Afro pop: Musical genre inspired by or directly from Africa.

Amapiano samples are more specific than they might sound to untrained ears, with Tyler ICU as the most trusted amongst engineers to many of amapiano’s heavyweights such as DJ Stokie, Mas Musiq, Scorpion Kings and Lady Du. The key ingredient to any successful amapiano track is its alignment with kwaito, whether draped with elements of jazz, deep house or pop music. So removing the genre from its kwaito foundations could prove catastrophic to a producer’s reputation. Regardless of the local politics around influence, dominance and nomenclature of these music genres, Afrobeats’ phenomenal rise to global popularity has been a source of inspiration to other genres.

In 2013, Bronx-based rapper 2 Shy released “Azonto Girl”, produced by Ghanaian-British producer Rude Boy, helping spread the genre and dance to the United States. In June 2018, prominent American rapper Kanye West released his album titled Ye. Fans of Kanye West that searched for his album also, unintentionally, came across Burna Boy’s song called “Ye” . This led to a 200% spike in streams for Burna Boy, gaining over 11.2 million streams in the United States.

Christianity in Africa since the 19th century, many new varieties of African church music have risen and continue to evolve. For example, with altered words, hymns—as well as secular songs—are quite often adapted as protest songs in order to rally opposition to political oppression.

This was the music Fela Kuti and Tony Allen played and listened to when they were young. In the late 1950s, Kuti left Lagos to study abroad at the London School of Music where he was exposed to jazz. He returned to Lagos and played a highlife-jazz hybrid, albeit, without commercial success. Kuti and his band traveled to the United States in 1969, when they met Sandra Smith, a vocalist and former Black Panther. Sandra Smith exposed Kuti to the works of activists like as Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, Jesse Jackson, and, most importantly, Malcolm X.

This is in contrast to the afrobeats sound, pioneered in the 2000s and 2010s. While afrobeats takes on influences from Afrobeat, it is a diverse fusion of various different genres such as British house music, hiplife, hip hop, dancehall, soca, Jùjú music, highlife, R&B, ndombolo, Naija beats, Azonto, and palm-wine music. Unlike Afrobeat, which is a clearly defined genre, afrobeats is more of an overarching term for contemporary West African pop music.

Afro-house, And Its Many Offshoots

African musical influence spans beyond borders and traditional African music. It began with the dispersion of millions of Africans around the world during the slave trade. It continued through the 20th and 21st centuries as people traveled to and from Africa. Now today, as the world gets smaller with the internet and more listeners get exposed to new African artists, the evolution continues. Without Africa and the African diaspora, music across the globe wouldn’t be what it is today. Chief among their complaints on social media is the insularity of Nigeria’s listeners and the lack of support of other African artists from their Nigerian counterparts. This is in stark contrast to the period when Nigerians embraced music from across the continent, such as the brass band styled highlife ET Mensah in the 1960s and the new wave of Awilo Logomba’s soukous in the early 2000s.

The exchange though brief, is indicative of how African pop music since gaining traction in Western markets, has struggled to receive nuanced treatment from its media and music platforms. The late 2010s saw the emergence of a new commercially successful Nigerian genre, Alté, which fused a wide array of influences from Afrobeats, rap, R&B, soul, dancehall, and others.

What Is The Blues?

These troubling reports from different African countries strongly suggest that regional grassroots music industries believe they are unevenly matched to compete with the more popular music genres. Nigerian artist Mr Eazi began to gain popularity in 2016 with his breakout singles “Skin Tight” and “Bankulize”, both produced by British-Ghanaian producer Juls.

• Naturally, they played their captivating calypso music using these new sounds.
• As the Academy’s top brass pointed out, the inclusion of non-traditional categories, genres, and artists is dependent on membership.
• They expressed the longing of slaves for spiritual and bodily freedom, for safety from harm and evil, and for relief from the hardships of slavery.
• Beginning in 1871, the Fisk Jubilee Singers toured the United States and Europe performing Negro spirituals for white audiences.
• These examples are just a few that show the effect of the African diaspora on the world’s music.

Surely, the members of Major Lazer who have spent time touring Africa and working with African musicians, recognize the differences between these two musical styles. Yet Major Lazer falls prey to the same marketing forces that flatten a myriad of musical cultures with the same generic label. As a result, their primarily American fanbase will be introduced to gqom sounds under the label of Afrobeats—a disservice to a style of music with its own riveting history in the townships of Durban. Canadian artist Drake also began to experiment with afrobeats in the mid-2010s, which arguably helped afrobeats gain international mainstream appeal. In 2014, he featured on “Ojuelegba ” by Nigerian artist Wizkid alongside British MC Skepta, and in 2016 when he released “One Dance” alongside British singer Kyla and Wizkid. “One Dance” became Spotify’s most streamed song, with over a billion streams, and was number 1 in 15 countries. Drake’s 2017 album More Life contains many Afrobeats and Dancehall influences.

Except they as the ‘leading community of music professionals’ should know better. Additionally, the Recording Academy announced five additional categories this year, including songwriter of the year and best score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media, which will only take effect at the 2023 Grammys. The works comprise her acclaimed new album African Pianism, which received rave reviews from classical music magazine Gramophone and was featured on BBC Radio. The label reeks of a desire to package African culture in a format that is digestible and thus, sellable to Western audiences. It is no accident that it wasn’t coined in the clubs of Lagos Island or on the streets of Festac.