African music, with its distinctive emphasis on polyrhythm and beats flowing from percussive instruments, was long treated as subordinate in the international music arena. Music from the continent ...

Note: This article was originally published in April 2005. It was created at a time when African music was on the cusp of becoming an increasingly large part of the Western pop culture landscape.

Globally acclaimed musician and producer Michael Prince Johnson has released Warrior Blood: Kings & Queens of Africa, a powerful Afro-House album with 10 tracks that celebrate African leaders and ...

Rhiannon Giddens is a folk singer and multi-instrumentalist who also happens to be a classically trained opera singer. Having grown up in North Carolina, she’s now on a mission to re-frame the history ...

The latest archival release on Damon Albarn's Honest Jon's imprint collects early 78 sides containing spare folk songs, primarily from Ghana and Nigeria, many of which are delivered a cappella. Save ...

For all the times that we’ve heard the phrase “African music,” it can be easy to forget that we’re talking about an entire continent here. The reality is that the African continent consists of more ...

On the islands off the coast of Georgia, the Gullah Geechee culture of ex-slaves was isolated from the rest of the world by seawater and a thick dialect and thus retained a music closer to Africa than ...

This has been a strong year for African music, with two big trends emerging. The first is the continuing integration of African music into the U.S. and European mainstream. Nigerian Afrobeat is played ...

Thinking back on the biggest cultural moments of 2024, it’s hard to ignore the many African women who were at the center of it all. Over the past decade, global African music has been dominated by ...

On a chilly October night, the dimly lit lounge of Rock Steady — a popular Afro-Caribbean restaurant in Midtown — is notably empty. Staffers are preparing for what’s supposed to be a busy night ahead.

The country has a rich, original relationship to jazz, with American techniques layered into regional traditions and rhythms. Explore 50 years of recordings picked by musicians, poets and writers. By ...

The African Music Week (AMW) Accra was launched on December 27, 2024, at the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC). The music festival, set to take place from December 15 to 20, 2025, was unveiled ...