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The Fifth Floor

Factual: Life Stories

Global stories from the BBC’s 40 Language Services, with Faranak Amidi

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services.

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services

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The Fifth Floor: Bands Battle over the Kenyan Airwaves

Kenyan singer Nameless

14/08/2015

Bands Battle over the Kenyan Airwaves

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, Bands Battle over the Kenyan Airwaves

Why there are street protests in Kenya about the amount of airtime devoted to local music

Searching for a Kenyan groove; postcard from Havana; Taiwanese grandfathers; Edinburgh Festival highlights; and trophy hunting tales

The Kenyan government has announced plans that 60% of music on radio and TV stations in the country should be local. But is that realistic? And does it matter that Kenyan radios and nightclubs are so enamoured with Nigerian and other grooves? From the Fifth Floor, journalists Frenny Jowi from Kenya and Peter Okwoche from Nigeria share stories of the tracks that define nations and identity.

Postcard from Havana
On the day John Kerry visits Havana to inaugurate the first US Embassy in Cuba for 54 years, BBC Monitoring's Emilio San Pedro takes us on a tour of the city and asks what the future holds for Cubans as they re-establish ties with the superpower over the water. This is the second in a series looking at Cuba on the edge of change.

The Taiwanese grandfathers on different sides of the war
Tzu Wei Liu of BBC Chinese is from Taiwan, which was a Japanese colony until 1945. Her  paternal grandfather was taught Japanese at school in Taiwan, while her mother's father was a child in China, hiding in caves from Japanese shelling. Tzu Wei has been investigating the hidden divisions in her family, and speculates that many other Taiwanese must share equally complicated identities. 

A snapshot from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Every year, the Scottish capital Edinburgh hosts the biggest arts festival in the world: over 50,000 performances from almost 50 countries. Pooneh Ghodoosi of the BBC's Persian service is in Edinburgh seeking out the Iranian talent on offer.

Hunting Tales
As the debate about Cecil the Lion rumbles on, we go on safari on the Fifth Floor to hear about other trophy animals and the people who hunt them, from the Marco Polo sheep of Kyrgyzstan to the Anatolian lynx of Turkey.

And Fifi shares her favourite funny stories from the world wide web this week

(Picture: Kenyan singer Nameless performing at MTV African Music Awards. Credit: Getty Images)

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