Before long, Temilade Openiyi known professionally as Tems quickly made her way into the R&B scene. Until international recognition last February. A journey that began with the song Mr Rebel. Last February, the young Nigerian singer Tems won a Grammy (the Oscars of music) for the ‘Best Melodic Rap Performance’ category, awarded to her for…
Read moreFrom the golden sands of the Sahara Desert to the renowned world of music festivals. Songs of love for his land and his people. One of the most beautiful and intense albums of last year has a title that is already a whole program: Afrique Victime. It bears the signature of Mdou Moctar, aka Mahamadou…
Read moreFor over fifty years he has been the voice of this ethnic group of Ethiopia and has garnered considerable popularity. He had disagreements with Haile Selassie and with Mengistu. He died last November in Dire Dawa. Although he left Ethiopia in the 1980s and stayed away for about twenty years, Ali Birra continued to be…
Read moreIn May, with their song ‘Stefania’, they easily won the latest Eurovision Song Contest and caught the attention of the world. Then, Kalush Orchestra is a new phenomenon, having been founded as recently as 2019 by rapper Oleh Psjuk together with some friends. The group takes its name from its birthplace, Kaluš, a city at…
Read moreA heart that beats to the rhythm of Africa Paul Van Haver was born in Etterbeek, a small town near Brussels, in 1985. Yet his story really begins only nine years later, in Rwanda, where his father, an architect of Tutsi ethnicity, was killed that year during one of the most terrible genocides of the…
Read moreMention Colombia and one immediately thinks of cumbia: a rhythm, an atmosphere, a dance, a way of singing, a synthesis of the essence of a people. A people still struggling to find a balance and social pacification between modernist and traditionalist thrusts, between terrorist regurgitations, the ever-untamed violence of drug traffickers and a complex interracial…
Read more“The world calls me Ustad, the teacher, but I personally feel I am a Shagird, a disciple of music”. This is how Naseeruddin Ustad Saami, one of the most significant personalities in Pakistan and musical Sufism, defined himself. His songs and his music are infinitely distant from what is heard in the West; so much…
Read moreSounds with an unmistakably Arabian and Middle Eastern flavour, the sort of music that passionately involves those who hear it. There are masterpieces that germinate far from the great circuits of the music business and pop up where you least expect them. This is the case of Fleuves de l’Âme by the Tunisian musician Houeida…
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Everything was against her. Aminata Gaye – Mina ‘the veiled one’ is her stage name – was raised in a traditional Senegalese family, when she realised that music made her a self-confident person, she knew there was no way back. She started to fight for her dreams and for a better society. “I cannot be…
Read moreCapable, beautiful and full of positive energy, the Egyptian soprano Fatma Said with her formidable voice has won her place on the most prestigious lyrical venues. Her success is also due to the efforts of her family who supported her every time the burden of prejudices and common places seemed to suggest she place her…
Read moreThe South African musician and composer was active both in music and in politics. At the cost of exile. Together with Hugh Masekela, a reference point for jazz enthusiasts. He died on 23 January, the same day on which, in 2018, Hugh Masekela passed away. The South African trombonist Jonas Gwangwa was just eighteen months…
Read moreThe Ghanaian band Santrofi demonstrates that Highlife music is still a rich and vital force. Artistically speaking, Highlife is the music of modern Ghana; a mix of pop and jazz not without ethnic influences imported from Nigeria in the first decades of the nineteen hundreds and exported to the world after the end of the…
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“We want to create a federation of international journalistic organisations that collaborate in this effort, starting from the global South,” says Filipino journalist and 2022…
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Once upon a time, there was a leopard. He had a huge walnut tree that was full of nuts. Stingy as he was, however, he forbade…
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Three young Comboni missionaries from three continents share their vocation stories and missionary experiences. Fr Victor Cunanan Parungao from the Philippines reflects on 15 years of…
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