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Africa’s live performance festivals all grown up

Africa’s live performance festivals all grown up

AT a music festival in Copenhagen, thousands of kilometres from Nairobi, Kenyan artist Elsy Wameyo found herself smiling as a familiar Luo greeting cut through the noise of the crowd and landed squarely on stage. “I’ll never forget the day I played in Copenhagen and a fan greeted me in Luo,” the artist recalled. A greeting in the Kenyan vernacular was the last thing she had expected. For Wameyo, a Kenyan-born singer-songwriter and rapper whose sound fuses hip hop, traditional African music, rap and R&B, the fact that "Nairobi showed up in northern Europe" is a reminder that African music…
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A voice that crossed oceans: Remembering Chris Rea

A voice that crossed oceans: Remembering Chris Rea

THE road has finally ended for Chris Rea, but the journey he shared with us - from the townships of South Africa to the streets of Lagos, from the highlands of Kenya to the heart of Zimbabwe - will echo forever. For generations of Africans, that raspy, world-weary voice was more than entertainment. It was a companion through our own struggles, our own dreams of something better. When Rea sang, he didn't preach from a pedestal. He walked beside us, dusty and tired, acknowledging the hardship while pointing toward hope. His philosophy resonated deeply with the African experience: we are…
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Revolutionary rap: Nigerian star Falz has kept protest music alive

Revolutionary rap: Nigerian star Falz has kept protest music alive

NIGERIAN rapper, actor and social media star Falz released his sixth studio album, The Feast, in 2025. Few Nigerian popular musicians have shown as much versatility and staying power as the man behind the #ElloBae and #WehDoneSir social media trends. For over a decade now, Falz has been marrying musical skills and social activism with digital savvy and comedy. His rise to global prominence was solidified with his 2018 song This is Nigeria. But it began in 2014 with Marry Me off his debut album Wazup Guy. As a young artist known for his video skits, he created an online…
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From Lusaka to Lyrical Mastery: Stogie T’s aNomy through his uncle’s eyes

From Lusaka to Lyrical Mastery: Stogie T’s aNomy through his uncle’s eyes

STOGIE T’s new album, aNomy, consolidates lyrics in his rap music repertoire as the most politically sophisticated, most intellectually literate and most worldly and historically informed in the South African rap scene. I have not come across any other South African rap artist with the same political depth in their lyrical rendition. My musical appreciation runs across all genres; from classics, jazz, choral, maskanda, kwaito, amapiano and everything in between – only if they are well thought-out and well-constructed musical offerings. I have a liking for rap lyrics because I came into the liking of this genre through my love…
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Pops Mohamed mixed old and new to reinvent South African music

Pops Mohamed mixed old and new to reinvent South African music

ISMAIL Mohamed-Jan – better known by South African jazz fans as Pops Mohamed – has passed away at the age of 75. His life in music represented a struggle against narrow, oppressive definitions of race, instrumental appropriateness and musical genre. A few days before his death, a remastered version of his 2006 album Kalamazoo, Vol. 5 (A Dedication to Sipho Gumede) had been released on digital platforms ahead of an official launch. Mohamed was born on 10 December 1949 in the working-class gold-mining town of Benoni in South Africa. By his mid-teens, the Group Areas Act – which divided urban…
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News influencers are reshaping the media – insights from Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa

News influencers are reshaping the media – insights from Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa

NEWS creators and influencers have become increasingly important sources of news as more people turn to social media and video networks like Facebook and YouTube to inform themselves. By news creators, we mean individuals who create and distribute content mainly through social and video networks and have some impact on public debates around news and current affairs. While traditional news outlets and journalists still tend to dominate attention for news on legacy platforms like Facebook, data from our Digital News Report 2025 show that news organisations face growing competition from creators on other platforms, especially on newer video-heavy networks. In…
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Congolese activist creates community radio for farmers

Congolese activist creates community radio for farmers

ON a humid afternoon in North Kivu, a group of farmers crowd into a low, corrugated-roof community hall, passing around basic feature phones as a young facilitator replays a Jambo Radio podcast on shifting rainfall patterns and the economics of oil extraction in Africa. The audio cuts, and the questions begin: a few sharp, several hesitant, many shaped by longstanding myths about who profits from extraction and what it means for their land. Patricia Kasoki listens closely. She asks follow-ups, redirects assumptions, and invites elders to share what past seasons looked like, before the forests thinned, before heavy rains became…
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The Magnificent Rebel: Fela Ransome-Kuti

The Magnificent Rebel: Fela Ransome-Kuti

SOME musicians entertain. Some educate. Fela Anikulapo Kuti? He declared war—armed only with a saxophone, a relentless groove, and the kind of audacity that made military dictators break out in nervous sweats. Nigeria's most flamboyant revolutionary didn't need grenades when he had a groove. While others whispered dissent in backrooms, Fela was broadcasting his contempt for corrupt authority through thundering horns, hypnotic drums, and lyrics so sharp they could slice through propaganda like a hot knife through butter. His weapon of choice? Afrobeat—that intoxicating fusion of jazz, funk, soul, and Yoruba rhythms that he didn't just create, he unleashed upon…
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Grassroots project keeps Mijikenda music alive

Grassroots project keeps Mijikenda music alive

THE thatch throws a soft, familiar shadow. A woven fence creaks in the salty wind. Inside a cleared yard in Kilifi, twelve drummers set skins into place like clockmakers fitting gears, a pair of elders sits cross-legged on the grass and sunlight angles through palm fronds onto a scattering of wooden shakers and carved flutes. This is not a concert. It is a salvage operation for sound, careful, urgent and stubbornly human. Baobab Studio’s LUTSAGA project, which Flavour Polle, Baobab Studio’s manager and cultural liaison, described simply as a granary, is acting like one by collecting the rhythms, grooves and…
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Transforming a little-known Kenyan town into Africa’s film capital

Transforming a little-known Kenyan town into Africa’s film capital

THE morning sun falls gently over Kitale, a town where maize fields stretch beyond the horizon. Inside a modest studio, Peter Pages Bwire reviews schedules for the coming week, surrounded by cameras, scripts, and equipment stacked against the walls. He has just returned from Lagos, where he secured a partnership that will bring Nollywood filmmakers to Kitale. Among those coming to Kitale is Dr Inya Lawal, a renowned social entrepreneur and founder of the African Creative Market (ACM), who will bring her experience in bridging creative commerce and empowering African storytellers to join the programme. They will train local film…
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