Afropop Worldwide

Beneath the gloss of Nigeria’s contemporary pop, older roots styles, mostly derived from Yoruba tradition, still thrive. In this program, we meet four top stars of fuji music, the percussion-driven, message-heavy, and occasionally profane trance music that animates weddings and parties on a daily basis in hidden corners of Lagos. Rival “kings” K1 da Ultimate and Saheed Osupa, and a rare woman of fuji, Salawa Abeni, take us inside the rough and tumble of an exciting musical subculture little known outside Nigeria. We also meet juju legend Shina Peters, meet up-and-comers on the Lagos roots scene. This program fills out our Hip Deep portrait of a vibrant African city where music holds the keys to a tumultuous collision of cultures and peoples.

Produced by Banning Eyre.
APWW #763

Technology is one of the great drivers of musical change, and often one of its least understood. In this episode, we explore the synthesizer, looking closely at the history of this ubiquitous (and often debated) piece of musical technology, and investigating how and why it was first used in a variety of African musics. Enabled by groundbreaking record reissues by synth pioneers like William Onyeabor (Nigeria) and Hailu Mergia (Ethiopia), disco stars like Kris Okotie, and South African superstar Brenda Fassie, we take you back to the ’70s and ’80s, listening to the birth of a distinctly African electronic sound.

Produced by Sam Backer
APWW #676

The 1970s was a decade that changed the world's popular music... No. Changed the world's culture. Whether you were boogieing to full-flower rock and funk, delving into free jazz, or discovering a hidden identity, the music was your constant companion. This was true in Africa as well. Ten years after most of the continent gained independence, new sounds were flourishing. This program samples the bounty from Ghana, Mali, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and more.

Produced by Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre in 2005
APWW #461

The leopard cult of Ekpe in Calabar, in present-day Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon, has one of the most unique performance traditions in all of Africa - a complex theatrical tradition, referred to in calabar English as "play," which encompasses a cycle of sacred dramas that takes many years to execute. The music of this society is almost completely unknown outside the region, because it was not recorded until the 1980s. This program will feature Calabar-themed recordings by artists including Sexteto Habanero, Chano Pozo, Arsenio Rodriguez, and Los Munequitos de Matanzas. Dr. Ivor Miller, the only scholar who has both penetrated the Abaku society and visited the motherland in Calabar, and promoted the first-ever re-encounter between the two traditions, will play some of this powerful music and tell stories of this fascinating culture.

Hip Deep by Ned Sublette (originally aired 2007)
APWW #534

There's a lot of fantastic music being made by Brazilian artists living in the U.S. They entertain an estimated 1.5 million Brazilian immigrants here as well as a growing number of other fans. And Brazilian music is enjoying a resurgence here - on Mazda commercials, endless bossa nova soundtracks played in upscale restaurants; inter-cultural collaborations and so on. We'll hear many of the best: Jorge Alabe, the godfather of many samba schools; Bebel Gilberto, daughter of bossa pioneer Joao Gilberto; singer Luciana Souza; the quirky percussionist Cyro Baptista; the funky, unorthodox Forro in the Dark and others. They all have fascinating stories to tell. We'll hear them in concert, visit with them in their homes, and hear songs from records produced in the U.S. New York University's widely published Professor of Music Jason Stanyek will be our co-host.

APWW #555