Bollywood, the multimillion-dollar industry of Hindi film, has a presence in the most far-flung corners of the world. The prodigious output of musical film is second perhaps only to martial arts (more on this later). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the North of Nigeria, where audiences are not…
Dayhiru - Kumsa The town lies in the shadow of a giant rock. Bulbous granite, the mountain seems to have risen out of the ground, sprung like a prehistoric mushroom. The tiny village nestles up against the cliffs. Some even build their homes from the same stone stuff like the…
Coming of pre-coup Bamako in February Little Axe's Warren Hill and myself headed into Boko Harem Northern Nigeria to work on an upcoming Hausa record. We recorded lots of music, met a lot of producers, and spent a lot of time in police interrogations. Updates coming soon. In the meantime,…
The trans-cultural exchange in musical phenomena, peripheral to the song as it may be is often at the forefront of discussion. Understandably so. The story of the creation of a style can read like an epic -- it appeals to the old folk concept of the passage of music with…