RIP: Mamadou Konte
Although largely unknown to the general audience, African rap has lost one of its most important players. Mamadou Konte founded the Africa Fête festival in France in the late seventies, later bringing it to the US and Canada. He also set up a label in Senegal that was responsible for uncovering Positive Black Soul and Pee Froiss, amongst others. One of his most important contributions to music, however, was the continued development of a music business in West Africa, where he ran numerous programmes for training managers and other professionals. He was also very active in trying to protect African music from the rampant piracy of the West Coast. Much of his work can be found by connecting to Africa Fete.com. Konte died in Dakar on June 21, and is survived by two sons - and a whole generation of musicians and music professionals.
UPDATE: Mamadou Konte will be featured in a special programme to be broadcast on TV5 Monde. Boncana Maïga’s “Stars Parade” will be devoted to him. Guests will include Souleymane Coly (Koteba), Luc Mayitoukou and Saintrick. The show goes out on July 14 at 18:00 GMT and Sunday July 15 at 12:00 GMT for Africa and Friday July 20 at 6:30 in France. Looks like you should check your satellite dishes and recorders.
Source: African Rap.com
Apart from the Chehadé brothers, I had never really thought about Palestine as a source of music - and certainly not electronic music. Mea culpa. Checkpoint 303 are a Franco-Palestinian-Tunisian collective that create electronic music using field recordings of life in the occupied territories. Although not overtly political, the sounds they use are often of demonstrations, bullets being fired and voices through megaphones. They combine this with snippets of news reports (most effectively in “Needle Stuck on Lebanon”). Add a touch of oud-playing and you get a rich sound with an overlay of drama.
We’re beginning to get a lot of press releases concerning summer festivals. One we thought we’d highlight is the annual Africa Fête show in Marseilles on June 30. First, because we’ve always wanted to visit the town and secondly as the event is quite cool. Headliners include Kristo Numpuby, Ashes to Machines, Oumar Kouyaté and Fogny. Needless to say, there will be the usual extra-curricular goodies such as contemporary dance from Burkina Faso, associations promoting all things African and a truck built by artists from Liverpool, Prague and elsewhere on the theme of migration. All this for a ridiculous €5. Details on the 
