THE NEW AFRICAN CENTURY: Music and Music Videos from Africa

Africa is a vast continent, with vast cultures and each with subcultures. The continent is wonderfully diverse not only in terms of colour of people, geography, number of spoken languages and dialects but also in the differences in music genres, musical instruments, range of sounds, etc. For example, in every African country music tastes even differ along village, tribal and town lines. There are no other words to describe African music apart from saying it is pure magic. The beauty of African music is the stories, the tales and the messages contained in them that are often sang in ways that give that uniquely beautiful African experience that you can only get by listening to traditional and contemporary African music. Furthermore, the way in which Africans dance to music differs from other parts of the world and this is definitely and distinctively an essential part of African life. In other words, singing and dancing has always been a community and family thing in Africa. This is my attempt to showcase a variety of music from across ‘all’ genres as part of our African visual cultural discourse. For friends of Africa and followers on this blog welcome to the discourse on African music and culture and enjoy the music. May I point out that this is not an exhaustive list of all music genres from Africa or the definitive representation of all best videos from Africa. This is purely my taste and admittedly part of nostalgia. There is no particular order or preference the numbering is just keeping tabs of videos I have posted. Should you be interested please feel free to contribute what you think and comment on the videos and suggest what you think I need to add.

1. JOLIE DETTA AND LUAMBO

Here is one from 1986 A collaboration between Luambo Franco and the emerging star Jolie Detta.

This album is commonly known as 'Massu' due to the big hit song from the album which made its singer Jolie Detta a reluctant star. This is one of the finest LPs released by Franco and the Jolie Detta's sublime vocals.

2. MALAIKA

One of the most successful singing bands in African history is Malaika. Their first album went multi-platinum which has never been equaled in South African History. They are world-class vocalists who continually take their Kwaito beat to the top of musical charts, and their legendary live performances wow audiences. This is the song called Muntuza (2Bob) from their 2005 album Vuthelani.

3. NAMELESS

It all began when a man by the name of David Mathenge tried to compete in a Kenyan radio contest but could not think of a name for himself. So, to be named or to remain “Nameless” was the big question? Since then he had produced an endless stream of hits, one successful year after another and so on and on. You have to admit that an artist is gifted when blatant people such as Jamali have the audacity to steal his song and it still becomes a hit. This is David's 2008 hit titled Salari