Afropop Worldwide

Afropop Worldwide Where Music Tells the Story of the World Over 30 years of connecting you to music of Africa and the World!

05/26/2026

🇦🇴 HIP DEEP ANGOLA PART 1: MUSIC AND NATION IN LUANDA

Music became a weapon in the struggle for independence in Angola. In this episode, we explore how musicians, dancers, radio broadcasters, and poets helped forge a new Angolan consciousness during the anti-colonial struggles of the 1960s and ’70s after centuries of Portuguese colonial rule.

Our guides are producer Ned Sublette, reporting from Angola, and historian Marissa Moorman, author of Intonations: A Social History of Music in Luanda, Angola from 1945 to Recent Times.

Featuring the legendary Ngola Ritmos, semba-era voices, and blazing 1960s guitar instrumentals, the episode traces how artists faced censorship, surveillance, imprisonment, and exile under Portuguese colonial authorities while their music became the soundtrack of liberation.

Listen now on Afropop Worldwide >>> https://www.afropop.org/audio-programs/hip-deep-angola-music-and-nation-in-luanda


Angolan Music
African History
Decolonization
Portuguese Colonialism
World Music

05/18/2026

“Africans call the shots.” 🌍⚔️

A TALE OF TWO REBELLIONS: HOW AFRICANS SHAPED THE FUTURE OF ISLAM

In this epic Hip Deep episode of Afropop Worldwide, Georges Collinet and author Joseph Braude trace two revolutionary uprisings that changed the course of Islamic history: the Zanj Rebellion in 9th century Iraq and the Fatimid Revolution in North Africa.

From enslaved East Africans in Basra rising against the Abbasid Empire, to Kutama Berber fighters helping build the Fatimid Caliphate, this story connects African history, Islam, rebellion, empire, slavery, Shi’a history, and the roots of the Sunni-Shi’a divide.

The episode moves from Baghdad to Zanzibar, Tunisia to Cairo, weaving together history, myth, and music with an unforgettable soundtrack featuring:

🇮🇶 Munir Bashir
🇪🇬 Umm Kulthum
🇮🇷 Hossain Alizadeh
🇦🇲 Djivan Gasparyan
🇩🇿 Djur Djura
🇪🇬 The Musicians of the Nile

This is the hidden history of African influence in the medieval Islamic world.

🎧 Listen now at https://www.afropop.org/audio-programs/a-tale-of-two-rebellions-how-africans-helped-shape-the-future-of-islam

Shiite Sunni Shia SWANA

05/14/2026

TODAY ONLY! For the next 24 hours, all recurring donations at $5 and up are matched by with $10! KEEP CULTURE ALIVE, make your tax deductible donation today >>> bit.ly/afropopspringappeal26 (link in bio!)

Percussion by the master sagar percussionist and composer

05/11/2026

Musical improvisation comes in many forms. A jazz player creates within the harmonic structure of a composition. A Shona mbira player in Zimbabwe improvises interactively with another player, and the audience, in some cases, an ancestor spirit. An Arabic maqam musician works within the elaborate set of rules governing the movement of melodies within one or more particular maqamat, or modes. How are these musicians’ experience the same? And how are they different? Musicians and scholars weigh in on this Hip Deep program. Produced by .

Listen: https://www.afropop.org/audio-programs/the-art-of-improvisation-part-2
Artists featured:

Farid el Atrache
Munir Bashir
Simon Shaheen
A.J. Racy
John Coltrane
Baba Larab
Randy Weston
Hakurotwi Mude
Mhembero Mbira Ensemble
Thelonious Monk
Miles Davis
Mubayiwa Bandambira
Cosmas and Alexio Magaya
Eric Dolphy

Countries:

🇺🇸 United States
🇪🇬 Egypt
🇮🇶 Iraq
🇱🇧 Lebanon
🇿🇼 Zimbabwe

Genres:





05/07/2026

THE MAN. THE VOICE. THE ICON.

GEORGES COLLINET.

We want to hear from you!

For nearly four decades, Georges Collinet has been the voice guiding listeners through the world of African music on Afropop Worldwide. But his story goes way back.

Before bringing African sounds to American audiences, he was introducing artists like James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Aretha Franklin to listeners across Africa through his work with Voice of America. From Douala to Bamako to Kinshasa, his name opened doors and built bridges long before “global music” was a buzzword.

Born in Cameroon and shaped by life in France and the U.S., Collinet has spent a lifetime championing African artists and fostering musical exchange across continents. Now in his ninth decade, we are celebrating his legacy with a special program.

If his voice has ever moved you, taught you, or changed the way you hear the world, we want to hear from you. Record a short message and send it to [email protected] with the subject line “Georges Collinet.”

Stay tuned for the broadcast and help us give Georges his flowers 💐

05/04/2026

at on May 1, 2026! Rocking the (donkey jaw) and the (little alms box)! 🔥🫏📦🎶

Fantastic night of and electronic music — check their tour dates for a show near you!

Across the Indian Ocean: How East African Music Survives in IranAcross the Indian Ocean, a powerful musical story surviv...
05/01/2026

Across the Indian Ocean: How East African Music Survives in Iran

Across the Indian Ocean, a powerful musical story survives in the Strait of Hormuz. It is shaped by migration, memory, and resilience.

Along Iran’s southern coast, in places like Bushehr, Hormozgan, and Qeshm Island, Afro-Iranian communities carry forward traditions rooted in East Africa. These cultural connections trace back centuries through trade routes across the Strait of Hormuz and the forced migration of African peoples from regions like Mozambique, Tanzania, and Malawi.

At the heart of this story is , a healing ritual found across the Persian Gulf and East Africa. Often led by women, zar blends music, trance, and spirit possession, using rhythm and collective performance to confront illness and restore balance. It is one expression of a deeply syncretic culture where African practices merge with Persian poetry and Sufi spirituality.

In Bushehr, music, meaning “music of the ports,” reflects this fusion through instruments like the ney-anban, a goatskin bagpipe, the tombak drum, and layered percussion. These sounds have traveled beyond the Gulf and reached global audiences.

Artists like and the Shanbehzadeh Ensemble have played a major role in bringing Southern Iranian music to the world. With roots tracing back to Tanzania, Shanbehzadeh bridges generations, preserving traditional forms while collaborating across genres. Alongside artists like , these musicians have blended Afro-Iranian traditions with jazz and other global styles, even while facing exile and restrictions on performance in Iran.

Today, a new wave, including acts like .1, is pushing these sounds forward. Electric instruments and modern production are shaping the next chapter while honoring the past.

Despite political repression and ongoing tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, Afro-Iranian music persists. It moves from zar ceremonies and Sufi-influenced rituals to wedding music and contemporary fusion.

Full article: https://www.afropop.org/articles/across-the-indian-ocean-how-east-african-music-survives-in-iran

04/23/2026

In southern Iran, along the Strait of Hormuz, music carries a hidden history.

For centuries, East Africans crossed this waterway as traders, travelers, and enslaved people, forming Afro-Iranian communities in places like Qeshm, Bushehr, and Hormozgan. Their traditions live on in practices like zar, healing ritual where rhythm, drumming, and trance are used to restore balance and drive out unseen forces. Rooted in East African spiritual systems and transformed over generations, zar is still performed today as a powerful form of communal music and care.

This is what survival sounds like. A fusion of African memory, Persian culture, and Sufi poetry that continues to evolve, from ritual spaces like this to modern Afro-Iranian jazz and Bandari music.

Visit Afropop.org to read “Across the Indian Ocean: How East African Music Survives in Iran” and hear the sounds of this living tradition. 🇮🇷 🪘

Video credit = @ irantour_with_mehran on YouTube.

Article written by Akshaj Turebylu

Full link: https://www.afropop.org/articles/across-the-indian-ocean-how-east-african-music-survives-in-iran

04/10/2026

HIP DEEP: THE ART OF IMPROVISATION PART 1 🇬🇭 🇲🇱 🇺🇸 This Hip Deep episode is Part 1 of a two-part series comparing and contrasting approaches to musical improvisation. Beginning and ending with bebop and free jazz, Part 1 takes sidetrips into Ghanaian percussion traditions, Mande string and vocal music, and solo taqsim improvisation in Arabic music. With insights from UCLA’s A.J. Racy and Wesleyan University’s Eric Charry, among others, we launch a provocative and revealing meditation on spontaneity in the world’s music traditions. Produced by .

LISTEN >>> Afropop.org





04/06/2026

This program presents a musical portrait of Bamako in the wake of crisis. We explore the precarious lives of griots in Bamako in the early 21st Century. The program draws on the groundbreaking documentary work of Lucy Duran, exploring how hereditary musicians apprentice and grow in various cultural contexts. In this case, we focus on the upbringing and education of children in these hereditary griot (djeli) families of historian-entertainers.

LISTEN >>> Afropop.org

Produced by

Artists:

Toumani Diabaté
Sidiki Diabaté
Adama Diarra
Ami Diabate
Bako Dagnon
Lassi Diabate
Master Soumy
Ousmane Dagnon

Countries:



Genre:

Malian
Rap


03/26/2026

Here at last, the second edition of the Afropop Living Room Sessions, where we showcase artists in intimate settings, including our remote studio in Middletown, Connecticut.

The featued band here is , featuring from Ghana. Afropop first met this Boston-based band when Christiana Athena profiled them in their early days for an Afropop Closeup called Asante Drum Language. As you will see, the band has come a long way, basing their music in Asante tradition, but filling their sound out with full, highlife-band instrumentation to create expansive original compositions.

Kotoko Brass was founded by brothers and and includes master Ghanaian percussionists Attah Poku and Kwame Ofori alongside a seasoned rhythm and horn section. The collaboration brings together musical traditions from different regions of Ghana in a performance grounded in rhythm, dance, and collective celebration

Here we get four songs from the band. Crank it up, put on your dancing shoes, and enjoy!

Listen to the whole show at Afropop.org!

MUSICIANS
Mohammed Alidu: Lead Vocals & Lunga
: Keyboards
Andy Bergman: Tenor Sax
Kwame Ofori: Percussion
Ben Paulding: Drum Set
Brian Paulding: Trombone
: Backing Vocals
: Bass
: Guitar

AFROPOP TEAM
Executive producer: Sean Barlow
Produced and recorded by:
Line Producer: Lynn Jones
Sound by: David Raymond
Editing:

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