Television and Music

Senegalese master-musician Baaba Maal will release his new multi-lingual album, Television, on September 15, a groundbreaking successor to 2001's Missing You.

The title-track refers to that African phenomenon - ubiquitous TV screens. "The television set is like a stranger you didn't ask for coming into your living-room," explains Baaba. "You don't care about who he is: he just seems to come from nowhere and gives you information."

Now we just need to get KZN product onto those screens.....



Television is a collaboration primarily between Baaba Maal and singer Sabina Sciubba and keyboardist Didi Gutman, both members of New York's Brazilian Girls. The result is a stunningly beautiful and diverse record that meshes two genres, generally unfamiliar to each other, to produce an eclectic and romantic sound.

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

And just because it's Friday:

Music Video

I have a little theory that South African Music wil be the single major "left-field" beneficiary of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Remember all those incessant "highlights" clips from the Germany 2006 tournament? They were all edited to music. So now imagine them done to a thumping kwaito beat instead and broadcast round the world to a gazillion homes. And once the music is familiar, audiences are going to search for it on-line and download both the song and the funky video that accompanies it.



To reiterate the sheer opportunity ahead, record label Universal Music Group announced that it too is generating "tens of millions of dollars" from Google's YouTube. Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of the label's eLabs digital division, said:

"YouTube is not like radio, where it's just promotional, it's a revenue stream, a commercial business. It's growing tremendously. It's up almost 80 percent for us year-over-year in the U.S. in terms of our revenue from this category."

While Caraeff gave no specifics on Universal's revenue from YouTube, a source close to the label told News.com that the label will likely book nearly $100 million in revenue from video streaming this year -- which includes placements on other sites like MySpace and MTV.