Pass Radio
Babatunde “Aiyekooto” Akerele in conversation with Ntone Edjabe
Babatunde “Aiyekooto” Akerele leads a Helsinki-based band called Aiyekooto & Afrobeat International.
Nigerian born afrobeat musician, composer, arranger and lead singer Babatunde Akerele aka Aiyekooto (b.1966) moved to Finland in 2005, with the assistance of Finnish colleague, guitar player and recording artist Seppo ”Paarma” Salmi. Back in 2003, in Nigeria, they had released a single together, Falana (mind your own business). It got a positive response and radio play on the local stations. When they settled to live in Helsinki, the band Aiyekooto & Afrobeat International was formed, consisting of top musicians, many having a work history in well-known bands of the local rhythm music scene. The band is co-led by Aiyekooto and Salmi.
During the years, the band has managed to gain credit as a powerful live unit within the audience dedicated to the Finnish scene. As proof for their intense gigs, they were awarded as Band of the Year in the 2007 Funky Awards, which are handed out annually to outstanding Finnish talent. With the album Olurombi, it’s time to conquer bigger audiences.
Olurombi was released in Finland September 2013 (label: Suomen Musiikki) as CD / LP+CD / digital. The single cut was called Yanke (join me in my dance). Sung in Yoruba, this up-tempo call for dance is irresistible, and a prime example of the entire album. Even if the music follows traditions set in Nigeria by the likes of Fela Kuti, Aiyekooto’s music is no pastiche, but the groove has softer undertones and, above all, its own manifestation, not to forget the powerful message.
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PASS Pop-Up at AVA
Chimurenga is occupying the AVA stoep in Cape Town with a pop-up bookshop over three days, from the 27th to the 28th January 2016, from 4-7pm daily. The pop-up includes a live broadcasting studio of the Pan African Space Station (PASS), Chimurenga’s online radio. On the programme for today: Ben V Future Nostalgia Dj Cherry Bomb This event is produced in collaboration with VANSA and the AVA. The live broadcast studio functions amidst an installation that brings together pop-up stores …
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PASS Pop Up at AVA
Chimurenga will be occupying the AVA stoep in Cape Town with a pop-up bookshop over three days, from the 27th to the 28th January 2016, from 4-7pm daily. The pop-up includes a live broadcasting studio of the Pan African Space Station (PASS), Chimurenga’s online radio, featuring a programme of music, interviews, and performances with Chimurenga collaborators in Cape Town, including People’s Education, Future Nostalgia,Lohla Amira and many more. This event is produced in collaboration with VANSA and the AVA. For …
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Call It A Difficult Night Book Launch
Call it a difficult night is a story about madness. Using anecdotes, poems, dialogue, and fragments of historical research, it follows a nonlinear path in tracing the life of its young narrator/protagonist. Institutionalised after a ‘final break’, a young woman remembers in sharp detail her disturbing childhood visions, which have become overwhelming by the time she is at high school and university. When she finally gets a diagnosis a doctor explains that she is likely to be either demented or …
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Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa live performance
PASS plays out with a live vocal and mbira performance by Zimbabwean-born musician and composer Tanyaradzwa Tawangwa. Tawangwa is a Zimbabwean-born musician and composer. A Princeton graduate, she works between mbira, classical piano and cello, opera and popular forms.
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Omar Berrada – Defend the Dead (on NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!)
Omar Berrada offers a meditation on poetry when it holds on to the imperative of “defending the dead,” among the traumas of history and the silences of archives. He does so via recordings of performances by NourbeSe Philip, sampled with the help of Ambrose Bye. “Zong! not only deals with an historical event (i.e. the massacre of enslaved Africans on board the Zong in 1784), but also speaks to contemporary times, in the sense that we are all contaminated by that …
Harmony Holiday : Astro/Afrosonics
Poet and choreographer Harmony Holiday digs in her Astro/Afrosonics Archive, which weaves poetry, poetics and music, through mythscientific gestures. “To access recordings and writing that unite the philosophy of collective improvisation that galvanizes black music, with the literary tradition – and creates new motifs within both disciplines – one has to practically be a savant, a collector of rare out-of-print records and books, or an archivist in one’s own right.” Harmony Holiday Harmony Holiday is the author of Negro League …
Seeing voices: Reflections on African photographic portraiture
Nontsikelelo Mutiti: Women in Self-publishing
Nontsikelelo Mutiti kicks off with a talk on women in self-publishing featuring Yolanda Sangwena (Afripop Magazine), Amy Sall (SUNU Journal), Ali Rosa–Salas (Top Rank Magazine) and Jessica Lynne (Arts.black). Mutiti is a Zimbabwean-born artist and educator. She has been a resident artist at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), Recess as well as the Centre for Book Arts in New York and is currently Assistant Professor in the New Media Department at State University of New York, Purchase College. …
The night ghost
PASS Pop-up has occupied the Performa 15 Hub in New York with the Chimurenga Library. Over five days, from 11 to 15 November 2015, The Library hosts PASS with a live broadcasting programme of music, interviews, and events with Chimurenga collaborators in New York, including musicians, journalists, writers, curators, and filmmakers. The live broadcast studio functions amidst an installation that brings together pop-up stores that experiment with trade, informal economies, aesthetics and body language, music and spoken word, mobility and infrastructure.
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