Reviews
For Those Left Behind
Recorded in the shadow of Lesotho’s Famo gang violence, For Those Left Behind is a defiant, dizzying triumph. The five-piece...
Reviewed in issue August/2025
African Jazz invites OK Jazz
There were two main protagonists in the evolution of Congolese popular music in the 1960s: Joseph Kabasele (alias Grand Kallé),...
Reviewed in issue August/2025
Jawaya Jathum
Jawaya Jathum translates as ‘The Guitarist and The Music Lover’, these being Polycarp Otieno (aka Fancy Fingers) and sweetly soulful...
Reviewed in issue August/2025
Nu Sta Li
Following in the footsteps of influential groups like Bulimundo, Luxembourg-based Cape Verdeans Grupo Pilón have been updating the funaná genre...
Reviewed in issue August/2025
Chapter 1: Where Does Happiness Come From?
The introduction to a third generation of the Kuti family came with Mádé’s 2021 debut album For(e)ward, yet its impact...
Reviewed in issue August/2025
Danger
Originally released in 1976, Danger fuses Afrobeat, funk and psychedelic soul with biting political and social commentary sweetly delivered through...
Reviewed in issue August/2025
Trésor Magnétique
When legendary musician, poet and novelist Francis Bebey passed away suddenly in 2001, Cameroon lost one of its most celebrated...
Reviewed in issue August/2025
Church of Kidane Mehret
In the years since the death of Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru in 2023, we have been lucky to hear archival...
Reviewed in issue July/2025
Useza
Among the Shona communities of northeastern Zimbabwe, the matepe, a type of mbira, is used to evoke trance states to...
Reviewed in issue July/2025
Man Shall Be Free
This Ghanaian group’s debut is a fresh collection of highlife jams. Guitar lines unwind through the compositions like a labyrinthine...
Reviewed in issue July/2025
