One of West Africa’s most exciting recording artists came to visit me at VOA headquarters. His name is Denning Edem Hotor. This 29-year old, dread-headed rapper from Ghana goes by the stage name Edem. He has a couple of slogans too: “Go get ’em Edem!” and “Special Delivery”. Edem is a force in Ghana […]
Dance in Ghana and Mali
Posted July 9th, 2012 at 5:57 pm (UTC-5)
My mind has been on dance lately. The late A.M. Ipoku, Director of the Ghana Dance Ensemble, once said that dance and music should be so closely connected that one “can see the music and hear the dance” (Barbara Hampton, 1984, “Music and Ritual Symbolism in the Ga Funeral.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 14:75-105). I […]
Northern Mali Comes to Washington, D.C.
Posted June 14th, 2012 at 5:12 pm (UTC-5)
Tinariwen, the phenomenal guitar-based Tuareg group, will play for us here at the Howard Theater in downtown DC. The group won a Grammy Award in February 2012 for Best World Music Album. Get ready for an exciting report on the show coming up early next week. In the meantime, here is a video segment of […]
Welcome to the New African Music Treasures
Posted June 11th, 2012 at 4:08 pm (UTC-5)
In case you haven’t noticed, the VOA radio show, Music Time in Africa, and this companion blog has a new face; and it’s me! So let me begin this new chapter in the history of VOA’s longest running show to introduce myself. I’m Heather Maxwell and am delighted to be taking up the reigns from […]
Ghanaian guitars
Posted June 3rd, 2009 at 10:37 pm (UTC-5)
One of the qualities, I find, that is shared by many of the musics that most appeal to me is the ability to create and sustain juxtapositions between different, and often seemingly contradictory, moods or ‘feelings’. The mysterious ways in which, for example, the best Brazilian Bossa Nova can simultaneously express contentment and melancholy, or […]
E.T. Mensah The King of Highlife
Posted June 1st, 2009 at 9:16 pm (UTC-5)
One of the greatest joys of an intuitively organized-read disheveled-archive is the potential for surprise discoveries. Even after ten years of poking through our stacks of reels I still find interesting recordings I have never heard. Over the last month, whenever I could find a few minutes, I have gone down to the archive and […]
