K'NAAN - TROUBADOUR

Recorded primarily in Kingston, Jamaica where K’Naan was granted unprecedented access by his friends Stephen and Damian Marley to their father Bob Marley’s original home studio at 56 Hope Road and the legendary Tuff Gong studios. Troubadour is a Hip Hop album like no other. K’Naan successfully blends samples and live instrumentation for a sound that’s both rooted in traditional Somali melodies and the classic Hip Hop tradition.

CHIWONISO - REBEL WOMAN

Zimbabwe’s Chiwoniso performs entrancing and uplifting songs with ancient soul and modern spirit. Backed by the mesmerizing interlocking melodies of the mbira and the deep grooves of an all-star lineup featuring some of Zimbabwe and South Africa’s top musicians, Chiwoniso’s voice resounds with defiant strength and profound tenderness.

ORCHESTRE BAOBAB - MADE IN DAKAR

Made in Dakar moves effortlessly from rumba, reggae and highlife to more indigenous grooves such as mbalax. Critis declared the group a walking compendium of West African music, saxophones and guitars rocking in rhythm over sinuous percussion. The first album in six years from this bountiful Senegalese collective glitters and tingles.

KASAI ALLSTARS - IN THE 7TH MOON, THE CHIEF TURNED INTO A SWIMMING FISH AND ATE THE HEAD OF HIS ENEMY BY MAGIC

After Konono Nø1 and the multi-artist “Buzz ‘n’Rumble” set, the incredible debut album by the Kasai Allstars collective raises the ante and lifts Crammed’s Congotronics series up to the next level. An unbelievable mixture of traditional acoustic instruments, electric guitars, distortion-laden thumb pianos and soulful vocals.

DUB COLOSSUS - A TOWN CALLED ADDIS

Extraordinary collaboration between contemporary Ethiopian artists and Dubulah (aka Nick Page) Dub meets dreamy blues, hypnotic grooves, jazz piano, traditional Azmari singing, 70s reggae and Ethio-pop.

BLK JKS - MYSTERY EP

Although South African quartet BLK JKS (pronounced “Black Jacks”) have been making music for nearly a decade, they have only recently begun to garner the acclaim they deserve. The MYSTERY EP incorporates African drumming and a dub sensibility, but highly danceable vibe has also garnered the quartet frequent comparisons to TV On The Radio.

BOOK: Music is the Weapon of the Future: 50 Years of African Popular Music by Frank Tenaille

Out of the ether arrives this long-overdue, cogent, well-crafted, knowledgeable, and well-structured survey of Afropop and, as a generous and valuable bonus, a survey of the genre’s organic relationship to Africa’s social and political milieu over the past 50 years. Here, Tenaille, a French journalist specializing in world music, profiles in detail 30 significant African musicians, some as familiar as Miriam Makeba and Yousseau N’Dour, others as relatively unknown as Mory Kante and Zao, but all crucially important in defining and defending African music as inherently important, joyous, and free of colonial control.

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