A typical prop 8 situation was the order of this weekend as major events lined up. Every major night club was booked and fully packed but the scene at the silver star tower was simply awe inspiring. I wondered who could have caused such a stir. It wasn't long before I discovered that arguably Africa's hottest and sexiest female artist EAZZY was the subject matter of the night, it was the launching of her TWINKLE album. It didn't really strike me with a chord of surprise. Her career has always been full of spring ups, her fall on stage, her amazing success with only two singles, the list goes on and now the magnificent crowd she had managed to scoop on one of the busiest Saturday nights on our entertainment calender.

This is one of those powerful features that come once in a blue moon. An icon to South Africans and giant in Kwaito, works with one of the most talented rappers that brought us “Aint No Thing”, “Promise” and “I Am”, Morale and Zola make this the best feature/ duo in 2010.

As you know Zola makes real people music that is full of emotions. Morale is the best hip hop writer to come out of SA, harbouring between swagger and real hip hop.

The two make a touching song about one of Morale’s fan letters.

Listen to the song here
Artist: Morale featuring Zola
Song Title: Ayamaah (Fan Letter)
Album: Decoded
Publishing: Neo Shanty/ SonyATV

Looking for more African lullabies to suggest for new mother, Lizha James, we asked our Facebook fans about some. Based on responses and one great link to Amazon.com, here are a number.

First off, we have Naima by Angelique Kidjo. Click here for audio and lyrics. These words may sound familiar to many people familiar with the Ewe and Fon languages of West Africa, "Toutou ou gbovi; Toutou ou gbovvi; Papa mou la homin o; Maman mou la homin o". The song has the world famous Carlos Santana on guitar as well.

There's the popular Thula Mtwana performed by South Africa's Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Lyrics and translations below
Thula, thula, thula mtwana (2x)
Ungakhai
Umama akekho
Umama uzobuya

I was in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area in late July for an event and took the opportunity to see Kojo Antwi in concert again, which was organized by Special Kay Entertainment. I had already seen him at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Kumasi during the 2009 Christmas period. I was excited to see him in concert again but his music is great and evergreen. The show was scheduled to run from 10pm to 4am, because Kojo loves to leave it late. Late he did, he was on stage at 1am and performed for 3 hours. Till 4am! Even some of the concert goers got tired and went home and Mr. Music Man kept on going like an energizer bunny. He's truly the maestro.

Before Kojo was on stage, a couple of Ghanaian music acts preceded him. Koby Maxwell performed his popular tunes like Abiba and I'm aware while Papa Shee performed Koyon so, Ate pa, Atadwe amongst others. While introducing Kojo Antwi, the emcee said, "One of the most famous musicians from Ghana" in reference to Kwadwo. I thought this was a little disappointing. Kojo should be one of the most famous musicians from Africa, and not just Ghana. This is what he should strive for and he needs the support of Ghanaians everywhere as well. His singing in Twi is not the only limiting factor, Angelique Kidjo, Oliver Mtukudzi and Salif Keita have navigated that problem already.

I happened to catch the Okoye brothers, arguably Africa's best musicians, performing for the first time earlier this month in Oakland. The concert was organized by Eugene Entertainment at Historic Sweets Ballroom and the resident dj was my boy, Deejay Slim. I knew P-Square were one of the best performing African music acts and they lived up to the billing. They performed for two hours, gave out free t-shirts, cds and posters and even some of the things they were wearing. The girls were going crazy, and the guys were enjoying themselves. Definitely one of the best African music concerts I've been to.

As they sang in their song, Danger - "If them dey talk our agenda (agenda), Make them go check our calendar (calendar), Na different countries we dey enter (enter), From January to December, Omo, wahala dey". P-Square was on an American tour which had seen them already go to Los Angeles. I had heard the LA show flopped because they were only on stage for less than a hour. I prayed that wouldn't happen in Oakland. The show was advertised as from 7pm to 2am. I knew for a fact P-Square would not be on stage till 11:30pm at the earliest. My friends who didn't get that memo and got there at 7pm had to wait 4 hours for the performance. They did get to see P-Square rehearse, which was nice. :-) They performed with a whole band; a guitarist, a drummer, and a pianist. They had a couple more dancers who contributed to the choreography on stage. Did you see that? P-Square performed with a band! They are a level above all the other young hot African music acts of today. E no easy!

An African music fan asked on our Facebook page about the Youtube video named Kizomba performance @ the 2009 Sexy & Sensual Latin dance festival. Turns out the music in the video is not Kizomba, but Semba. The song is by Carlos Lambartine, one of the masters of Semba music. The query was made by Fabian Dre and the information was provided by Sergio Baptista.

Semba is a typical Angolan genre rooted in traditional carnival rhythms, such as kilapanga, rebita, kazukuta and kabetula. In semba, much of the rhythm is not carried by drums, but instead by guitars, allowing the music to develop more complex chords, some of them borrowed from the Portuguese’s rich melodic heritage.

According to Sergio, Kizomba is a new Afro style and semba is an old one. Angolan music has the kizomba, Semba,Tarraxinha genres. The semba is much faster than the kizomba. :)

Thanks to our Facebook page, African music fans from South African and Kenya were able to get the story behind this late Miriam Makeba song.

Hapo Zamani in Kiswahili means 'Long time ago'.

The Swahili lyrics translates as (courtesy Ndinda Tha Mixer of Capetowntocairo)
Before(in the olden days) mama, I wasn't like this ( I didn't behave like this)
Before(in the olden days) mama ,because of alcohol (alcohol has changed the singer for worse/the singer stopped drinking alcohol and is now a better person?) ...not sure what this means
Given her explanation halfway through the video, it could essentially be a song by a prodigal who's coming back home?

The Xhosa lyrics and translations (courtesy of Zubenathi Mbunye)

In the spirit of #FF Follow Friday, we'll list a few more African musicians on Twitter. See the first list at this link, second list at this link, third list at this link, the fourth at this link, the fifth at this link, the sixth at this link, the seventh at this link, and the eighth at this link. Twitter is a social network where people post 'tweets' or status updates ala Facebook. It's become a web phenomenon as Barack Obama used it in his presidential campaign and it has many other celebrities. Various websites and media organizations have Twitter accounts as well. There are many African musicians on Twitter as well and this blog post will list some of them for you to follow. You can follow Museke.com by going to http://www.twitter.com/museke for all the latest content from this site and other juicy details.

Lynx Entertainment's Africa's moment featuring RICHIE, ASEM, ZIGI, EAZZY AND OJ BLAQ is becoming a theme song for Ghana's Black Stars' participation in the Mzansi Mundial - the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

I saw a couple of videos about the Vodafone Flashmob from a post on Afroklectic saying the "the weight of Africa is on the Black Stars". These videos below will tell you everything you need to know.