Season 12 of the critically-acclaimed television series AfroPop premiered Monday, January 20th on The WORLD CHANNEL, exploring the legacies of Afrobeat creators Fela Kuti and Tony Allen.
The AfroPoP season opener featured Joel Zito Araújo’s documentary film My Friend Fela about the African musical icon followed by Birth of Afrobeat, a short film from director Opiyo Okeyo telling the story of drummer Tony Allen. Produced by Black Public Media (BPM) and co-presented by distributor American Public Television (APT), AfroPoP has brought real stories of life, art and culture in the modern African Diaspora to public television audiences for more than a decade.
In My Friend Fela, director Joel Zito Araújo follows Carlos Moore as he explores the many unknown aspects of the legendary musician’s life. A close friend and the official biographer of Fela and friend to major, international black figures like Malcolm X and Maya Angelou, Araújo sets out to counter the popular narrative of Fela as the “eccentric African pop idol of the ghetto,” with photos, archival interviews and Moore’s own personal conversations with Fela’s wives, family and bandmates. My Friend Fela brings viewers a seldom seen side of the revolutionary artist’s life and music. As Moore delves into the Nigerian political strife during Fela’s life and the Pan-African theories which shaped his beliefs and bled into his music, a nuanced profile of a musical revolutionary and champion of the people emerges.
The premiere episode concluded with the short film Birth of Afrobeat. The live-action and animation hybrid captures the story of iconic drummer Tony Allen as he records the album What Goes Up with the American band Chicago Afrobeat Project in 2017 and discusses how he and Fela pioneered the Afrobeat genre.
“Season 12 launches with two films that pay tribute to the enduring legacy of two cultural trailblazers and the music they created which has done so much to unite people around the world around political struggles and shared realities,” said Black Public Media Executive Director and Leslie Fields-Cruz.
Check out the trailer below:
https://youtu.be/U56zabiWoKs
Other episodes in season 12 of AfroPoP include Amina by Kivilcim Akay (January 27), a moving look at the life of a Senegalese immigrant living in Turkey and trying to pursue her dreams in the face of growing obstacles; Daddy and the Warlord by Shamira Raphaëla and Clarice Gargard (February 3), which follows Gargard on a trip to postwar Liberia to uncover the truth about her father’s involvement with the infamous war criminal Charles Taylor; Gilda Brasileiro: Against Oblivion from Viola Scheuerer and Roberto Manhães Reis (February 10), a profile of one woman’s quest to challenge a culture wishing to ignore its ties to slavery after she discovers documents exposing an illegal 19th century slave-trading post in the Brazilian rainforest.
The season finale episode (February 17) includes Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela, director Thomas Allen Harris’s personal documentary profiling his stepfather, B. Pule Leinaeng (“Lee”) and his fight against apartheid as a foot solider in the African National Congress, paired with Spit on the Broom by Madeleine Hunt-Erlich, an experimental short film on the United Order of Tents, a clandestine organization of Black American women organized in the 1840s during the height of the Underground Railroad.
Each episode of season 12 of AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange airs at 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. on the original air date. The programming will also be available for streaming on worldchannel.org beginning on the day of its broadcast premiere.
AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange is co-executive produced by Leslie Fields-Cruz and Angela Tucker. The program is produced and directed by Duana C. Butler with the generous support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts.
For more information on the series and its episodes, visit www.blackpublicmedia.org. For viewing information, check local listings or visit www.aptonline.org.
This post was curated by Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D. Follow Nsenga on Twitter @Ntellectual. Follow The Burton Wire on Twitter or Instagram @TheBurtonWire.
