Hip-Dia. You never saw it coming.

OK, I'm having one of those"Man, the world is a funky place/I can't believe what I've found on the internet" kind of evenings.

I'm working on the second editon of Africa in World History and have been searching about for useful material.

A search for images led me to Flickr, where I found the Africa Pool , which featues a fine selection of both the most and less stereotypical of African images.

From here, I googled my way off in search of information on Hip-Life, the oh-so-Ghanaian synthesis of Hip-Life and Hip-Hop. I was delighted to find The HipLife Complex on Blogspot, which features Hip-Life video links via YouTube.

However, it was the companion website, Awesome tapes from Africa that really blew me away.

Here I found a reference to Sony Achiba, who has apparently invented his own genre of music, called Hip-Dia, which combines not only Highlife and Hip-Hop, but also Bollywood film scores. You can here his music here on his website.

I don't know about the rest of you, but for me that all makes for a fine evening. There's just something about a Ghanaian guy making a living (not a bad one judging from his music sales) by combining music traditions from three continents that makes my evening. So, to celebrate, I think I'll drink a Miller High Life (coincidence or Kismet... you decide.) an American beer nonetheless now owned/produced by a South African conglomerate, and call it a night.