Name: Phiona
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Bio: Phiona Okumu has written for Y Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire, Elle, Straight No Chaser, Shook, Arise, www.rage.co.za etc. Her favourite Africans are Kenyans, and then Ghanaians. But she's neither. Often she can be found navigating the social media maze to engage with world-wise, afro-centred, Hip-hop predisposed peers. Follow her on www.twitter.com/ophiona
Posts by ophiona:
DJ Edu’s Monday Mash-up Mix (Listen+Download)
May 21st, 2012Tracklisting:
Sheema-Nampenda Vs Vybz Kartel-Party Me Say Vs Beenie Man-Me & You (Nuh Care) Vs Serani-Don’t Go Away
Ice Prince-Juju Vs Drake-Find Your Love
Jua Cali-Bidii Yangu Vs Busta Rhymes-I Love My B****
Shimpazi-Kampeni (Nanga Why) ft P Jay Vs Lalah Hathaway-If You Want To
Victoria Kimani-Ayaya (Stronga) Vs Missy Elliott-One Minute Man ft Ludacris
Madtraxx-Kamaress Vs Rahsaan Patterson-6 AM Vs Seanizzle-Summer Fling Riddim
Brymo-Good Morning Vs Avril Lavigne-Smile
Ofori Amponsah-Odwo Vs Rupee-Tempted To Touch
Watch Tabi Bonney’s New Video ‘Castle on A Cloud’ featuring Terri Walker
May 10th, 2012‘The Endless Summer’, is out free to download on May 17th, until his for-real and for-sale album comes out later. Ski Beatz handles the production. This song features UK soul singer Terri Walker’s vocals.
Watch South African House Music Band Mi Casa’s New Video ‘La Vida’
May 10th, 2012South African house music darlings MiCasa charm their way through Brazil as lego characters in this brand new animated video.
A Blog We Love: Black Acrylic
May 10th, 2012Black Acrylic is a delightfully personal Pan-Africanist mix of commentary on art, style, socio-politics, music and other things. A post (from which the above image comes) on reclaiming the cult of beauty had me with this: “Eager for anything that diverts from the script we gluttonously praise tokenism (e.g Tika Sumpter on Gossip Girl) and fetishism (e.g Vogue Italia Black Issue). Deep down we just want to publicly exist outside of the media’s two dimensional box. We want to be ourselves.” Co-sign to the power of one hundred.
Check out Black Acrylic in full here
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Young, Fresh and Noir: Iamwaves on Creating His Own Music Genre+New Video ‘Till We Ghosts’
May 7th, 2012In a parallel life, Spoek Mathambo might have been the vocalist for Popskarr, an electro-pop outfit he conceptualised with Terrence Pearce. But he had no time to be a part of as he was leaving his then Cape Town home to take root in Johannesburg before taking over the world. Instead he roped in a then teenage Yannick Ilunga whom he’d met during his Sweat X days to fill in. Both have also recently collaborated on the 2012 update of the Fela Kuti tribute album Red Hot and Riot, specifically on the song Zombie.
Illunga was born in Brussels in 1990 to a Congolese father and Angolan mother who moved their family to Cape Town, South Africa six years later. When he’s not posing as part of Capital of Cool, (a collective of creatives he neither refutes nor accepts are a crew of hipsters) he’s orchestrating Petite Noir. This is a solo project via which he means to introduce the world to his own genre of music, Noir Wave. The first single Till We Ghosts, has this video.
Phiona: Have you been to Congo and Angola
Yannick: I have but for a very short while though
So do you identify most with South Africa culturally?
Well, not really. Since I’m not from SA. And SA people aren’t the most welcoming either
How do you mean?
Just ignorant shit happening. It’s always been amongst the blacks that reject other blacks from other countries which I don’t understand.
Have you ever experienced it?
There (have been) a few ignorant comments thrown from my friends here and there but nothing ever serious. But I’ve seen shit go down though. Like the one time I took a taxi and this woman was being humiliated after they burnt her house or something.
I try to stay well grounded in where I come from but try to push it forward, instead of sticking to what already is if that makes sense…
Give me an example
Ok, well, people in general get comfortable sub consciously and with the whole culture thing I think that’s where we get trapped into thinking things have to be done in a certain way when it doesn’t, you get me ? Culture isn’t wearing your dad’s hat. It’s buying a new one. 5 years down the line we won’t be doing the same shit though, hopefully. That’s why I’m starting this Waves Generation thing.
Tell me what you listened to growing up
I was listening to mad R&B type stuff, then I started listening to a lot of Blink182, Sum41. Then Istarted getting more into some Nirvana and a lot of electronic music. I really used to enjoy and still do enjoy some metal type stuff. I’ve never really been limited to a certain kind of music.
Did you listen to radio?
uhmm.. yeah. Pop is always good man. I never hated it like alot of people do. Yeah, I enjoyed the radio. But I was always on the internet trying to find out what the next best thing was at like 14, 15. I always say if you can appreciate a Britney song as much as you can appreciate a Radiohead song then you’re on the right track.
What did you know of Fela Kuti before Red Hot Riot came along?
That stuff was always around me at home. African music was always around me playing in the house or at a family function. I knew quite a bit about Fela. His doccie changed my life man, proper! Whenever I make music I always ask myself if it would have as much of an impact on people as his music did but I’m not about to run around the stage naked though.
What sort of answers do you tend to come up with as far as impact or longevity?
Longevity is a one the most important things if you listen to my music then you would notice that I always speak about living forever. I think my music is still growing, man. When the time is right it will be bigger than everything but right now i think it’s impacted a few people already.
You produce?
I produce everything.
How did you hone the skill?
I started playing guitar 7 years ago. I was in a few other bands and things and learnt to write songs and music. I started playing around with computer programs and watching Terrence.
Which artists and producers do you rate today?
I love Dev Heynes man, from Blood Orange. I love Lil B too. I’m like obsessed. A$ap… a lot of rappers. Death Grips are cool, The weeknd, Drake, Frankie Rose, and Lex Lugar kills it as a producer! Kendrick Lemar, Little Dragon, M83, santigold, Clams Casino, Neon Indian, Morrissey, Fally Ipupa – he’s dope. It always feels like like the African artists are a given you know cause it hits home.
Is the music by Popskarr and Petite Noir different?
Yeah. Petite Noir is a genre that I call Noir Wave which is the New Wave with an African Aesthetic with a bit of pop. Popskarr is nu disco with a pop structure and writing content is different too. I’m in two different mindsets when writing.
What gives it its African aesthetic?
Me. Being African first of all and just using all my influence and digging a bit deeper into where im from.
What, if any Congolese or Angolan music can you count as influences for you?
The only Angolan stuff I really listen to is kuduro. Other than that it’s more the Congolese stuff. I like a lot of Papa Wemba. The musicality in African music is amazing man, it’s on another level! But Fally is cool, Pepe Cale, most of the stuff my parents listen to. The crazy thing is I used to get irritated hearing that stuff as a kid.
What we should know about the new EP?
It’s going to be amazing, and just something new. Not coming from South Africa or just Africa but the world!
Till We Ghosts will be the debut EP by Petite Noir
DJ Edu’s Monday Mash-Up Mix (Listen+Download)
May 7th, 2012DJ Edu sits in for Trevor Nelson with an Afrobeats special on BBC 1Xtra, featuring D’Banj co-hosting the second hour and a session featuring Ice Prince and a host of UK MCs. It’s the kick-off for an all afrobeats day on the UK’s number one radio station for Black music. Consider this a taster.
Tracklist:
Chub Rock-Treat Me Right Vs Justin Timberlake-Lovestoned Vs K’naan-Abc’s
Childish Gambino-Heartbeat Vs Wande Coal-Kiss Your Hand
Black Coffee-Turn Me On ft Bucie Vs J Holiday-Bed
Calvin Harris-Let’s Go ft Ne-Yo Vs Dj Sbu-Lengoma ft Zahara
Dj Cleo-Wena Ng’hamba Nawe Vs Marques Houston-Circles
Dj Cndo-Terminator Vs Azealia Banks-212
Shakira-Waka Waka ft Freshly Ground Vs Chris Brown-Yeah x3
Rihanna-Where Have You Been Vs 4X4-Yesi Yesi
Salif Keita-Madan Exotic Vs Sean Garrett Feel Love ft J Cole
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A Blog We Love: The 4Aces Date
May 1st, 2012Cookie, Abby, Oz and Kaven live in the fabulous lane. They are the 4 Aces spread out between Lagos, DC, and New York making us wonder how we can make our lives this colourful and this care-free. These girls look good everywhere they go and they’re not the only ones who know it. So do the folk at Essence, Vogue Italia, Fashion Bomb and others who have featured their fierce looks in their street style editorials.
With the rise in mainstream African fashion reportage over the last five years, I’m quite pleased about the co-related trend where more personal style blogs like this one are popping up everywhere. Fashion advice, beauty advice, and personal style posts abound. And if you need it there is a love/life forum where young readers pose questions they’d probably ask their friends like ‘Should I change myself to make him happy?’ Girrrl no!
Growing Pains: MC Tehn Diamond on Chasing Dreams and Repping Zimbabwe
April 25th, 2012When Zimbabwean-born MC/singer/songwriter Tehn Diamond went to Australia, it was really to get as far away as he could from the tyranny of his parents’ wishes. Your typical middle class African family today looks like his: siblings flung across the globe (Tehn has a brother in China, a sister in UK and another in America), and parents whose professions have just about weathered economic conditions so volatile that as their offspring you dare not emerge from (expensive) tertiary education without a sturdy career.
So off Tehn went in pursuit of a finance degree which was doomed from the start. “I was never gonna finish it,” admits the 27-year-old rapper born Tendai Nguni, “I wanted to do a performing arts degree, be an actor, be a singer, be on Broadway. My parents were against that. They wanted me to do something so I would have something to fall back on first.”
And at first he made a real go of it, turning in the grades for his first year in Brisbane. But things changed when his interest wandered over to the creatives’ side of campus. Tehn Diamond fell in with an arts crowd whose ambitions he could relate to. He found friends here where in the commerce faculty he had never secured any peer connection. It was in these circles that he really started to listen to rap music. Up until this point, Jay Z was the beginning and end of the Hip-hop lexicon for this Frank Sinatra and New Edition fan that had it in his head he would be a songwriter one day.
There’s a mature honesty in Tehn’s style that places him some paces ahead of rapper counterparts with longer Hip-hop histories than his. But by being able to craft a song as second nature he advances straight to the top of the class, and he explains, “I wanted to sing but at first I didn’t think my singing voice was good enough so I wanted to be a songwriter. I started out writing and singing hooks for this rap group over in Australia. When I started writing raps in 2006 turned out I was pretty good cos I was a songwriter I knew about structure and things like that.”
The time he took exploring his new found passion – which was his every waking hour – slowly encroached on his attendance record. Faced with whether to soldier on with academic learning for three more years or to enrol fully in a self-taught course on the craft and the business of Hip-hop – what Tehn calls “the game”, the choice wasn’t what he would do but how he would break it to his politician father and his mom, a professional caregiver in the UK. He sent an email, of course. It’s paraphrased on They Don’t Get It, a track on 2008’s SOTG1, the first in his Student of the Game mixtape series
With nothing more to lose and everything yet to prove, the learning process for Tehn Diamond turned inward, yielding the reflection you’ll hear on songs like Be Amazing where he rhymes: ‘Used to look down on my own until I found peace…’ Owning one’s cultural identity had never occurred to him before he left Zim, but nowadays it’s a priority.
“I don’t speak Shona fluently and I didn’t care about it until I came on this journey,” Nguni confesses. Growing up there was always a thing of if you spoke English you were better or if you’re from a certain neighbourhood. Your culture wasn’t cool. But being surrounded by Australians I had to ask what is it about me that is distinct? What did I bring to the table?
“More than anything I’m trying to get comfortable with using what Shona I do know and speak well without fear of ridicule or judgement. So I’m tweeting in Shona every now and again and stuff like that. Which is hilarious to a lotta folk, but I’m not fazed. This is an exciting challenge for me.”
SOTG1 was all Tendai had to show for when he returned home. In contrast, the school mates he’d left behind were now grown up and settled into jobs. “I didn’t know where I’d be recording again. I didn’t know how I’d afford to do so. I was basically just a post-adolescent bum still living at home with no hope,” is how he remembers that trying six months in which he very nearly abandoned his music dreams.
Not a moment too soon came the opportunity to tour in Singapore for close to a year. It was like putting jumper cables to his flagging motivation. Here at last was the proof that a sustainable living doing what he loved was possible. “This experience changed me,” he says, “it showed me the kinda work ethic required to make a career of my music, and gave me a glimpse into the good life that awaited anyone willing to really work for it. I wrote most of #SOTG2 there and based it on the times I had out there.”
You can’t get within close range of Tehn Diamond, nowadays also a motoring entrepreneur, without being steam rolled in a more positive direction of self-belief. His can-do attitude is effervescent, present in his personality and certainly in his rhymes. In Grown-Up Kid he thumbs his nose at prescribed routes to and definitions of success. The Sweet Life featuring Simba Tagz (which we premiered last week) is in a similar spirit of defiant happiness, and comes from his current mixtape, SOTG3: The Pursuit of Amazing, named for the famous Chris Gardner book which Will Smith turned into a box office hit.
For Tehn, although staying overseas presented the obvious option for his then up-start music career, he couldn’t see himself based anywhere but in his own country as he puts it, “I wanted to perform for the people who would “get me” the most. SA had their stars, as did Nigeria. I wanted to be that very thing to Zimbabwe. And I’m still fighting that fight. But it had to happen from here, so others who will follow after me know that we have what it takes and were made to be amazing and stand tall on an international stage.
Tehn Diamond is named amongst 30 young achievers to watch over at isthisAfrica
His debut album, The Perfect Tehn is out September 4 2012.
Check out his official website for more music and info.
Follow him on Twitter
A Blog We Love: Fly
April 25th, 2012(photo credit: http://www.flygirlblog.com/)
This post is long overdue. I came up on this blog a couple years back via one of its Fly Girl Of The Week posts where readers – girls who are inherently fly – send in pictures and some text about themselves. I liked this round-the-way approach to sharing inspiration. It’s one of the things that keep me coming back. Author Andrea Pippins, such a consistent curator of flyness, has an amazing knack for spotting hot finds in fashion, colours, art, design, hair and more. You’ll spend hours on her site easily. Happy browsing 
Shabazz Palaces’ Tendai Baba Maraire Presents a Chimurenga Renaissance Material: Interview + New Video ‘rhodZi!’ + New Single ‘Boom!’
April 18th, 2012Before they formally came to be known as Sub Pop-signed enigmatic new lords of left-field Hip-hop Shabazz Palaces, Ishmael Butler and Tendai ‘Baba’ Maraire met in a club in Seattle 9 years ago. Butler is also ‘Butterfly’ from the Grammy-Award winning post-Daisy Age 90s Hip-hop trio Digable Planets. While Tendai is an heir to the late Dumisani Maraire, renowned Zimbabwean composer, producer and ethnomusicologist. He toured, performed and recorded with his musical family including sister Chiwoniso and friends like the late Andy Brown.
Mutual friendships kept Butler and Maraire on each other’s radar, and it was 2 or 3 years before they actually started making music together. Ishmael, fascinated by multi-instrumentalist Tendai’s mbira playing, persistently persuaded a reluctant Tendai to add it to their joint production arsenal. When he eventually did the seminal Blast It emerged, one of the songs Shabazz Palaces used to score the Kenyan documentary Tough Bonds.
The mbira dominates the soundscape for Wona Baba Maraire, the album Tendai wrote for his family and for his country and released in December 2011. On it you’ll find Is She, a mournful auto-tuned angst, not unlike something one would find on Kanye West’s 808’s & Heartbreak, except the bass never drops. It’s one of the only three instances where you’ll hear English. This album strictly uses the raw melody from Southern African harmonies, some African American gospel, and percussion to stir up feelings of African nationalism, belonging, love, nostalgia.
On a day off from tour duties with Shabazz palaces, Tendai spoke to AfriPOP! about making Zimbabwean Shona music for the next generation.
AfriPOP!: Are all of these original songs that you wrote yourself?
Tendai: Yes. They are they were just songs that had to do with a period of time in my life. Growing up as a Zimbabwean and being influenced by the 60s and 70s and the story-telling element and a bit of comedy and that was all what I wanted to reflect in this album
You call the album Wona Baba Maraire. Is this an album about your heritage?
It represents heritage but more importantly I have a pretty large family. My father passed away in 2000 so this was me more or less stepping into my name sake as the oldest boy of the family. And letting everyone know that I hadn’t forgotten about my home and my culture
And this is your first album?
It’s my first solo mbira album
Why did you want to do it?
Well for me it was a good way and a good foundation to lay for what I felt the future was gonna bring. This album was intended to bring a lot of African Americans who didn’t come to my shows the traditional shows. Cos the audience would always be people from Zimbabweans and that was something I couldn’t understand. This was a way to bring a lot of people to this music, they don’t get it because a lot of time no one brings it to them but when they do, they get it. I would like to be able to bridge that gap.
Growing up outside Africa the only time I ever saw Africans proudly owning their culture was when I would see people like Fela, Makeba, Masekela… people like that. African Americans treated me a funny way when I got off the plane. I went through the whole African booty scratcher thing. I think now younger people are more accepting of the culture
Who do you think is going to get it the most?
I think everyone gets it once they get hold of it. I didn’t have anyone in mind I really had a purpose. You do it in hopes that when I go out there and say, ‘My name is Tendai, this is what I do,’ maybe my peers and their peers can embrace it
How do you feel about the term ‘world music’?
People gotta understand this. It’s the music industry they have to sell things commercially. I don’t like it cos it lumps us in with all this other music. They try to take away the truth of our music you know. You can go to a lot of shows where they are not Zimbabwean and yet they are up there playing Zimbabwean music. If I was to come to a show and it was a lot of Europeans on stage doing this music I’d have a lot of questions.
Are you often in Zimbabwe?
Not as often as I’d like to. I plan on going this year. I’m going to see my grandparents.
Would you move back?
I definitely wanna move back. I wanna set up a situation so that I am able to go back more often, like 3 or more times a year. Zimbabwe, South Africa, Africa is at a pivotal time in terms of music the economy and taking ownership of their resources. I want to be a part of that
Besides being this amazing cultural icon for Zimbabwean traditional music and indeed for Africa, what do you recall about your father?
More than anything he was about doing things with a purpose. I understood him in a way that a lot of people maybe didn’t. He had to blaze a trail for people and in order to do that he had to make a lot of sacrifices. Here was a guy coming to America in the 60s from a village with no electricity. You had to respect he was always busy trying to build something while trying to be the best father. There had to be compromise.
One of the things we know about Shabazz Palaces is they prefer to not let too much be known about them personally. Is it weird for you talking about you around this record?
Not at all. The thing is there is always a commercial aspect to Hip-hop, more so than traditional African music of course. When we first came out we felt like everybody was becoming famous without the music, like when MySpace first came out. We really felt that the expression of the music was important (to buck the trend).
Do you approach making music differently on the two projects?
There’s no different approach at all. I am always making music, humming and singing songs. In fact right now the foundation has already been laid for my next project. I am something like twenty songs into another mbira album which will be completely different from this one. That’s the one thing about me I never like to do anything the same way.
***
To commemorate Zimbabwean independence today, Tendai drops this video for rhodZi!, an indictment of Western imperialism, focusing on the history of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes. It’s created by Zimbabwean journalist, author, and filmmaker Charles Mudede.
The video to rhodZi also comes with an original essay from Charles Mudede: A Time of Struggle: Baba Maraire’s “rhodZi”
On this song (with a hook sung by his mother Lora Chiorah-Dye) Tendai, raps about Robert Mugabe’s place in Zimbabwe today, corruption and cultural apropriation.
Check out the new website for Baba Maraire’s Chimurenga Renaissance: www.chimurengarenaissance.com
Follow @maraire on Twitter
Like Maraire on Facebook