São Luís do Maranhão is one of the poorest and most ethnically-diverse cities in Brazil. In this old slave port, located in the far northeast of the country, a thriving reggae scene has wielded disproportionate influence since the 1970s, based on an overarching taste for obscure roots reggae from the Jamaican countryside and vintage lover’s roc ...…

We go to Miami to enjoy highlights from the 21st annual Afro Roots Fest at the the North Beach Bandshell. Co-headliners are the sublime griot singer Noura Mint Seymali from Mauritania and the Grammy-nominated diva Fatoumata Diawara from Mali. Noura graces us with special backstage performance of the ancient harp, ardine. And Fatoumata sings a c ...…

Afro-Sweden? Who knew? Over the past 60 years, a number of musicians from Africa and its diaspora have come to base themselves, or have been born, in Sweden. And recently, they have emerged as a collective voice in Swedish society. From the acoustic Mande folk of Sousou and Maher Cissoko, to the kaleidoscopic hip-hop of Timbuktu, and the smooth ...…

Yes, it’s the age of South African House, Afrobeats, Afro R&B and the likes, but roots music lives on in South Africa. This show updates the Zulu pop music known as maskanda, with a look back at its history and a survey of the current scene--rich musically, but troubled by fan rivalry that can lead to violence and even deaths. We’ll hear nimble ...…

A lot has happened since Afropop last visited Zimbabwe. The 37-year regime of Robert Mugabe has ended, and Thomas Mapfumo, the Lion of Zimbabwe, has staged a triumphant return concert after a 14-year absence. Meanwhile, the country’s youth now moves to the groove of Zim-Dancehall from the likes of reigning star Winky D, and gospel-trad roots mu ...…

In the early 2000s, Afropop told the story of “Four Generations” in Congolese music—from rumba and rumba-rock to soukous and ndombolo. Now time has marched on, and once again, thrilling new sounds are emerging from Kinshasa and its global diaspora. We’ll hear hyperkinetic roots-rock from Jupiter and Okwess, Fally Ipupa’s embrace of the current ...…

In the 70s and 80s Ivory Coast’s capital Abidjan was a major musical hub in West Africa. After a series of political crises, Abidjan is back. The Zouglou sound of the 1990s and the coupé decalé rage that followed are being reinvented in the era of Afrobeats and African hip-hop. The group Magic System is now invited to play major events in Franc ...…

The 2018 edition of the world music exposition WOMEX went down in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands with 300 artists and 2700 delegates from 92 countries. There was a lot to chew on. But one of the hidden wonders of WOMEX is the intimate European Broadcast Union radio studio. That’s where Afropop Worldwide and KEXP, Seattle, hoste ...…

In 2019, for the first time, Afropop Worldwide hosted a stage at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Our lineup features innovative new sounds out of Africa, including Jojo Abot from Ghana, Adekunle Gold and Aramide from Nigeria, groundbreaking deejay AfrotroniX, Nsimbi from Uganda. We’ll meet the artists, sample their sets, and take in the gr ...…

The latest music craze to hit South African dance floors is a dark, pulsating and energetic sound called gqom. For the past seven years, a young and technologically skilled generation in Durban, KwaZulu Natal, has created and finessed a sound that has the world hooked and wanting more. It is an entire cultural movement complete with distinctive ...…

On a return trip to Madagascar, we catch up with and hear new music from tsapiky maestro Damily, the “king of salegy” Jaojoby, an exciting new duo starring Sammy of Tarika Sammy, Toko Telo and more. This music-rich edition is filled with entrancing and hard-to-find roots pop. In the wake of 2018’s hard-fought presidential election, Madagascar f ...…

Trinidadians call their annual Carnival "the greatest show on earth," and with good reason. The Carnival season brims over with art and music: steelpan, calypso, soca and extravagant masquerade costumes. In this program, we take a look at how these Carnival arts are kept alive in today's Trinidad. At this moment in time, Carnival is in flux. Co ...…

With Mardi Gras Indians straight out of New Orleans, Afro-Futurism coming from Mozambique via Dusseldorf, dub-inflected Colombian cumbia , gritty psychedelic South African punk and a grand Cuban mambo band, New York’s annual celebration of cultural music was back with a vengeance at the Copacabana. Sit down with Gato Preto, Orquesta Akokan and ...…

The island of Hispaniola, located in the western Caribbean, is divided in two by an invisible line that snakes down its central mountain range. On one side is Haiti, the other the Dominican Republic: one colonized by the French, the other by Spain. The island was the first place in the Americas colonized by Europeans, and was the place where tr ...…

Afropop returns to Dakar, Senegal to catch up with the latest in that country's dominant music style, the bracing, dynamic genre known as mbalax. We'll hear the latest from Youssou N'Dour, Wally Seck, Pape Diouf and others, and meet lesser known artists working the Dakar scene. We'll also meet a remarkable artist from Senegal's southern Cassama ...…

The DJ crew Zona Libre take a break from throwing genre-defying parties and producing their own live events and podcasts to team up with Afropop for another edition of Cuts from the Crypt. Frequent Afropop producer Morgan Greenstreet (modrums) and Brooklyn-based Puerto Rican DJ Ricardo Luiggi (tres dos) dig through Afropop's extensive vinyl arc ...…

Since at least the 1980s, when this program first aired, Paris has been one of the most important incubators of African music on the planet. That’s why we’ve visited there to take the pulse so often. On this program, we look back on 30 years of adventures with African music in Paris. We’ll hear studio sessions with Congolese guitar ace Diblo Di ...…

APWW #636A vast, new world of DJs, record collectors and producers are going to far reaches of the Earth to find forgotten records and new styles of music. Their discoveries are then brought back home, remixed, repackaged and re-released to be heard by an entirely new audience. We speak to some globetrotting DJ and producers Chief Boima and Gek ...…

The annual WOMEX gathering is a feast for the eyes and ears. At the 2018 edition in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, over 300 artists performed in 60 official showcases. Afropop Worldwide recorded both intimate exclusive sessions and official showcases. We also interviewed globetrotting artists: Moonlight Benjamin (Haiti/France), Dawda Jobarteh (Gambi ...…

As the Ottoman Empire waned in the late 19th century, there was scarcity, economic stress, and political oppression in Lebanon. The once lucrative silk industry died. Factories closed. Families in search of better lives emigrated, or sent children abroad. Today, diaspora communities of Lebanese and Lebanese descendants far outnumber the 4-milli ...…

The 2018 edition of the world music exposition WOMEX went down in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands with 300 artists and 2700 delegates from 92 countries. There was a lot to chew on. But one of the hidden wonders of WOMEX is the intimate European Broadcast Union radio studio. That’s where Afropop Worldwide and KEXP, Seattle, hoste ...…

APWW #794We’re hopeless at making Top-10 lists--or even top-40s—so you’ll have to settle for this: a whole hour of some of our favorite tunes of 2018. Casting the net deep and wide, Banning and Georges spin new records by our old favorites, the freshest cuts from new artists and reissues that have gone unheard for years. If you’re looking for g ...…

We just wrapped up our third season of our podcast series Afropop Closeups, and it may have been the best season yet. Afropop producers traveled from watching reggae artists in chilly Berlin to Thomas Mapfumo’s triumphant return concert in Harare, Zimbabwe. They witnessed how digital technology is changing carnival in Haiti and how--for centuri ...…

Flamenco as we know it was “born” in Spain in the mid-19th century. But for centuries before that, Roma (Gitanos, Gypsies) had been living in Spanish cities, often rubbing shoulders with the descendants of Africans (Moors), who had been there as both citizens and slaves going back to Medieval times and earlier. This overlooked pre-history of fl ...…

712 Sounds Like BrooklynAt Afropop, we have gone far and wide, from Brazil to England to Madagascar to Egypt, tracking down incredible music to bring back home to our headquarters in Brooklyn. For this program, "Sounds Like Brooklyn," we stay closer to home, tracing a hidden music economy of CD vendors in bodegas, copy shops and food markets ar ...…

New Orleans, Louisiana is home to some of America's greatest musical traditions, and plays an outsized influence on the evolution of everything from jazz through to r&b, rock and funk. Today, the city is still legendary for its second line brass bands and brightly costumed Mardi Gras Indians. But if you've rolled through New Orleans on pretty m ...…

As Afropop Worldwide marks the week of its 30th anniversary on the public airwaves, we take a look at the story that led up to the program’s creation. We hear excerpts from the podcast A Show of Hearts profiling the program’s founders Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre. And host Georges Collinet recalls his audition for the job that has shaped three ...…

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti would be 79 years old this month, had he not died from complications of AIDS in 1997. By the time of his death, Fela was the inventor of the enduring and influential Afrobeat music style, the composer of an enormous body of music, and one of the bravest political voices in 20th century African music. It is fair to say that n ...…

Gael Faye is a musician and best-selling author, born in Burundi and living in France. In this podcast, Elodie Maillot introduces Faye’s music and breakthrough book Petit Pays (Small Country). Faye speaks about his precarious life as an exile, and about the growing community of Afropean artists in France. Faye now spends a lot of time in Rwanda ...…

Matanzas, Cuba has long been regarded as the source (la fuente) of many rich Afro-Cuban folkloric traditions. These ceremonial and secular Afro-Cuban musics are, for the most part, alive and well, and being documented for the first time by Matanceros themselves, rather than exclusively by Havana-based or non-Cuban imprints. The Matanzas record ...…

Jazz legend, Randy Weston left us on September 1, 2018. He more than any contemporary jazz artist understood, honored and explored the roots of American music in Africa. He lived there, traveled there often, and spoke of his connections to his African ancestors in every interview during his 92 years. In this program, we revisit our musical conv ...…

In 2008, before Sudan became two separate countries, Afropop explored the country’s troubled history through music. After all, Sudan was once a musical powerhouse in East Africa, producing richly swinging orchestral pop. In recent years, much has changed. Sudan is now two countries, still troubled, but still inheritors of great musical traditio ...…

Ambassador Osayomore Joseph is a living legend of Edo highlife music, well known and respected in Benin City for a long career of creative music and activism, so his kidnapping in October 2017 was particularly shocking to his fans. Producer Morgan Greenstreet brings us the story of Osayomore's ordeal, in the Ambassador's own words.…

Kano State in northwest Nigeria is a land of paradox. The ancient home of the Hausa people, it has ties back to the oldest civilizations in West Africa. Muslim since around the 12th century, the region remained largely self-administered during the era of British colonialism, and never significantly adapted Christianity or Western culture and va ...…

The massive Niger River Delta is a fantastically rich cultural region and ecosystem. Unfortunately, it has been laid low by the brutal Biafran War (1967-70) and by decades of destructive and mismanaged oil exploration. This program offers a portrait of the region in two stories. First, we chronicle the Biafran War through the timeless highlife ...…

Some countries are embedded in our collective memory for their trademark rhythms--samba for Brazil, rumba for Cuba, Afrobeat for Nigeria, mbalax for Senegal. We'll celebrate these beats with some of their seminal practitioners.By Afropop Worldwide.

The guitar music of Africa is eternal! Despite the rise of Afrobeats, Afro-house, hip-hop and techno, the continent still turns out inventive and thrilling string pickers. This music-rich program features shredding desert-rock axemen and filigree griot guitarists from Niger and Mali, as well as new sounds from the Congo, Zimbabwe and Madagascar ...…

This spring, Afropop returned to Fes, Morocco, for the 23rd annual World Sacred Music Festival, a sumptuous spread of music from across the globe that blurs the boundaries of what is sacred. Interwoven with Morocco’s ornate history and fertile fabric of daily life is a mosaic of many musics: Gnawa, Arabic pop, Amazigh ahwach, classical Andalusi ...…

Vinyl is back! But there’s a difference between the world of glossy reissues and the format’s golden age. Skippy White’s record store in Boston has been selling records since 1961, and he’s seen it all—er, heard it all, maybe. Brian Coleman and Noah Schaffer produced this check in with a music lifer.…

Brazil has seen its ups and downs since it became an independent empire in 1822: strongman leaders, military rule, populist democracy and more. In 2018, a politically weary nation faces a stark electoral choice between radically different futures. But whatever was happening in the halls of power, Brazil has always produced powerful, beautiful a ...…

Borrowing the title from Cuban polymath Fernando Ortiz, producer Ned Sublette takes a group of travelers, including you, to multiple sites in western Cuba to analyze the musical impact of what Ortiz called the "Cuban counterpoint" of tobacco and sugar. We'll hear endangered species of drums in mountain farms and sugar towns, drilling down into ...…

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 brimm ...…

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 ...…

The latest music craze to hit South African dance floors is a dark, pulsating and energetic sound called gqom. For the past seven years, a young and technologically skilled generation in Durban, KwaZulu Natal, has created and finessed a sound that has the world hooked and wanting more. It is an entire cultural movement complete with distinctive ...…

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 ...…

For some 50 years, Leo Sarkisian was a worldwide staple on the overseas radio broadcast of Voice of America. A talented musician, raised in the Armenian community around Boston, Leo began traveling the world with his Nagra tape recorder and microphones for Tempo International, a Hollywood record label. His intrepid work in remote corners of Afg ...…

Reggae’s rock steady beats have long been admired by international audiences. Beyond the established markets of the U.K. and the U.S., reggae’s newest innovators are springing forth from surprising new territories. In Germany, homegrown musicians are developing their own signature styles of the music and the German reggae artist Uwe Banton was ...…

#782Uplink:6/28/2018On a visit to the U.S. Virgin Islands in winter 2018, we took the pulse of the national music of St. Croix – quelbe. Rarely recorded, rarely exported, quelbe is an energetic form, led by sax or flute with percussion and banjo, and it fuels the traditional dance style, quadrille. St Croix is the largest of the U.S. Virgin Isl ...…

A lot has happened since Afropop last visited Zimbabwe. The 37-year regime of Robert Mugabe has ended, and Thomas Mapfumo, the Lion of Zimbabwe, has staged a triumphant return concert after a 14-year absence. Meanwhile, the country’s youth now moves to the groove of Zim-Dancehall from the likes of reigning star Winky D, and roots gospel from Ja ...…

Singer and bandleader Thomas Mapfumo is an icon in his home country, Zimbabwe. But he last performed there in 2004. He moved his family into exile in Oregon to escape the turmoil, scarcity and harassment they faced in the late years of President Robert Mugabe’s regime. But in April , 2018, with Mugabe out of power since November, Mapfumo return ...…