Afropop Worldwide

Highlife—West Africa’s pioneer popular music of the late colonial and independence periods—has mostly faded from popularity in 21st century Nigeria. However, highlife is alive and well in Edo State, 300 kilometers east...

In our visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, we go beyond the handful of artists who have achieved international careers and dive into the local scene. We visit azmaribets, down home music clubs featuring vivacious women...

New York City is home to a diverse community of Colombian musicians and groups who create in a wide range of traditional, popular and experimental music styles for diasporic communities and beyond. "Colombia in NYC"...

For some 50 years, Leo Sarkisian was a worldwide staple on the overseas radio broadcast of Voice of America. A talented musician, raised in the Armenian community around Boston, Leo began traveling the world with his...

As the 21st century rolls on, more and more of the musical artists who are making a difference cannot be pinned down to any one national identity.Migration, intermarriage, and the hurly burly of our globalized planet...

From his Cameroonian roots, to his DJ days in Paris, his global broadcast career on VOA from the 1960s into the ‘80s, and his 38-year career hosting Afropop Worldwide, Georges Collinet is living an extraordinary life...

n Jamaica, sound systems are more than just a stack of speakers blasting the latest tunes to an eager crowd. Over the last 70 years, they have come to represent the most common way that Jamaicans experience music. Sound...

The golden age of vinyl records is long past in Africa, but the market for rare and reissued African vinyl outside the continent has been growing steadily since the early 2000s. DJs and collectors have turned an...

In this special episode we introduce you to a fast-paced, emotional sound built from the streets of Lagos, Nigeria. We follow DJ Khalifa, the pioneer behind the sound, from DJing on a phone in a hostel to collaborating...

Beneath the gloss of Nigeria’s contemporary pop, older roots styles, mostly derived from Yoruba tradition, still thrive. In this program, we meet four top stars of fuji music, the percussion-driven, message-heavy, and...

Technology is one of the great drivers of musical change, and often one of its least understood. In this episode, we explore the synthesizer, looking closely at the history of this ubiquitous (and often debated) piece...

The 1970s was a decade that changed the world's popular music... No. Changed the world's culture. Whether you were boogieing to full-flower rock and funk, delving into free jazz, or discovering a hidden identity, the...

The leopard cult of Ekpe in Calabar, in present-day Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon, has one of the most unique performance traditions in all of Africa - a complex theatrical tradition, referred to in calabar English...

There's a lot of fantastic music being made by Brazilian artists living in the U.S. They entertain an estimated 1.5 million Brazilian immigrants here as well as a growing number of other fans. And Brazilian music is...

To make this unprecedented program, producer Ned Sublette traveled to Mbanza-Kongo, the ancient seat of the Kongo empire located in present-day northern Angola, where he spoke to Dr. Bárbaro Martínez Ruiz, professor of...