Afropop Worldwide

Beneath the gloss of Nigeria’s contemporary pop, older roots styles, mostly derived from Yoruba tradition, still thrive. In this program, we meet four top stars of fuji music, the percussion-driven, message-heavy, and occasionally profane trance music that animates weddings and parties on a daily basis in hidden corners of Lagos. Rival “kings” K1 da Ultimate and Saheed Osupa, and a rare woman of f...

Technology is one of the great drivers of musical change, and often one of its least understood. In this episode, we explore the synthesizer, looking closely at the history of this ubiquitous (and often debated) piece of musical technology, and investigating how and why it was first used in a variety of African musics. Enabled by groundbreaking record reissues by synth pioneers like William Onyeab...

The 1970s was a decade that changed the world's popular music... No. Changed the world's culture. Whether you were boogieing to full-flower rock and funk, delving into free jazz, or discovering a hidden identity, the music was your constant companion. This was true in Africa as well. Ten years after most of the continent gained independence, new sounds were flourishing. This program samples the bo...

The leopard cult of Ekpe in Calabar, in present-day Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon, has one of the most unique performance traditions in all of Africa - a complex theatrical tradition, referred to in calabar English as "play," which encompasses a cycle of sacred dramas that takes many years to execute. The music of this society is almost completely unknown outside the region, because it was not...

There's a lot of fantastic music being made by Brazilian artists living in the U.S. They entertain an estimated 1.5 million Brazilian immigrants here as well as a growing number of other fans. And Brazilian music is enjoying a resurgence here - on Mazda commercials, endless bossa nova soundtracks played in upscale restaurants; inter-cultural collaborations and so on. We'll hear many of the best: J...

To make this unprecedented program, producer Ned Sublette traveled to Mbanza-Kongo, the ancient seat of the Kongo empire located in present-day northern Angola, where he spoke to Dr. Bárbaro Martínez Ruiz, professor of art and art history at Stanford. We’ll learn about the simbi, the spirits that Martínez Ruiz describes as “the multiple power of god”; hear Antonio Madiata play the lungoyi-ngoyi, t...

Haiti became the first black-ruled republic in the Americas in 1804, and music has mirrored, and at times shaped, the twists and turns of Haiti's politics and culture ever since. A primary source of Haitian culture is Dahomey, the birthplace of vodou--the most commonly held world view among Haitian people today. We explore how each of Haiti's rulers has championed his own preferred music. The Duva...

We explore the role music played in the creation of a uniquely Angolan consciousness as the country struggled toward independence in the 1960s and ‘70s after centuries of colonialism. Our guides will be producer Ned Sublette, on the ground in Angola, and Dr. Marissa Moorman, historian of southern Africa, and author of Intonations: A Social History of Music in Luanda, Angola from 1945 to Recent Tim...

Our Hip Deep edition “A Tale of Two Rebellions,” produced in August, 2007, recounts the stories of two remarkable military campaigns in early Islamic history. Both uprisings take place in the late 9th century, both involve Africans as key players, and both set the scene for the crystallization of the Sunni-Shi’ite divide in Islam, which of course continues to this day. Produced by Banning Eyre APW...

Scholar and author Joseph Braude guides us through the often overlooked popular music of the Persian Gulf, the music known as Khaliji. We learn about the Africans of places like Bahrain and Kuwait - slaves of yore - their free descendents, and more recent waves of African immigrants, notably from Sudan. This episode features spectacular historic recordings, such as the songs of the all but disappe...

Toumani Diabaté, the most celebrated kora player of his time, passed away in July, 2024, just days before his 59thbirthday. Afropop Worldwide was blessed to call Toumani a friend for over 30 years and to interview him some 15 times, often at his home in Bamako, Mali. In this episode we celebrate a life of massive virtuosity, creativity and innovation. Toumani overcame daunting obstacles and extend...

Jorge Ben Jor first began to experiment with fusions of samba, bossa nova, rhythm ‘n’ blues and soul in the early 1960s. Together with Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, he participated in the watershed cultural movement, Tropicália, in the late 1960s. In the 1970s, he further explored Afro-Brazilian history and culture in a series of popular albums that have since become key points of reference for...

Afropop returns to Senegal for a thrill-packed tour of Dakar nightlife and a first time visit to the rich traditional music tapestry of Casamance. We check in with Youssou N’Dour, Baaba Maal and Cheikh Lo, and meet stars like Cheikh Ibra Fam, Dieyla, Sahad and mbalax heartthrob Pape Diouf. In Casamance, we experience the frenzy of a female fertility ritual and the serenity of the Diebate kora fami...

Musical improvisation comes in many forms. A jazz player creates within the harmonic structure of a composition. A Shona mbira player in Zimbabwe improvises interactively with another player, and the audience, in some cases, an ancestor spirit. An Arabic maqam musician works within the elaborate set of rules governing the movement of melodies within one or more particular maqamat, or modes. How ar...

This Hip Deep episode is Part 1 of a two-part series comparing and contrasting approaches to musical improvisation. Beginning and ending with bebop and free jazz, Part 1 takes sidetrips into Ghanaian percussion traditions, Mande string and vocal music, and solo taqsim improvisation in Arabic music. With insights from UCLA’s A.J. Racy and Wesleyan University’s Eric Charry, among others, we launch a...

Umm Kulthum has been called the greatest singer in the Arabic speaking world in the 20th century. Born in 1904 the humble daughter of an Egyptian village imam, she went on to become a glamorous Cairo celebrity in her 20s, and soon after that, a cultural icon whose monthly live radio broadcasts brought much of Egypt to a standstill. She turned high poetry into popular culture. She extended musical...

This program presents a musical portrait of Bamako in the wake of crisis. We explore the precarious lives of griots in Bamako in the early 21st Century. The program draws on the groundbreaking documentary work of Lucy Duran, exploring how hereditary musicians apprentice and grow in various cultural contexts. In this case, we focus on the upbringing and education of children in these hereditary gri...

Cheikha Rimitti was more than Algeria's musical icon - she was the embodiment of defiance itself. Born into a life of poverty and oppression, her powerful voice resonated as the rallying cry for the marginalized, fearlessly giving voice to the forbidden themes of love, sexuality, and political injustice. Rimitti's music ignited a fire for independence, challenging societal norms with each daring...

Over the years, as barriers to international touring in the U.S. have risen, and more and more talented African and African diaspora artists have made their homes in American towns and cities, the sounds and voices of Africa have become more and more common on local scenes. In this edition of Afropop's "Africa in America" series, we spotlight women, Marie Daulne (of Zap Mama) collaborating with NY...

This joyful celebration of gospel music greats brings together Africa and America. Ladysmith Black Mambazo is the South African male a capela choral group singing in the local vocal styles of isicathamiya and mbube. They became known internationally after singing with American Paul Simon on his joyous Grammy Award winning 1986 album Graceland. The Fairfield Four, started over 100 years ago, won a...

It's been decades since house and techno music exploded out of South Side Chicago and inner-city Detroit, and most Americans still don't know their dance music history. In 1977 a DJ named Frankie Knuckles moved to Chicago to spin and remix disco records at an underground club called The Warehouse. Out of a fringe subculture that formed there - gay and African-American - house music would emerge to...

Elijah Wald, acclaimed author of “Escaping the Blues: Robert Johnson the Invention of the Blues”, talks with producer Ned Sublette, and plays lesser-known recordings by Peetie Wheatstraw, Lonnie Johnson, Leroy Carr and others, who provided source material for some of Johnson’s classic tunes. APWW #452 Produced by Ned Sublette in 2005

The Harlem Renaissance was a vibrant 1920s-1930s Black cultural movement centered in Harlem, a hub for African American creativity, literature (Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston), music (jazz, blues), and art (Aaron Douglas), fueled by the Great Migration and a desire to redefine Black identity that forged a new sense of Black Pride. In this program, we hear less well known artists such as James...

Sierra Leone has deep reserves of resilience, and an ability to come together and overcome great obstacles embedded in its culture. To provide the kind of history that is all too often overlooked when reporting on current events on the African continent, we are encoring this Hip Deep episode, which explores the nation’s past. When Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961, Freetown swayed to the be...

Nestled between Ghana, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Nigeria, Benin is a rich sliver of West Africa too often overlooked. This program puts Afropop's spotlight on Benin, starting with the country's favorite daughter. International star Angelique Kidjo looks back on her musical education in the Benin capital, Cotonou, as she walks us through the songs on her album Oyo, which spans covers of songs by Jam...