Has Music of Africa Had an Impact on Your Listening?
An informal survey.
First off - a huge thanks - once again, to everyone who has interacted with Music of Africa in any way.
As of next month, this project will be a year old. I've listened to Africa music off and on for a long time and I thought I was pretty well acquainted with it. Now that I've dug in deeper, I realize that was a mistaken assumption. The more I find out, the more I realize how little I know. But it's been fun.
It's great to see our subscriber and follower counts ticking upward. But I’ve started to wonder what kind of impact we've made on people's listening. We're recommended a bunch of music in the last (almost) year, but did any the recommendations hit home? Well, what better way to find out than to simply ask?
So if you're so inclined and have a spare moment, can you drop a comment in the Comments section. Is there something (song, album, artist, group, music style/genre/sub-genre, whatever) we've recommended that hit home for you and they you've revisited since you first encountered it in these pages?
And since recommending music is what we do, I’ve posted another great song here. It’s kind of an old school one, from Botswana.
This is an amazing newsletter - I plan on writing about my own experiences of discovering and falling in love with African music, so it's great to see I'm not alone here. (Though, pressure is on to do the subject justice!)
Like a lot of Westerners, I first found my way in through Paul Simon's Graceland, and then the Indestructible Beat of Soweto compilation - so my tastes tend to the Bantu and Zulu traditions. That said, I've been exploring more of the North African griot traditions (the Toure and Diabate families) and pop from Mali and Senegal.
Like Michael Fell said, there is plenty written about the folks I've been into - but I'm also trying to bring my friends and readers into what, for them, it brand new territory.
I enjoy your page as you highlight contemporary African musicians rather than solely focusing on the obvious '70s Afrobeat, Highlife, and Zamrock musicians. There is already plenty written about the golden years of '70s African music, but it's much harder to find articles highlighting contemporary African music.
Thank you for what you do.