Afro National - Jeneba

Afro National - Money Palava

Systema Solar - El Botón del Pantalón

Amy Winehouse [feat. The Specials] - You're Wondering Now

Amy: "I won't return, forever you will wait..."

Mohammed Rafi and Suman Kalyanpur - Aaj Kal Tere Mere Pyar Ke Charche

Shammi Kapoor and Rajshree from Brahmachari (1968)

Miriam Makeba - Pata Pata

Just happened to hear a clip of this on some random commercial... brought back a flood of memories.

Wintley Phipps - Amazing Grace

Continuing with this month's theme, here's a video you need to watch from start to finish. You'll never forget it.

Calixto Ochoa - El Africano

While we're on the subject of race, here's the original version of a song I heard in Bogota this June. There are lots of versions of it, the most famous being by Wilfrido Vargas.

The song is controversial, for reasons discussed at some length here. But it's also very catchy and versions of it keep cropping up. One by Sonora Dinamita is here, a hip-hop version by Pitbull here, the Vargas version here, and a fragment by Chico Che here.

And here's an interview (in Spanish) in which Ochoa discusses the song he wrote and first performed:

Carolina Chocolate Drops - Cornbread and Butterbeans

See my last post for an explanation...

Pomplamoose - Single Ladies

Haven't posted anything for ages but just came across this via Andrew Sullivan's blog and couldn't resist. Interesting take on the Beyonce song... also check out their version of September here.

Andrew Sullivan, by the way, is a national treasure. His blog is always interesting, often surprising, and occasionally reaches vertiginous heights of brilliance. In responding a recent rant by Pat Buchanan about "traditional" Americans losing their nation, he started a thread under the title Whose Country? in which he made the provocative claim that "white Americans do not realize how black they are." This was followed up by a post on the African origins of the banjo (including a memorable video clip from Deliverance), an excerpt from an extraordinary 1970 essay by Ralph Ellison entitled What America Would Be Like Without Blacks, a link to Saul Bellow's 1952 review of Ellison's Invisible Man, and a video clip of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Rod Dreher dived into the conversation here, as did a reader discussing Huckleberry Finn here; other readers chimed in here, here, here and elsewhere.

When most people speak of "The West", they usually have Europe and the United States in mind, perhaps together with some of the countries of the old Commonwealth (Australia, New Zealand, Canada). For many years now I have objected strenuously to the inclusion of America in this group. This country is as African as it is European, not simply because of a vibrant black subculture, but also because mainstream American culture itself has been shaped by the black experience in so many ways, large and small. The video clip at the top of this post is in some ways a metaphor for this.

Chocquibtown - Somos Pacifico

Posting this from Bogota... this takes about 20 seconds to get started so be patient, it's worth the wait.

Jurassic 5 - Work It Out

Monie Love - It's a Shame

Still among the best of the Brits...

Queen Latifah (ft. Monie Love) - Ladies First

Both ladies were members of the Native Tongues collective, and both were nineteen when this was released. The track is from All Hail the Queen.

The Roots - The Seed (2.0)

Originally called The Square Roots (should have kept that name). This track is from Phrenology.

Jungle Brothers - Straight out the Jungle

Founding members (together with De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest) of the Native Tongues Collective...

A Tribe Called Quest - Check the Rhyme

This track is from The Low End Theory, reviewed by Dave Heaton here. The following extract from Heaton's review is on the band's Wikipedia page:

Any 30-second snippet of The Low End Theory will go further to convince of the album's greatness than anything I can write. I could easily write an entire book on this one album and still feel like I've hardly said anything... The Low End Theory is a remarkable experience, as aesthetically and emotionally rewarding as any work of music I can think of.

And here's the album's brilliant opening track, Excursions:

De La Soul - The Magic Number

Among the greatest hip-hop innovators of all time. I bought 3 Feet High and Rising at the time of its release in 1989 and remember being startled by it. Now I'm going back to discover all the bands that were inspired by De La Soul. There are quite a few geniuses in that crowd, as you'll see this month.

Brace yourself...

AR Rahman - Jai Ho

Finally saw Slumdog Millionaire a couple of weeks ago on DVD, with heavily sanitized subtitles... the banter among the kids was hilariously coarse but didn't get translated that way for some reason. Untranslatable maybe? Or tailored to the audience?

Irrfan Khan, as usual, was brilliant.

That's it for the month... next month will feature Alternative Rap: De La Soul, Digital Underground, A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers and other great innovators...

Mika Singh - Mauja Hi Mauja

Another from Jab We Met...