Afropop Worldwide Afropop Worldwide

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 poor man. In this episode we hear the man, the music and the remembrances of those whose lives were changed by his extraordinary generosity. Produced by Banning Eyre.

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 exclusionary policies of reactionary president, Jair Bolsonaro, especially through local variants of hip-hop and reggae. Produced in Belo Horizonte by David Katz, this program explores the intricacies of the city’s homegrown resistance movements, based in squatted buildings and public spaces in the city center and peripheral favelas on the outskirts. It reveals the surprising complexities of the renowned Belo Horizonte rap scene, which is intricately linked to improv theatre and urban poetry movements, with a revived Carnival culture, African-Brazilian Candomblé and baile funk all part of the local form’s very distinctive musical backdrop; the smaller reggae scene also addresses issues such as social exclusion, income disparity, racial bias, gender discrimination, transphobia and environmental crises. In the show, we’ll hear from rappers such as Roger Deff, Samora Nzinga and the leftfield duo of Hot e Oreia, as well as Leo Vidigal of the Deska Reggae sound system and Zaika dos Santos of Salto, the city’s first female-run sound; Tiago Lopes of the Rastafari collective Roots Ativa and former rapper Kdu dos Anjos and guide us through the permaculture and upcycled fashion projects they have established in the massive favela complex of Aglomerada da Serra, providing employment and social integration to some of the city’s most disenfranchised residents.

APWW #812
Originally produced in 2020

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, black history has long been silenced. In this Hip Deep episode, we use music to explore that history as we take a road trip across the country in search of sonic traces of Afro-Mexico.

We visit the state of Veracruz to learn the history of the Afro-Mexican son jarocho sound, made famous by Ritchie Valens' 1958 hit cover of "La Bamba," a traditional jarocho tune. Then, we visit the Costa Chica of Guerrero, where Afro-Mexican communities are fighting for government recognition to help preserve faltering musical traditions. And we'll stop by the golden-age halls of Mexico City, where the Afro-Cuban danzón thrives far from its ancestral home in Havana. Along the way, we hear from top scholars in the field such as Ben Vinson III and Alejandro Madrid, as well as Afro-Mexican music stars past and present, from Los Cojolites to Las Cafeteras. ¡Que padre!

APWW #658

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 to a whole new wave of West African popular music. Afropop Worldwide was on hand to record the show, and this program takes us back to the time when N’Dour was still firmly rooted in the mbalax tradition, his famed experiments with international styles just beginning. Produced by Sean Barlow.

APWW #12

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 history has given us. Produced by Banning Eyre.