Afropop Worldwide

Sierra Leone has deep reserves of resilience, and an ability to come together and overcome great obstacles embedded in its culture. To provide the kind of history that is all too often overlooked when reporting on current events on the African continent, we are encoring this Hip Deep episode, which explores the nation’s past.

When Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961, Freetown swayed to the beguiling, breezy lilt of palm wine guitar and danced to the funky pop of Geraldo Pino and the Heartbeats. Once a center of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Sierra Leone became an improbable amalgamation of indigenous peoples and repatriated Africans freed from slavery. Thirty years of political and economic disintegration led to a horrific civil war that claimed tens of thousands of victims and created a generation of maimed bodies and ruined lives between 1991 and 2002. A significant portion of the violence was internal, with community members and sometimes children taking up arms against each other.

Following the conflict, efforts to restore peace included truth and reconciliation programs aimed at strengthening social ties. This episode profiles the inspiring story of Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, a band formed in war-era refugee camps in Guinea. The band played a key role in giving citizens the courage to return home, and now, along with other young musicians in Freetown, attempt to pick up where others left off before the war. Produced by Simon Rentner with Wills Glasspiegel.

APWW PGM #552
Originally broadcast in 2008

Nestled between Ghana, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Nigeria, Benin is a rich sliver of West Africa too often overlooked. This program puts Afropop's spotlight on Benin, starting with the country's favorite daughter. International star Angelique Kidjo looks back on her musical education in the Benin capital, Cotonou, as she walks us through the songs on her album Oyo, which spans covers of songs by James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Miriam Makeba, and Benin's own Bella Bellow. We meet the 70s "vodoun funk" band Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, who are still going strong, and recently made their belated US debut. We move forward to present a chat with Lionel Loueke, a Beninois guitarist who has moved on to become one of the most original voices in contemporary American jazz. The program ends with a remembrance of the brilliant Malian guitarist and singer Lobi Traore.

APWW PGM #594
Originally aired in 2010

In the music of the French Antilles - the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe - you can hear influences that range from the traditional béle and gwo ka drumming of the islands' rural communities, to European additions like polka and French chanson. But when these islands produced a pop genre that took much of the Caribbean and African world by storm - the smooth and sexy dance music zouk, which exploded in the 1980s - it was an entirely new blend that uniquely reflected the complex layers of identity in these Caribbean communities that are, administratively, a full-fledged part of France. Still colonies? Many think so. Either way the Antilles have long produced artists and thinkers with deep sensitivity to the gradations of race, class, migration, and relationship to a powerful, distant metropolis. Now, musicians in Guadeloupe and Martinique are re-exploring their roots, celebrating rhythms that go back to slavery days without pulling back from the cosmopolitanism of recent years. Our guide to this music - and the rich history and ongoing debates that it reflects - is Brenda Berrian of the University of Pittsburgh, whose book, Awakening Spaces: French Caribbean Popular Songs, Music and Culture, is a definitive - and enthusiastic - treatment of the subject. Hip Deep by Siddhartha Mitter.

APWW #570
Produced by Siddhartha Mitter in 2009

The first decade of the 21st century saw the beginning of huge changes in African diaspora music. Afrobeats and amapiano were still in the cradle, but a new spirit was in the air. In this program, we return to that crucial decade to hear some of the bold new ideas bubbling up in Africa. We’ll hear Buraka Som Sistema from Angola and Portugal, Nigerian rapper 9ice, an Akon remix of Amadou and Mariam, and a then emerging American rock band with a bright future ahead of them, Vampire Weekend. Produced by Wills Glasspiegel.

Originally broadcast in 2009.

Once-substantial Jewish enclaves of Morocco, Algeria and other North Africa states have dwindled steadily since World War II, mostly through migration to Israel. In sub-Saharan Africa, lesser known Jewish communities provide strikingly different narratives. Guided by ethnomusicologist and Rabbi Jeffrey A. Summit of Tufts University, this program focuses on the history and music of a small but robust community of Jewish converts in Uganda, the Abayudaya. Summit’s own recordings include the Abayudaya singing choral music, modified folkloric songs accompanied by local drums and harps, such as the enchanting adungu, and also ventures into pop music bring this remarkable story vividly to life. This program will also introduce history and music from a younger community of practicing Jews in Ghana.

APWW #544
Produced by Banning Eyre.