Quick, name any musician from Africa.

If you were like me about a year ago, you couldn’t. So I decided to explore what modern African music had to offer. It probably shouldn’t have been suprising that couple of the songs I wanted to post weren’t on YouTube at all.

Angelique Kidjo might be the most famous of the artists listed here; below is “Papa”.

“Manjani” by Sam Mangwana was wonderful, and it’s a crime no one thought it good enough to put on YouTube. Guess I should do it. In the meantime, here is his “Mabele”.

Issa Bagayogo is a Malinese pop star. Unfortunately, his song “Touba” was also not on YouTube. So we’ll go with “Dambalou”.

“Fire in Soweto” by Sonny Okosun was an international hit, and apparently somewhat controversial.

A couple psuedo-African songs from the gaming world:

Civilization 4′s “Baba Yetu” has to be the most captivating theme in a game I’ve ever heard. The lyrics are the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili (although the singers are most definitely not native Swahili speakers.)

Street Fighter 4 has this theme for the African stage. Yes, this is the game with a Mexican wrestler who fights to obtain the greatest recipe collection in the world. No, I haven’t played it.