The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

Wande Coal , Lizha James , Barbara Kanam , AY , HHP , Bracket , Blu3 , Radio & Weasel , Alikiba , Black Coffee , and Cheb Khaled lead the nominees for the Museke Online Africa Music Awards . The MOAMAs will award the best of African music over the last year and put the winners in the spotlight as Africa prepares to host the globe at the World Cup in South Africa. The awards are being organized by Museke.com, home of the African music fan which seeks to unify Africa through its music. The nominees were selected over a 3 month period by an academy made up of African music enthusiasts and fans. Voting will take place on http://awards.museke.com (http://moamas.com) until 15 May, with winners being announced on 1 June. Users can vote once everyday. Below is the full list of nominees (arranged by song/album, name & country) African song of the year Bumper to bumper – Wande Coal – Nigeria Juju - Black Coffee - South Africa Meme pas fatigue – Magic System/Cheb Khaled –...

Below are the list of nominees for the Afrotainment-Museke Online Africa Music Awards Nominees 2011! The awards show will be held September 24 at the Afrotainment TV Studios in New York City. Vote today at www.moamas.com General categories Genre Categories Artiste of the year - 2Face Idibia -Nigeria Fally Ipupa - DRC Asa - Nigeria Maurice Kirya - Uganda Viviane Ndour - Senegal Kidumu - Burundi Professor - South Africa Male artiste of the year - 2Face Idibia -Nigeria Fally Ipupa - DRC Maurice Kirya - Uganda D’Banj - Nigeria Professor - South Africa DJ Arafat - Cote d’Ivoire Kidumu - Burundi Female artiste of the year - Nneka - Nigeria Asa - Nigeria Viviane Ndour - Senegal Juliana Kanyomozi - Uganda Patience Dabany - Gabon Angelique Kidjo - Benin Neyma - Mozambique Group of the year Liquideep - South Africa Freshlyground - South Africa P-Square - Nigeria Goodlyfe - Uganda TearGas - South Africa Toofan - Togo P-Unit - Kenya New Artiste Cabo Snoop - Angola Diamond - Tanzania Ice Prince - ...

Lizha James, Dama do Bling, Amr Diab, Ralph Anselmo and Perola emerged multiple winners of the inaugural Museke Online Africa Music Awards (MOAMAs). The MOAMAs sought to award best of African music over the last year and put the winners in the spotlight as Africa prepares to host the globe at the World Cup in South Africa. The awards were organized by Museke.com, an African music site which seeks to unify Africa through its music and its partners. The winners would be awarded packages where their music will be promoted through various media while their online presence will also be enhanced. The winners were selected based on African music fan votes. Voting took place from April 6 to May 29, 2010 on http://awards.museke.com/ ( http://moamas.com/ ). Users were allowed to vote once everyday. The nominees were selected over a 3 month period by an academy made up of African music enthusiasts and fans. The organizing team encourages music fans to learn about all the other nominees, since th...

From August 3-5, American President Barack Obama will engage with 115 young leaders from 47 nations of sub-Saharan Africa at his Forum with Young African Leaders. The Forum is an opportunity for the participants to engage with each other, their American counterparts, and U.S. government officials on key themes of youth empowerment, good governance, and economic opportunity. North Africa will not be represented, which is cause for another debate that my friend MBA has already started here . Major props to the Obama administration for putting this together. Learn more about the breakout/forum/summit/camp here . I'll be following through Twitter #youngafrica . Yay, for Obama and his folks using Twitter. Isn't that why we love Hussein anyway? Yes, we can. What I really wanted to share with you was the list of young African leaders? First off, I was so surprised I didn't know about this till last week. A whole me! :-) A friend, Mac-Jordan, even asked on Twitter if we knew of any...

The ‘8 GOALS FOR AFRICA’ song is part of an awareness and advocacy campaign developed by the United Nations System in South Africa on the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 8 Goals for Africa features Yvonne Chaka Chaka from South Africa, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Angelique Kidjo from Benin, Hip Hop Pantsula , Mingas from Mozambique, Oliver Mtukudzi from Zimbabwe, Eric Wainaina from Kenya, Baaba Maal from Senegal, and the Soweto Gospel Choir from South Africa. World renowned jazz musicians Hugh Masekela and Jimmy Dludlu from South Africa are instrumentalists on the track, produced by Arthur Baker from the United States of America. Helen Clark, the chair of the UN Development Group which brings together all UN agencies working in development, today launched 8 Goals for Africa, a campaign song by eight of Africas best known musicians, calling for commitment to achieve the Millennium Development Goals - a set of eight internationally-agreed goals designed to reduce poverty, hun...

It's great that there are a lot of African movies out there. But frankly, the only ones I really want to see are those gunning for the awards and going to film festivals. I can watch the rest online. Oh damn, did I step on someone's foot? I hope not. My favorite African director, Leila Djansi , is being honoured again. After all the wahala of ' I Sing Of A Well ' (won't tell you about it, there are other websites who excel at that), Leila's next film, Sinking Sands is proving to be even more successful. It received 9 nominations at the Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), which I am taking really seriously because they seem to be open to movies from most of Africa. Well, except the Francophone and Lusophone countries, which I hope is fixed soon. Since most people are losing faith in FESPACO, (will come back to this in another post), the AMAAs are the default African Oscars. Kate Henshaw, Ini Edo, Rita Dominic & Michael Ezuruonye at the AMAA 2011 Nomination N...

As you know, American President Barack Obama held a town hall meeting with Young African Leaders from over 50 countries about the future of Africa in an interconnected world and the role of the United States as a partner with African nations. I had wondered how old these young leaders were but from the video, it seems these leaders are as young as 30 and even below. Sweet. I loved how they were repping in their cultural attires too. Here are some soundbites I found particularly interesting. THE PRESIDENT: Welcome to the White House, and welcome to the United States of America. And that includes even our friends from Ghana, who beat us in the World Cup. (Laughter.) Where are you? Over there? That's all right. It was close. We’ll see you in 2014. (Laughter.) HAHAHAHA We need young Africans who are standing up and making things happen not only in their own countries but around the world. Diaspora Africa’s future belongs to entrepreneurs Can't stop saying this line right here So it...

My first travels outside Ghana in 2012 landed me in Tanzania. My time there helped shape what my Tanzanian alter-ego would be like. I never had as many Tanzanian friends as I would have wanted, in fact I might have had as many non-Tanzanian friends who had once lived in Tanzania as Tanzanian friends. Tanzania is affectionately called "Bongo". The Bongo friends I've had have been awesome people and close friends as well. How couldn't I love a country where their major language is an African one? Kiswahili. I wish I could write this whole blog entry in Swahili but I'm not quite there yet. Hamis will give it a stab later. Who's Hamis? So after Ayooluwaato Eze from Nigeria, Richard Nshuti Mayanja from Uganda, and David Ochieng Mwangi from Kenya, I introduce to you all Hamis Ambwene Massawe, my Tanzanian alter-ego. I am from diverse backgrounds. If you've been to Bongo, you'd know it's a country of diverse cultures. In fact, Swahili is a prototypic...

I've heard a lot of Senegal's DJ Awadi and how he is talked about a lot when it comes to African hip-hop. We've seen a lot of conscious and meaningful hip hop come out of Senegal and Awadi's Positive Black Soul deserves a lot of the credit. Awadi's recent album, Presidents d'Afrique (African presidents) was released in 2010, the same year many African nations celebrated their golden jubilees of independence. Awadi took us back to the 60's and told us those messages of unity, positivity, leadership and revolution still ring true today. So, I had to let you know all about the album :-) African rap legend, Didier Awadi , is one of the most highly respected African musicians. He spent four years of research, reading, collecting and interviews preparing his most recent album, Presidents d'Afrique. He featured many African rappers and musicians on the album, making a transcendent and monumental African rap album. L'Esclave opens the album and feature...

It's an open secret that I pay more attention to African movies that are gunning for awards and film festivals. I did watch Blackberry Babes 1 & 2 recently because I was in an email conversation about the movie and decided to pique my interest. Blackberry Babes probably can't hold a candle to the movies I will be talking about in this blog post . However, if you know about the Blackberry craze sweeping Sub-Saharan Africa, then you should watch it. It's there on Youtube . But this post is really about the 2011 Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) , fast becoming Africa's Oscars as FESPACO goes through some soul searching. Viva Riva, a film from the Democratic Republic of Congo (yes, they make films there too and they ain't always about rape) was the big winner at the Africa Movie Academy Awards held last weekend in Bayelsa State. It was directed by Djo Tunda Wa Munga . Set in Congo (DRC) and Angola, it tells the story of Riva (played by Patsha Bay) who has rut...

I absolutely love African music and it is almost by coincidence. The day I promised to be a Pan-African and take interest in learning many things about different African countries, it started with the music. I haven't stopped since and I have collected a large database of songs from all over the continent, from kwaito to coupe decale, from genge to mbalax and from bongo flava to zouk. I am going to use this blog entry to talk about 10 African songs that I love and listen to consistently even though I don't know 100% what the lyrics are about (in no particular order). None of them are in English (obviously). None of them are from Ghana (syke). None of them are from Nigeria either (because chances are you've already heard about them). I hope you will check them out and listen to them. You may discover your next favorite song or artiste. Click the songs to find the lyrics, video, audio, etc. High I go - Kabelo (Kwaito/gospel from South Africa) The first Kwaito songs I heard w...

Two of my favorite movies ever, Shirley Frimpong-Manso's Perfect Picture and Leila Djansi's I Sing Of a Well (ISOAW) have been nominated for multiple categories at the 2010 Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA). The nominations party was held in Accra, Ghana on March 6th. I have been a huge fan of (great) African movies recently and can't wait to see some of these movies. It's great to see the African movie industry blossoming, with actors and actresses acting in different countries, African cinema spreading to different nations, burgeoning sales in African film and respectable awards ceremonies. Shirley had two movies nominated, Perfect Picture and " A Sting In a Tale" (ASIAT) . Perfect Picture is still one of the best Ghanaian movies ever made imho and deserves to win a couple of awards. It's funny how the three leading ladies in the movie, Jackie, Lydia and Naa all got nominated for Best Actress - together. Who does that? This would surely lower the rep...