Hausa hiphop artist Nazir Hausawa (Ziriums) featured in Recording a Revolution: Hiphop and Social Change in Africa, Alachua County Library Headquarters, Gainsville, Florida, USA, 23 February 2013

Hausa hiphop artist Ziriums (Nazir Hausawa) will take part in an African Hip Hop event at the Alachua County Library Headquarters, in Gainesville, Florida, USA, on Saturday 23 February 2013. Ziriums was featured in the documentary Recording a Revolution, by Alex Johnson and Saman Piracha, which will screen 10am-11am. Ziriums will host a Q&A from 11am-12pm The event also features discussions with founding member of Dead Prez M1, Kamau Ngigi, founding member of Kalamashaka, a Kenyan Hip Hop group, and Michael Wanguhu, the director of the award winning documentary Ni Wakati (It’s Time), which will screen from 1-2pm.

The event is sponsored by the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida and the Alachua County Library District.

For more information, see the poster and the press release below.

Recording a Revolution: Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa

Event Time: Saturday February 23, 2013: 10 am-5 pm

Event Location: Alachua County Library Headquarters, 4^th floor

Recording a Revolution is an event that brings together artists, scholars and documentary filmmakers to discuss hip hop, the visual arts, and political activism in Africa. Two new documentaries will be presented along with a panel including the films’ directors/producers and featured hip hop artists, including American hip hop artist M1, founding member of dead prez. This panel will discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with the representation of and by artists/activists of Africa and the African diaspora, and open up a public dialogue about social and political concerns in Africa. As it coincides with Black History Month, this event will also encourage a discussion between the historical linkages between Africa and its diaspora.

The two African hip hop artists – Nazir Hausawa (aka ‘Ziriums’) of Nigeria and Kamau Ngigi of Kenya – will arrive several days before the event. If anyone is interested in meeting with them on Thursday or Friday (February 21-22), or would like more information about the featured movies or artists, please contact Sue O’Brien (smobrien@ufl.edu).

This event is sponsored by the Alachua County Public Library, as well as the Center for African Studies and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida.

Daman Sounds Album Release Party for “The Exponential” 16 February 2013, 4pm, Carnivorz, Kaduna, Also Peace Concert in Rayfield Resorts, Jos, 6 February.

 

Lagos-based musician Daman Sounds, who raps in Hausa and English,  is having an album release party on Saturday, 16 February 2013, in Kaduna. The Venue is Carnivorz, No. 1 Post Office Road, Kaduna. Time: 4pm

He will also be playing at the Bob Marley Birthday Celebration and Peace Concert in Jos, Plateau State, Rayfield Resort Lake, 6 February 2013, 4pm till dawn. (Other musicians at the peace concert will be:

DJs CLASH….
STEARY J ………..PEACE FM 90.5 JOS
LT JOHN ………….COOL FM 96.9 KANO
KINGSLEY OBIDA ………PEACE FM 90.5 JOS
G CONNECTION ………RAY POWER 100.5 JOS
SIMON EDWARD …….ASO RADIO 93.5FM ABUJA
PUPA J……………….PEACE FM 90.5 JOS
DIGITAL TALLER…………..HIGHLAND FM
RIDDIM AGITAN………….HIGHLAND FM
SIBIN BENJAMIN……….RAY POWER 100.5FM JOS

ALSO ….V-TYME(AUSTRIA)…. YOUNG FACE,X-RAY,DADDY SHINE(ABUJA)…..,APHSIS THE VICE PRESIDENT,DAMAN SOUND(KADUNA) )….DADA,JIFERAH, DADDY D(LAGOS) ETC BLAZE THE PLACE.

To listen to Daman Sounds music and find out more about him, check him out on Sound Cloud,  Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter.

Here are a few of his recent tracks.

Past appearances include the July 2011 Ade Bantu Lagos-Kano HipHop connection workshop and concert held at the Goethe Institut, Kano.

Campus End of the Year Party and Awards with Sani Danja and others, 30 November, Mozida Lounge, Kano

First Ever Freedom Fasaha 2011 Contemporary Hausa Music Championship Awards, 10 December, 6 pm

Freedom Radio and the Fasaha Association of Nigerian Musicians is hosting the first ever Hausa Music Championship Awards this weekend, as a way of honouring musicians who have contributed so much to the contemporary Hausa musical landscape.

Date: 10 December, 6pm

Venue: The Afficient, No. 74, Sultan Road, Nassarawa Kano.

Sani Danja “New Guy in Town” Album launch, Kaduna, Gamji Hall, Friday, 25 November 2011

Kannywood star Sani Danja will be launching his new music album “New Guy in Town” featuring Soul E, Anita Joseph, Mista Yax, Slim T, Kt40, this coming Friday, 25 November, at Gamji Hall in Kaduna.

In his Facebook message about the event, Danja says:

 ‎3 more days to go Kaduna album launch comes up on the 25th friday Nov 2011 @Gamji hall New Guy in town featuring Soul E, Anita Joseph, Mista Yax, Slim T, Kt40 lots of gift to be won buy ticket get one of my audio cd free…. jersey diffrt club motor cycle flat screen tv and lots of gift to be won gate 500 vip 1000

For more information about Sani Danja, he has two public facebook fan pages (one old one for Sani Musa Danja, and a new one for Sani Danja), and a reverbnation page.

Click the following link to listen to his new track: Have you seen Danja?

And the promo for his album “New Guy in Town”

Hausa music sallah show, Gamji Hotel, Kaduna, Friday, 2 September 2011, 4pm

A sallah show will take place at Gamji Hotel, Kaduna, on Friday, 2 September 2011, set to begin at 4pm. The show will feature Hausa musicians: Masaud KanoRaiders, Adam A. Zango, Billy-O, Funkiest Mallam, Buzu Kaduna, Mahmoud Nagudu, etc.

Gate fee: N1000 for individuals, N1500 for couples

For more information on the musicians, see Masaud Kano Raiders myspace page and facebook page; Buzo Danfillo’s myspace page, facebook page, and reverbnation page; Adam Zango on facebook and IMBD; a recent interview with Funkiest Mallam in Leadership newspaper .

For a sampler of music from some of the musicians who will perform, check out the music videos below:

Adam A. Zango’s “Wazobia”

Funkiest Mallam with Sani Danja in “Zaman Tare”

Billy-O featured in Ty Shaban’s  “Ka yi kudi ka guje ni”

Mahmoud Nagudu’s “Lubiya” mimed by actors in a Hausa film

Buzo Danfillo’s “Forget It” (no video but you can listen to the music here)

….

 

Call for Papers: African Music in the 21st Century–an Iconic Turn?–Mainz, Germany, Abstract Deadline: 15 September 2011

Call for Papers
African Music in the 21st Century – An Iconic Turn?
An International Symposium Celebrating the 21st Anniversary of the African Music Archives Mainz (AMA)

To be held at: Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. June 13th – 16th 2012
Convenors: Hauke Dorsch, Matthias Krings

Since the advent of the 21st century and the proliferation of digital media a shift in the consumption and marketing of music in a number of African countries occurred: Videos gained an increasing importance. Today, Video-CDs and DVDs are widely sold in African cities, bars and restaurants show music clips and music casting shows on TV, music videos are available online through sites like youtube, but also via homepages and blogs devoted to artists, genres, and (at least ideally) music of the entire continent.

Due to this online availability and easy circulation of discs the visual aspects of music, especially dance styles, clothing fashions, coiffure spread more easily and rapidly than ever before between
different African countries and between African and its Diaspora. For example, migrants stay up to date with regards to musical and fashion trends in their respective countries of origin thanks to these videos. Prior to the mediatisation of African music through visual technologies, dance styles could only be transmitted through the presence of human bodies. Due to the proliferation of videos African dance and music travel trans-nationally on South-South and South-North axes at an accelerated speed.

So far, the pictorial turn (Mitchell) or iconic turn (Boehm) in Cultural Studies informed only few studies on African music. Consequently, the change following the digitisation and video-isation of the production and dissemination of African music is still under-researched. Taking music videos as its vantage point, this symposium will look at visual aspects of the performance and analysis of music more generally.

We invite young researchers and established scholars to present papers on the different ways music in Africa (and beyond) is interpreted, illustrated, translated or extended in its meaning by visual representations. These may refer to the analysis of individual videos, the comparison of a number of videos, or genres, changing trends of video aesthetics, the convergence of visual and aesthetic trends from elsewhere – in Africa and beyond (i.e. MTV, Bollywood, etc.). Furthermore, papers on the transformation (or even emergence) of music industries in Africa due to the impact of the visual are welcome. How are music videos produced on the ground? Who are the agents of the iconic turn in African music? How does music television support the iconic turn in African music? Finally, we invite papers on other aspects of the visual in music, performance (i.e. looking at costumes, stage shows,
stage lighting, etc.), on festivals and of course dance.

The symposium will celebrate the African Music Archives’ 21st anniversary. The AMA hosts Germany’s largest collection of recordings of African popular music. It includes roughly 10.000 recordings, from shellac records of the 1950s, to vinyl discs and singles from the 1960s to the 1990s, to music cassettes of the 1980s and 90s, to recent CDs, VideoCDs and DVDs.

The symposium will be hosted by the African Music Archives, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

Please submit your proposal no later than Sept., 15th 2011 and your full paper no later than May, 23rd 2012 to Hauke Dorsch dorschh@uni-mainz.de.

Hausa rapper Ziriums Show, Amarachi Lounge, Brooklyn, New York, midnight, Friday 9/10 September 2011

Ziriums performs "Hausa Fulani" at the 2010 Savannah International Movie Awards in Abuja (c) Carmen McCain

Hausa rapper Ziriums (Nazir Ahmad Hausawa) will be performing in what his invitation to the event calls  “the first Hausa Rap concert ever in Brooklyn”

Time: 12am midnight

Date: Friday, 9/10 September 2011

Venue: Amarachi Lounge , at 325 Franklin Ave, Brooklyn, New York 11238, United States

$10 cover fee

Ziriums has previously performed at The Shrine in New York; SUNY Purchase, New York; the Savannah International Movie Awards, Abuja; the pre-parlour Music Festival in Niamey, Niger; the British Council, Kano, among other appearances. He has collaborated with musicians Mecca2Medina, Yoye, Supreme Solar, Billy-O, Abdullahi Mighty, Adam A. Zango, Murja Baba, Maryam Fantimoti, Alfazazee, Malo Men, Osama bin Music, and others. He released his first album This is Me online in 2010. It can be purchased on Myspace, Amazon, and itunes.

Ziriums is featured in the forthcoming documentary Recording a Revolution and has also been featured on CNN, NTA International, Fim Magazine, and has made appearances on radio shows and other print and online publications, including translation of an interview and translation of lyrics on A Tunanina and a feature on Sahel Sounds.

For more information about Ziriums and to listen to his music, see his Facebook page, myspace page, reverbnation page, and youtube page.

Ziriums’ show in Brooklyn follows on another recent Kano-Lagos Connection concert featuring much Hausa hiphop that took place in Kano, at the Goethe Institut.

Other hiphop artists who use Hausa include Abdullahi Mighty, Adam A. Zango, Big Daddy Fresh, Billy-O (featured in TY Shaban’s video here), Buzo Danfillo, Daman Sounds, Japs, Jesse Jagz, Kano Raiders, K-Boyz, Lakal Kaney, Lt. John, M.I., Nomiis Gee, Osama bin Music, TY Shaban, Vtime Faya, among others. For more sampling of Hausa hiphop and popular music listen to this free sampler at dandali.com, put together by Hausa popular culture scholar Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, which includes songs by Billy-O, Soultan Abdul, Abdullahi Mighty, Menne, Lakal Kaney, Neba Solo, and the “traditional” musician Dan Maraya Zamfara [actual name is Babangida Kakadawa].)

Here is Zirium’s music video from the title track of his album This is Me.

Kano-Lagos Hip Hop Music Connection, Concert 30 July, Goethe-Institut, Kano

 

This from the Goethe-Institut Kano:

Goethe-Institut Kano Liaison Office presents

Kano – Lagos Hip Hop Music Connection

Featuring Ali Jita, Snypa, Vtime Faya, Kool Kid, Da Man, Protek, 2tek, Nura Nash, Nomis Gee, Mikkey CA, Big Daddy Fresh, Mahmoud Nagudu, and Ade Bantu

The music project Kano – Lagos Hip Hop Connection was developed by Ade Bantu in co-operation with Goethe Institut Kano. The 7 dayproject  is aimed at linking musicians from Southern and Northern Nigeria and uniting them through creativity, rhymes and music.

16 rappers & singers from Lagos and Kano will engage in creative writing and studio recording sessions. The project will culminate in a live performance at the Goethe Institut, Kano on the 30th of July.

Venue: Goethe-Institut Nigeria, Kano Liaison Office, 21, Sokoto Road, Nassarawa G.R.A., Kano

Date: Saturday, 30th July, 2011

Time: 6 pm

Admission is free

Follow their blog on

http://lagoskanohiphopconnection.tumblr.com/

For the Musicians bios, see the following links: Musicians from Lagos, Musicians from Kano