The Ballad at (as?) the Core: Popular African Music Today

The dominant genre of modern African music in 2013-14 was the ballad. Is this symptomatic of anything? Is the African singer, perhaps, at heart a balladeer(ess)? Since it began to step out of its Congolese cradle (where it nestled as rumba) in the mid-1950s, contemporary African music, increasingly a part of the global ‘pop’ culture, continues to be at its most endearing and most resonating in that modus. Since Bob Marley, however, it has been much challenged around Sub-Sahara by the infectiousness of the political-cultural messaging in reggae, the rambunctious imprint in hip-hop, and that catch-as-catch-can wave -- Afro-Fusion.

Still, the lyrical content of African pop music today is mostly about love and loneliness ('aloneness', even) and loss, in distant or forsaken places. Love: which in may sorts of ways, to an expression. The anguished heart which Zahara’s ballad evokes returns us to a period, not quite so long ago, which she probably has a personal recollection of, when parents, spouses and lovers didn’t have mobile phones, and many couldn’t even write. So absences and longings were total, and telegrams (the quickest way to say anything from afar) were dreaded for their habitus-induced capacity to totalize the end of hope. The telegram had become the default bearer of the worst kind of news -- the death of a loved one. 

Has the mobile phone, then, killed longing and lonesomeness? Not quite, for it has restored hope that, as in the traditional village or community life, no social (dis)connect is beyond rerouting and repair in the global village. But it requires a different sort of re-imagining and feeling. Perhaps Zahara should tell us how one should feel about the empty train now. 

Is not all gospel music a protestation of undivided love for The Maker? The “Kwetu” (motherland) which John Bosco, the Congolese, sang so longingly about in ‘broken’ Swahili -- that brokenness being both Sheng’s precursor and contemporary -- across East Africa of the Fifties: Wasn't it about Love?

Here below are 25 of the best African ballads of 2014. Check them out. They are not arranged in any particular order:

1. Bondo - Say You Love Me 
2. D’ija - “Awww” 
3. Jaywon - “Tana Wole”
4. Davido ft. Uhuru x DJ Buckz - “The Sound”{Nigeria+S. Africa}
5. Vanessa Mdee ft. K.O. - “Nobody But Me” {Tanzania + }
6. Skales - "I am for Real" 
7. Orezi and Davido - “Shuperu”
8. Seyi Shay - “Jangilova”
9. Yemi Alade - “Johnny”
10. Tiwa Savage - My Darlin'    
11. Adekunle Gold - Sade 
12. Rayce - For You 
13. Rayce - Tetela  
14. Mr. Flavour ft. Chidinma - “Ololufe”
15. Zahara - Limbisa {South Africa}
16. Tolu ft. Don Jazzy - My Lover 
17. Elani - Nikupende (Lyric Video) {Kenya} 
18. Waje - Coco Baby ft. Diamond Platnumz {Nigeria + Tanzania}
19. Avril - Nikimuona {Kenya}
20. Charass - Coco Butter [Remix] ft. Davido x Phyno 
21. Alicios - Posa ya Bolingo (Lingala Love) {DRC}
22. Harrysong - I'm In Love [Remix] ft. Olamide
23. Bisa Kdei - I Love You {Ghana}
24. DeeVS ft. Bisa Kdei - Yebeko 
25. Elani - Kookoo {Kenya}


NOTE
See also Zahara's Loliwe; and see how she explains the meaning of the song. The literal meaning of the word is “The Train”. Though it came out in 2011, I mention it here for the special poignancy and richness of its allusions. Loliwe is Zahara's metaphor for the deep longing for a father, a loved one, who went away in search of greener pastures. A father who went away and, it seems, isn’t ever coming back -- because trains from the big towns arrive predictably at the local station and disappoint.