Afropop Worldwide

The Cumbia Diaspora: From Colombia to the World by Afropop Worldwide

When Zimbabwe’s dynamic roots band Mokoomba had a chance meeting with a house music producer and an American kamelengoni (Malian pentatonic harp) player, the sparks flew. A few weeks later, they all gathered for two days to write and record a song aimed at the lucrative Afro-House, DJ remix market. In this Zimbabwe-focused episode, we hear new mbira music from Mary Anibal and Othnell Mangoma Moyo,...

Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian musical giants have long enjoyed the spotlight, yet throughout Latin America there are other black enclaves producing some of the New World's most vibrant music. Their stories have gone untold for far too long. In this episode, Afropop explores these lost sounds, starting in an Ecuadorian desert valley where African and Andean traditions have mixed seamlessly into fie...

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Tsapiky is fierce, joyful, high-energy, electric-guitar driven dance music from southwest Madagascar. Producers Morgan Greenstreet and Boris Paillard went to Tuléar to record and interview today’s main female players in the tsapiky scene. The music is typically performed in “bal poussières” (dust balls, mandriampototse in malagasy) ) that can last from three days to a week—non stop! In this episod...

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New York City has long been a major incubator for Latin music with its large populations of Puerto Rican, Dominican, Panamanian, Cuban, and Colombian musicians and music fans. We celebrate some of the giants of New York’s Latin music scene—Ray Barretto, Larry Harlow, Jerry Gonzalez—as well as less well known artists. Topics include the cross-pollination between Latin music and jazz, the Panama con...

Planet Afropop - Afro Nation by Afropop Worldwide

In this Hip Deep program, we explore musical connections between Africa and India. First up is the story of the Afro-Indian Sidi community. In the 13th century, Africans arrived in India as soldiers in the armies of Muslim conquerors. Some were able to rise through the ranks to become military leaders and even rulers. Their descendants continue to live in India today, performing African-influenced...

Yes, it’s the age of South African House, Afrobeats, Afro R&B and the likes, but roots music lives on in South Africa. This show updates the Zulu pop music known as maskanda, with a look back at its history and a survey of the current scene--rich musically, but troubled by fan rivalry that can lead to violence and even deaths. We’ll hear nimble ukapika guitar playing, heavy Zulu beats and bracing...

North African music receives very little coverage in the United States. There are no high-profile mixes of recent Tunisian underground dance music from hip DJs, and no young Algerian musicians with major distribution deals in the U.S. So we decided to explore what exactly is going on in this part of the world. We trace the origins of some of the region’s most interesting current music to the banli...

Bongo Nation: Tanzania's Music Economy by Afropop Worldwide

This program tells the story of generations of creative musicians from Benin who translate traditional, largely Vodun occult music into popular and experimental music. We hear traditional music styles including tchinkoumé, agbadja, and kakagbo, and explore how, starting in the 1970s, Sagbohan Danialou (a singer, drummer, guitarist and composer known as "l'homme orchestre," the one-man-band) and To...

New Orleans, Louisiana is home to some of America's greatest musical traditions, and plays an outsized influence on the evolution of everything from jazz through to r&b, rock and funk. Today, the city is still legendary for its second line brass bands and brightly costumed Mardi Gras Indians. But if you've rolled through New Orleans on pretty much any night in the last 30 years, you've probably he...

Foutanga Babani Sissoko, known also as Baba Sora, was one of the most generous patrons of Malian musicians, particularly griots, in modern times. His gifts of cash, gold, cars and houses are legendary, and the amount of music he inspired was voluminous. But the source of all those riches turned out to be dubious, to say the least. And when he died in March 2021, he had spent his latter years a poo...

The Abakuá society of Cuba conserves with remarkable orthodoxy language and rituals from the Ekpe society of West Africa. For The Cameroon-Cuba Connection, Dr. Ivor Miller shares with Georges Collinet and Ned Sublette his decades of research into the roots of Cuban Abakuá in Cameroon. Featuring ceremonial and pop music of southern and southwestern Cameroon, as well as Abakuá-themed music from Cuba...

Belo Horizonte is Brazil’s sixth largest city and including its surrounding districts, the country’s third largest metropolitan area. The capital of Minas Gerais, a state built on mining, dairy products and coffee production, Belo Horizonte is often seen as a parochial, conservative backwater, yet its thriving alternative arts scene provides robust forms of musical and cultural resistance to the e...

Much has been made of Mexico's rich Spanish and indigenous heritage, but until recently there's been little talk of Mexico's so-called "Third Root": Africa. Africans came to Mexico with the Spanish as soldiers and slaves -- so many that by 1810, the black population of Mexico was equal to that of the United States. Today, African heritage persists throughout Mexico, yet for a variety of reasons, b...

In 1989, very few Americans had heard the extraordinary voice of the man destined to be named “Best African Artists of the 20th Century.” Senegal’s Youssou N’Dour and his juggernaut mbalax band Le Super Etoile had played at The Ritz in New York three years earlier, and had recently been signed to Virgin Records. N’Dour’s own star was undoubtedly on the rise. But for many, this was an introduction...

The Amizigh, or Berber, are the original inhabitants of North Africa, which means their roots run deeper than the region’s better known Arab or European inhabitants. Berber history and music span from ancient sounds from the Atlas and Kabyle mountains to the latest pop fusions. In this, the first of Afropop’s Berber music series, we get the history and hear some of the extraordinary music that his...

The long awaited follow-up to Afropop's popular 2002 program "Berber Rising" brings listeners up to date on music being made by the original inhabitants of North Africa, the Imazighen, or Berber. The program will include interviews and music from Takfarinas, Malika Zarra, Idir, Amazight, Fatima Tabaamrant, Iness Mezel, Najat Aâtabou and more. We'll take the pulse of the Berber village, the push fo...

The 20th edition of Planet Afropop marks the end of our first season. In this episode, we sample top new music picks from Mukwae and Banning, Georges remembers a childhood sweetheart, Mukwae interviews Bermudian DJ Noise Cans, and Banning interviews Samuel Rose of the Swanky Kitchen Band from the Cayman Islands.

From the 1970s to the present—hip-hop and Afrobeats notwithstanding—the most beloved and popular music in Senegal has been and remains mbalax. Mbalax grew out of a scene where urban bands Dakar bands like the Star Band and Orchestra Baobab were experimenting with Afro-Cuban music, funk and other foreign styles, blending and mixing them with local traditions. Perhaps inevitably, Wolof sabar drummin...

In this episode of Planet Afropop, we explore the music and language of the Caribbean coasts’ Afro-indigenous Garinagu People of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, St. Vincent, and Nicaragua commonly known as the Garifuna. The official story is that these are descendants of enslaved Africans who were shipwrecked on the Island of St. Vincent in 1635. The distinct Garifuna language and music challenge thi...

The "taarab" music of East Africa's Swahili coast offers an amazing history lesson. Bantu and coastal Africans, Arabs, Portuguese, Germans, Brits, and Indians all figure in. With guest, anthropologist and author, Kelly Askew, this Hip Deep program explores the taarab music of Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, Tanga, and Mombasa, Kenya. The show features rare recordings by the likes of taarab pioneer Siti B...