Category: .Think Africa Press
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Interview with Nuba Nour
Nuba Nour: a Percussion Group Without a Homeland Occupying Womad’s Open Air Stage are five men dressed in white cloth. Each one holds an open faced drum. Behind them, two female singers clap and sway with their rhythms. This is Nuba Nour, a percussion driven group from Nubia – a…
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Interview with Femi Kuti
“It Sounds like I’m Blowing My Own Trumpet”: An Interview with Femi Kuti Femi Kuti. Photograph by Alexander Macfarlane. London, UK: Femi Kuti is the spitting image of his father Fela, and one could easily mistake a recent photograph of Femi to be a matured Fela in later life. He…
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On Tour With Vieux Farka Touré
On Tour With Vieux Farka Touré “The sound of our blues is dry like the Sahara, but it’s the vast open space that shapes the desert blues. For me it will always be the music of openness.” Take two landscapes that have given birth to blues music- the Sahara Desert…
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Interview with Toumani Diabaté
Interview with Toumani Diabaté Griots usually come across as inherently modest. A non-griot can never become a griot, so underlying the respect given to his father, his grandfather and his teachers, every griot must feel eternally grateful to have been born at the end of such a lineage. Toumani Diabaté’s…
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Interview with The Lijadu Sisters
Interview with The Lijadu Sisters Most women in afrobeat fit into two well established roles: erotic dancers or backing singers. In the former they are sex objects, in the latter they are background figures by definition. Fela Kuti, the man with 27 wives, would parade his “queens” around on stage…
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Interview with Samuel Yirga
Interview with Samuel Yirga Last month saw the release of Dub Colossus’s Addis Through the Looking Glass, a complex, sophisticated and critically acclaimed experiment in Ethiopian jazz. The band drew inspiration from a variety of modern genres, giving accessibility to an ancient musical tradition. With this experimentation comes a loss…
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The Soundtrack to the Egyptian Revolution
The Soundtrack to the Egyptian Revolution “Egypt is like a big sister to the other Arab countries. It’s easy to see from our history whyEgypt has become so important.” Zakaria Ibrahim, front man for the Egyptian folk band El Tanbura, cuts a humble figure considering his achievements. Credited with providing…
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Interview with Aurelio
Interview with Aurelio “Yurumei”, the Garifuna name for the island of St.Vincent, is a complex interpretation of homeland for Aurelio. The singer was born and raised in Honduras, and with the release of his second album, Laru Beya, comes another strong ancestral pull: repatriation to West Africa. “St Vincent is…
I'm Clyde Macfarlane, an NCTJ qualified journalist and illustrator. 