Africa Creates: New Feature on the Blog!

Africa Creates

This has been a silent week for the blog in terms of new posts but a lot has been happening in the back-end of things. As a result we are pleased to introduce a new weekly feature that will come to you courtesy of Africa Creates Radio.

Africa Creates is an online radio show bringing together and showcases the talent exhibited by all sorts of creatives from around the African continent such as  writers (including poets & bloggers), musicians, filmmakers (short or feature films & TV) and other artists. The weekly show is aired by the Artist First Radio Network, a pioneering internet radio station based in the US with an international audience. It is therefore a great platform for all sorts of artists to market themselves to a worldwide audience. The  show, hosted by writer and blogger Vered Ehsani, basically consists of one-on-one interviews with Vered plus a bit of time to showcase the artist’s work.

The variety of guests on Africa Creates so far has been pretty wide, covering the type of guests who wouldn’t immediately get aritime or airplay on the usual radio channels. The very first radio show featured an in-depth chat with Eric Wainaina and his journey through music, social activism and thoughts on his ground-breaking musical theatre piece Mo Faya!/Luanda Magere and its modern take on the famous legend. Listen to the very interesting interview below:

Apart from musicians, Africa Creates is also interested in featuring production studios and record labels which play a significant role in churning out musical content for and by the African continent. The first to get featured on the radio show was Penya Africa, the good people who further exposed the most popular Afro-fusion band out right now, Sauti Sol. In this interview Natalie Lukkenaer of Penya Africa discusses how it nurtures upcoming talent through the Sauti Academy and such initiatives as outreach programmes in one of Kenya’s prisons. Listen below:

Vered’s background as a writer also creates a great incentive for engaging with writers, poets and bloggers as seen in this past round-table format interview of writers John Sibi-Okumu, Stanley Gazemba, Dr. Hamisi Bubosa, Kinyanjui Kombani, Andy Ruri and Jacob Mulanda.They discuss the  intricacies and challenges of publishing books especially those that are creative in nature and interesting trends in the literary and entertainment scene. Listen to that interview here:

THE BOTTOM LINE

Africa Creates will feature the radio shows every Friday starting tomorrow with Vered’s interview of Sand Stone Studio’s Tedd Josiah which discusses his latest initiative to share tips, tricks and skills vital to musicians, filmmakers and all other creatives. We believe this feature/column will do a lot to increase the depth of Bottom Line Kenya as we strive to give more exposure to all types of creative talent.