We end our journey around Africa with a video of my all-time favorite African band…THE SAND FAMILY! Okay, so this isn’t an African band — it’s me playing All Around This World music with my kids sevearl years ago while we were on our first nationwide summer tour. But we were playing an African song, “A Hiyeni” from Mozambique, which turned out pretty well, and of course the idea of actually tying up a three month musical journey around Africa with one real “favorite” musician is such a fruitless endeavor (though I’m tempted . . . .) Thank you for traveling around Africa with me. Onward!
Tag Archives | Africa
K’naan’s ABCs
Somali-born artist K’naan fuses international hip hop with Ethio-Jazz to make transcontinental musical magic. If you like this video of K’naan — which you will — also check out Sudanese-born Emmanuel Jal. His “Gua,” rapped in Arabic, Nuer, Dinka and English, is a powerful plea from peace from former “War Child.” (If you’re hungry for more, eat the Jal way.)
Bombino’s African Explosion
Bring it on, Bombino!
Though Around This World usually defaults to African music that has proven itself over generations, we’re going to spend this week — our week looking back on three months exploring Africa — by celebrating some of the most electrifying African musicians of today. We start in Niger where Tuareg guitarist Bombino ROCKS the Sahara. Watch this clip of Bombino live at the foot of the Mosque of Agadez — if Hendrix played desert blues….
Amazed by Africa
This week our online class celebrates SUCCESS! In our last three months of classes we’ve been traveling, metaphorically, around the very real continent of Africa, celebrating the history, culture and, most enthusiastically, the many many musics of this infinitely extraordinary continent. We sang, we danced, and we sang some more. We take this last week to enjoy some of our favorite African music, bittersweet for we know we’ll soon be moving on.
Zimbabwe: a Hyper-Inflated Sense of Awesome
For this week’s online class we travel south in Africa to Zimbabwe, a country whose recent history is full of high highs, such as that of gaining independence, and low lows, such as unfathomable hyper-inflation, all set to the bounding musical soundtrack of an ancient thumb piano, a man nicknamed Tuku and some guys who used to tend chickens. Let’s go.
Making Music in Mali
In this week’s online class for kids we visit Mali, a vast desert land which, a thousand so years ago, was home to a series of empires that controlled the strategically significant trans-Saharan trade route. Today Mali is at more of a metaphorical crossroads — torn between modernization in its cities and Islamic fundamentalism which holds strong sway in the North. In class we put politics aside and focus on Mali’s music, which sounds both ancient and modern, and resolutely regal. Let’s go!
What are we Singing This Season?
In class this season we have the pleasure of learning family-friendly songs from all over the awe-inspiring African continent. If you want to dive even deeper definitely check out All Around This World: Africa, a dazzling double CD — 32 studio recordings of songs we sing in our Africa classes, co-produced with musicians from all over Africa. There’s a little bit of everything on it for you and your kids, from Cape Verdean samba to Malagasy salegy, from Algerian rai to South African isicathamiya and more. If you order the physical CD — allaroundthisworld.bandcamp.com! — you’ll get an exciting little booklet with lyrics and a map of Africa that shows you where the songs originated. If you want to stream it, one digital CD at a time, I guess that’s fine too.
Africa……..? AWESOME!
We’re here! Africa Africa Africa. For the next three months in our online classes for kids we have both the ultimate pleasure, and the sincere responsibility, of exploring the vast African continent, meeting an extraordinary number of African countries and culture through music. Our class this week introduces us to a few of our soon-to-be favorite songs. Let’s go!
Philly Lutaaya sings Tulo Tulo
This week in class we sing “Tulo Tulo,” a Ugandan lullaby, which we first learned from Eastern Uganda’s Abayudaya Jews.: “Tulo tulo, go to sleep my pretty baby, dream sweetly through the night….” Enjoy this performance of “Tulo Tulo” by Philly Lutaaya, one of Uganda’s most admired musicians. Before Lutaaya passed away in 1989, a victim of AIDS, he became one of the first prominent voices in Africa to speak out about the disease. Toward the end of his life he performed and lectured in schools and churches around the nation, speaking for the dignity of people living with HIV. His last album was the before-its-time, stunningly frank, “Alone and Frightened.”
Yeeeeeeah! Ugandan Dance Party
Dance party! East African dance party, to be exact. This week in class we chant “Keenene,” a Ugandan song and story that empowers us and our little kids to demand to eat raspberries. The song appears in W. Moses Serwadda’s collection, “Songs and Stories from Uganda” embedded in a tale about how some village children accepted help from an unfamiliar animal named Baluba and he ultimately provided a feast for them, including a voluminous amount of raspberries, which they shared with their neighbors. The Ugandan song in this video has nothing to do with Beluba…but doesn’t it make you want to dance?
