What is Afrobeats?

Afrobeats is currently enjoying the most exposure it has ever received and with this ever increasing popularity, confusion among most music listeners both home and abroad has left a major question that needs answering.

Afrobeat is a music genre whose origin is credited to late Nigerian musician, Fela Kuti. The late musician and his band (Africa 70) played a blend of highlife, funk and jazz. At the time, highlife was the big deal in West Africa, especially in countries like Nigeria and Ghana. Fela Kuti in the 70’s created a new sound which he called “Afrobeat”. With their album “Gentleman”, Fela Kuti and Africa 70 fully established the core sound of Afrobeat which became a distinctive music style. This music style blended influences from different styles including funk, jazz, highlife and traditional African music.

As things progressed, more genres were created and African artistes started gaining more international recognition, but as a result of the vast genre we had in Africa at the time, pinpointing our sound became an issue. At this point, the African artistes needed an identity because they had faith in what African music could do in the international space. They understood that pushing a movement for the African sound required adequate and effective branding. It became an even more pressing issue when the African sound started gaining popularity in the United Kingdom in the early 2000’s. The likes of D’banj’s Oliver twist, Fuse ODG’s Antenna took the United Kingdom by storm and cemented the sound as an important part of their music scene. The artistes needed a catchy tag for the different African pop sounds. It was then the term, “Afrobeats” was coined.  “Afro” meaning anything that has to do with Africa, “Beat” meaning sounds. The addition of an ‘s’ to “Afro” and “beat” birthed Afrobeats which translates to “African popular sounds.”

Afrobeats was developed and popularized in the western part of Africa, particularly Nigeria and Ghana in the late 90’s to mid 2000’s. In April 2011, London based Ghanaian Dj, Dj Abrantee started a radio show called ‘Afrobeats with Abrantee’. He used Afrobeats as a catchy term for all the popular music that came out of Africa. As African pop music continues to gain popularity around the world, the term “Afrobeats” is now widely used.

Over the years, the term ‘Afrobeat’ pioneered by Fela kuti is still often confused with ‘Afrobeats’.  While “Afrobeat” is used to refer to Fela’s music, “Afrobeats” is an umbrella genre used to capture all popular music made in Africa. Afrobeats is also a culture as it has evolved to comprise not just African music but also the African food, tribes, and dance styles. Although the two terms are nearly similar in spelling, Afrobeats is a general term for all genres across the African continent including Juju, Amapiano, Soukous and many others while Afrobeat is a fusion of highlife, Jazz and funk influences with lots of percussions. That being explained, it should be understood that Afrobeat paved the way for Afrobeats as it was a style which the world was already familiar with before the advent of Afrobeats.

Fela’s children, Femi and Seun Kuti, and Fela’s drummer, Tony Allen continued with the Afrobeat sound while the likes of Tuface Idibia, D’banj, Fuse ODG, Tiwa Savage, Wizkid have been the poster child for Afrobeats. Unlike Afrobeat which has a distinctive jazz and highly percussive style, Afrobeats is not a single style as it is made up of variety of our indigenous sounds which is sometimes fused with foreign genres.

In recent times, Afrobeats is recognized as the African global music brand as foreigners view any music that comes out of Africa as Afrobeats. Artistes from several parts of Africa now identify with Afrobeats as long as their music have elements of African contemporary sound in it.