Cesaria Évora, Hakim, Khaled, Angélique Kidjo, Chico Science, Los Van Van, and many others.Our live recordings of these artists are treasures. Also covered by Afropop are the rise of global rappers such as K’Naan, Baloji, Blitz the Ambassador, the international cumbia explosion, kuduro out of Angola, baille funk out of Brazil, DJ culture sampling the world and much more.
Afropop’s field research has taken listeners and web fans to exciting musical destinations such as Mali, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Cape Verde, Angola, both Congos, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Angola, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Keyna, Ethiopia, Egypt, Morocco, Cuba, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, Peru, Mexico, Belize, Ecuador, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Curaçao, Trinidad, Jamaica, France, Portugal, Spain, the U.K., several American cities and more. Afropop Worldwide is distributed by
PRI Public Radio International to over 100 stations in the U.S.
Afropop Worldwide creator and Executive Producer Sean Barlow said, “We congratulate all the finalists. And on behalf of Afropop’s Board of Directors and our superb creative team--several of whom have worked together since Day 1—host
Georges Collinet, Senior Producer and Senior Editor of Afropop.org
Banning Eyre, Chief Audio Engineer
Michael Jones, Senior Producer
Ned Sublette, New Media Producer
Saxon Baird, web designers
Didier Garcia, Justin Douglas and
Larry Larson as well as our corps of producers including
Marlon Bishop, Wills Glasspiegel and Simon Rentner, we are very happy to receive this recognition. We thank all of our listeners, web users and industry colleagues for your votes. And we hope to keep earning your ears and eyes and hearts and minds for many years to come.”
Barlow continued: “We are also very proud that the founders of numerous musical ensembles, publications, record labels, media offerings, websites and concert venues have cited Afropop as a key inspiration in launching their endeavors."
Melinda Ward, Senior Vice President for PRI Content says “We are delighted to hear of Afropop Worldwide’s top honors in the About.com awards. Well deserved! Our station affiliates consistently tell us their listeners give the weekly series high marks for the warm charisma of host Georges Collinet, the unique reportage offered, and the overall excellence of the production led by Executive Producer Sean Barlow.”
Afropop’s website, www.afropop.org, launched in 1997, was one of the first websites on African music, and one of the first for any public radio program. The site has kept pace with technology and now offers original audio, video, a rich blog, and the most extensive archive on African music to be found on the web. Since 2003, with support from the National Endowment of the Humanities, Afropop Worldwide has produced a set of programs that blend music with history and other disciplines. The series is called Hip Deep, and its 70+ programs and web resources are permanently available at www.afropop.org/hipdeep.
*A note on the contest process: The About.com World Music Expert guide, Megan Romer, sent out requests for nominations on the major social networking sites (Facebook, twitter), as well as world music industry listserves. A request for nominations was also sent to the World Music GuideSite Newsletter subscribers and it was mentioned in her blog. Five finalists were selected directly from the nominees, based on a straight tally. There was about a month window to vote in seven categories, including best world music venue, festival, record label, artists.
For More information Contact us at
Info@afropop.org
