Vinyl gold: Eric Burdon Declares "War"
THE PLAY LIST
Take Me Apart: Kelela. I have been with Kelela since her mixtape Cut 4 Me. Two years later, she has just released her debut album and, as the title suggests, it takes me apart. She ponders love and hurt using an R&B form that the old-school would recognise. It’s like Aaliyah and Destiny’s Child’s sad songs in the 1990s with a 21st-century something. (ZH)
Rose Gold: Shekhinah. I’m always vouching for millennials. So I guess me hyping up the South African songstress’s debut album doesn’t come as a surprise. I got hold of her debut album this weekend and blasted it through the house and into my neighbours’ yard at least twice. Her voice is gorgeously unapologetic, just like her lyrics that cover love, a millennial’s hustle and growing the fuck up. (ZH)
Eric Burdon Declares “War”: Eric Burdon and War. Buying vinyl has become a sharkfest nowadays. It’s a seller’s market out there. You’re lucky only if you got in early, back when the supposed death of the format was an almost real thing. One time, though, I caught this hipster sleeping and walked away with Eric Burdon Declares “War” for the unseemly price of R60. It felt like good old-fashioned digging. The album’s seamless, blues-based funk has brought a lot of sunshine to my Saturdays and a nostalgia for when culture was about more than just purveying the cool. (KS)
Afridocs website. I’m not much of an escapist. A good night at the movies or in front of the screen usually involves a factual story about a part of the world I know nothing about. A hazard of the job maybe, but what the hell. If you’ve been sleeping, you can mail the cheque later. afridocs.net (KS)
THE READING LIST
Always Another Country: Sisonke Msimang. This highly anticipated memoir is essayist Msimang’s first book after years of meticulously feeding her worldwide readers spoonfuls of carefully constructed, always compassionate wisdoms when we didn’t always know how to react to the pathological incidents of being South African. Her views on race, class and gender politics — as well as where human folly and sensibility fit into theory — are beautifully woven into a very personal story of growing up in different countries, with her family members as the characters and her observant, generous voice as the as the courageous narrator. (MB)
The Lists were compiled by Friday editor Milisuthando Bongela, writer Kwanele Sosibo and intern Zaza Hlalethwa