Afropop Worldwide Folgen

On a hill in the northern suburbs of Lisbon, Portugal sits the neighborhood of Cova da Moura. Only a highway and a forest park separates it from the city center, but it could be an ocean away. Built in the 1970s by immigrants from former Portuguese colonies in Africa (namely Cape Verde and Angola) Kova M, as locals call it, is a community brimming with life. Cape Verdean Kriolu, not Portuguese, is the lingua franca, and funana, Kriolu rap and afro-house dominate the streets. We take a walk through the neighborhood and visit the local community center, Moinho da Juventude, whose free-to-use music studio has become a launchpad for an abundance of young talent. Here, the youth of Kova M turn out potent rap and afro-house and produce their own music videos. In doing so, they speak their truths of living in a neighborhood harshly kept in the margins of Portuguese society.

In West Africa, women are on the cutting edge of musical and cultural progress. This program looks at four singer/composers with roots in tradition and unique ideas about how to keep them current in the fast-changing milieu of today’s African music. Mali’s Fatoumata Diawara keeps her focus on messages, mixing traditional sounds and rock idioms to reach young audiences. Senegal’s Aida Samb is finding new avenues for that country’s trademark mbalax sound, including collaborations with Afrobeats stars like Wizkid. Elida Almeida of Cape Verde has emerged as a freewheeling composer, able to draw on whatever influences she likes, and it’s working for fans of all generations. And Benin’s Angelique Kidjo, never one to sit back on her many successes, has covered Talking Heads’ 1980 album Remain in Light, in its entirety, re-Africanizing a rock classic for a new time. We’ll speak with all four artists, and hear their latest music. Produced by Banning Eyre.

As work continues on the vast Afropop archive, producer Banning Eyre takes a deep dive and comes up with some gems. On the vinyl front, the focus is on South African and Zimbabwe, where the Afropop team collected a good deal of rare vinyl in the 1980s. Then Banning samples some his favorite field recordings from Zanzibar to Mali. In the age of YouTube, Pandora and Spotify, you might have the impression that all the music ever recorded is there at your finger tips. Here's proof that's not so. You'll hear music on this program you can't find anywhere else. Originally aired in 2015 [APWW #714]