Africa's musical heritage in 18 CDs

The collection is divided into six regions - southern Africa, west Africa, central Africa, east Africa, north Africa and Portuguese-speaking Africa.  

The producers have turned to the Senegalese music veteran Ibrahima Sylla for the tracklisting and they have accompanied the 250 songs with a 32-page illustrated booklet written by music journalists from Le Monde, Libération and RFI.

Hear some of the music To hear some of the music click on  the link and scroll down to: En écoute un mix de 40 minutes and click in the window below.

 
“African music is a spectacular adventure,” writes RFI producer and historian Elikia M’Bokolo in his remarkable introduction. “It can be understood in both the singular and the plural sense: a long, rich adventure made up of sharing, exchanges, a melting-pot of inheritance and invention, looking backwards and leaping into the unknown.”
 
The international dimension of the music chosen is underlined by all the contributors to a box set that is already being seen as a classic.
 
It includes songs by artists who have put the continent on the music map, such as Miriam Makeba, Franco, Fela Kuti, Manu Dibango, Salif Keita, Youssou N’Dour. 
 
But there are also representatives of the new generation challenging these music legends - Didier Awadi, Tumi & the Volume, Magic System, Comrade Fatso, etc.

Listen Daniel Brown talks about 50 years of African music   04/08/2010 by Laura Angela Bagnetto   Listen (02:42)

 
The anniversaries are really just a pretext for an ambitious tour of the entire continent. The authors underline that the musical heritage draws deeply on history and the successive waves of migration to and fro over the Atlantic Ocean which began with the slave trade.
 
“Because of the slave trade,” notes Le Monde journalist Véronique Mortaigne, “Africa became one of the greatest purveyors of rhythms in the world. ”
 
The box-set covers 50 years of music with stories about each region, rather than commentary on each song. It is full of anecdotes.
 
For example, the story of the instruments given by Russian Tsar Nicolas II to Ethiopia in 1896. They indirectly contributed to the remarkable golden era this country enjoyed in the 1960s and 1970s.
 
Music specialists are bound to quibble over names that have been overlooked in the 18 CDs. However, the aim was not so much an exhaustive look at the endless well of musical expression in Africa.
 
It was more an attempt to chronicle what one author describes as a tuneful reflection of the “hope, utopia, authoritarianism, disillusionment, revolt or despair” the continent has experienced over the past half-century.