Afropop Worldwide Folgen

The rumba and soukous of Congo-Zaire has infatuated listeners across the world for more than half a century. However, today in the neighborhoods of the capital, Kinshasa, there is a movement of musicians creating a new music that is at once more folkloric and rootsy as well as more innovative and cosmopolitan. Producer Nathaniel Braddock shares music and interviews from the months he spent in Kinshasa in 2024 working with musicians and instrument builders involved in creating new styles called "musique de recherche" or bofenia rock. PA 042

Grammy nominated ngoni virtuoso Bassekou Kouyate and his 8 piece band Ngoni Ba wowed the crowd at Lincoln Center in 2011. Ngoni Ba re-wired the ancient ngoni to create a dense, 21st century sound. We'll hear the concert and talk with Bassekou about hunters, his precocious son, and his future plans. We hear a very different take on the ngoni from Sidi Touré who made his U.S. debut at BAM in Brooklyn. Sidi Touré is from the legendary city of Gao in northern Mali, the seat the ancient Songhai empire. Then we go to Egypt to hear how artists from Port Said are making music for instruments that go back to the time of the Pharoahs. [Produced by Sean Barlow. Originally aired 11-09-2011] APWW #626

This program ventures into corners of Africa we rarely hear from, guided by adventurous field recordists and crate diggers. The Zomba Prison Project is a set of recordings by inmates at a maximum security prison in Malawi, one of the poorest nations on earth. The project’s debut CD was nominated for a Grammy Award. Here, we speak with the producer, Ian Brennan, and hear tracks from a volume of soulful, even heartbreaking, songs from the prison. We then go back to the 1960s and ‘70s in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta) to sample a gorgeous set recordings by Volta Jazz, Dafra Star, Les Imbattables Leopards and more. We hear from Florent Mazzoleni, the author and intrepid vinyl collector behind the new box set, Bobo Yéyé: Belle Époque in Upper Volta. Produced by Banning Eyre APWW #738