(photo by Andrea Bergart)

Too often, when we see the words “African music” in  a major music site, they’re in the same phrase as words like vampire or weekend… not that we don’t encourage experimentation with African music and techniques. But it’s refreshing to see the Chicago powerhouse making room for the music you find in the sidewalk stands they portray in the article, which we highly, highly recommend.

In French only… for now at least… but a lot of the gestures are pretty self-explanatory, so keep practicing!

Move it Chaleh! Words you might hear at an outdoor chop bar in Accra, Ghana, a calling for you to get up and shake it. A hint to the pungent grooves blasting out of subwoofers and beat up sound systems throughout West Africa today.

Smaller, cheaper studios are sprouting all over big African cities, allowing a new generation of artists to create and push the envelope of urban and dance music. In particular, Move It Chaleh! focuses on two underrated African trends:
Coupé décalé is the upbeat sound of Côte d’Ivoire today, a dance craze which can be heard throughout francophone Africa. It has roots in both Congolese soukous and Ivorian zouglou. It emerged at the height of the Ivorian crisis around 2002-2003, first in Paris, but it quickly spread to Ivory Coast, to Africa and now to the world.

Hiplife is a Ghanaian mish mash of hip hop, dancehall, calypso and other Caribbean styles, with highlife, itself a mix of soul and funk with more traditional Ghanaian rhythms. It has taken Ghana by storm, and it is well known to Ghanaian abroad, particularly in the US and UK, yet it is still off the radar for most.

Time to change that. Move it chaleh!

Nnamdi Moweta invited Akwaaba founder Benjamin Lebrave to his show, Afrodicia, Saturday December 13 from 2 to 4pm. Nnamdi plays a lot of party music from all over the gulf of Guinea, soukous, highlife, afrobeat, hiplife, coupé décalé… Akwaaba fits right in, check it out!

Until we drop our second release, packed with Ivorian and Ghanaian jams, check out this video about the coupé décalé phenomenon. You can also read a very good article about it and a nice short mix by our friend Eddie STATS of the Fader.

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