So I stumbled on to IanAR's Attention, tag, concept and I am sure that I didn't tag this set quite exactly the way that Ian and/or Diana outlined, but, we do the best we can.

There are exactly 40 tunes in my tag attention 02 sept 07 5k and 31 in the subset attention afropop 02 sept 07 5k, and the various other "attention" tag derivatives. The set was mostly from things I was listening to that had the generic iTunes tag "afropop" as assigned by metatags on the playlist--not by me.

I find it interesting to just type in a tag, a word, or a phrase on iTunes to see what comes up. In this case, I typed in "afro" and 199 tunes popped up. Slightly over 40 of them were streamable, and I eliminated everything with over 5k listens. I think the highest number was around 3200 and the lowest was 6, but I just made the one catch all group.

For about 9 of the songs, I just couldn't justify putting an "afropop" tag on them--Pat Metheny, Steve Miller Band, Eric von Essen for example, and how they ever acquired an "afro" tag is beyond me anyway.

The other outliers are Max Roach, Eric Dolphy, and Charles Mingus, but that seemed to make sense to me that popular music made by persons of primarily African descent could be Afropop, as distinct from "afrobeat" or "african" music.

There are a couple of other oddball inclusions that I left in the "attention afropop" collection, since their tags won't be polluting the african, afrobeat, or afropop tags, and those are the British protopsych-rock group Sam Gopal and Japanese/Brazilectro artist Yukihiro Fukutomi.

So, pop this into your tag radio and give it a listen. It's worth about one-to-two hours of idiosyncratic jazz-fueled tunes.

Here's the lineup:

Netsanet Drifting Talkin' Talkin' Dimples The Sky Is Burning Scribble Bliss Sunny Ti De Ariya For Me (and myself alone) Sidi Bou Said The Glorious Monster Before the White Man Came Expensive Shit Play Racubah A Jackson in Your House Sirabhorn Unplanned Afro-Space Drummers from Ibadan Do the Needful Animals Bee Vamp (alternate take) Dime-A-Dance Romance You're Alone Now Illuminator Hail the King Stumbling Over Melted Moonlight Better Git Hit In Your Soul Missouri Uncompromised Rattlesnake Shake Don't Waste My Time Fille d'acier (Girl of Steel) Road Close (Dance Dub) Upsidown The Same Blood Ja Funmi Side By Side Ma Jaiye Oni Good Samaritan Kiti Kiti