Blogs: "Awesome Tapes from Africa" and "African Music Treasures" - Who's Up for a Road Trip?

If you are planning a trip to Africa and/or just want to increase your familiarity with the continent's music and culture we suggest two sites that we have recently become fans of. Voice of America's "African Music Treasure" goes to great lengths to provide cultural context with its music samples. This we greatly appreciate. For example, below is the opening of a recent posting from Matthew LaVoie on the blog:

Any discussion of Sufism in Sub-Saharan Africa has to include, if not start in, Senegal. Perhaps nowhere on the continent are Sufi Brotherhoods as pervasive as they are in Senegal, where the different orders are a part of national politics, many sectors of the economy, popular fashions, traditional and contemporary art, sports, and popular music. Today it is impossible to walk through the streets of Dakar, St. Louis, Kaolack or any other Senegalese city without being drawn in by the sounds and symbols of Senegal's Sufis; from greetings, shop signs, and murals, to the singing of religious students in the streets, and cassettes playing in taxicabs, Sufi orders shape the physical space, imaginations, and relationships of the majority of Senegalese. And over the last ten years, with the dramatic growth in the religious cassette industry, Sufi songs have implanted themselves in the mainstream of Senegalese musical life. In fact, many Sufi artists now regularly outsell their secular counterparts, and for all of the international recognition that Mbalax and Senegalese hip-hop have received, the sound of urban Senegal (especially during Ramadan) is deeply religious.

The post goes on to provide music from Mouride and Tidjane singers. You can visit the site and enjoy for yourself at African Music Treasures.


Awesome tapes from Africa is a little more heavy on the music and a little less heavy on the cultural context, but excellent none the less. There are few sites that provide the range and quality of music that are found on this blog. You can lose yourself in Kandja Kouyate tracks or move your head slowly to Kandandu's sweet portuguese lyrics.

Both sites are great resources with incredible music. We enjoy visiting them and exploring day after day............... Anyone up for joining Create Culture on a trip to Africa?