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Afoxê

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Afoxé in Afro-Brazilian Carnival#

The annual Carnival that takes place in several cities of Brazil is considered the country’s largest public festival. Specifically, Carnival in Bahia Salvador is the birthplace of several groups from the Afro-Brazilian tradition, afoxé, which relates to Afro-Brazilian Carnival traditions linked to the Candomblé religion. The term “Afro” is utilised with reference to a phenomenon originating in Africa but developed in Brazil. Rather than celebrating the sacred Candomblé religion privately, the afoxé Carnival traditions are a public affirmation of the religion, which is openly displayed on the streets in a Carnival context. Carnival plays a fundamental role in defining black identities in the context of the larger society. In Brazil, Carnival is a moment when the racial heritage of Brazil as well as its hybrid cultural traditions is continually presented.

African blues

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Notable artists#

Ali Farka Toure
Boubacar Traoré
Ramon Goose
Corey Harris
Vieux Farka Toure
Ry Cooder
Taj Mahal
Robert Plant
Rokia Traore
Baaba Maal
Nuru Kane
Justin Adams

External links#

Article on African Blues

African heavy metal

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Southern Africa#

The author Edward Banchs traveled extensively through African countries, exploring the most prominent metal scenes, and in 2016, he published a book, titled Heavy Metal Africa: Life, Passion, and Heavy Metal in the Forgotten Continent, covering the musicians and the rise and struggles of the respective cultures in the Sub-Saharan and island countries. According to Banchs, South Africa has developed a robust metal community due to the existing music industry and a large population. South Africa In South Africa, heavy metal was introduced from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s in Johannesburg and saw the relative success of bands such as Odyssey, Ragnärok, Urban Assault, and Voice of Destruction. The arrival of metal music in the country was controversial. For example, the government and the N.G Kerk banned certain records from being imported, and fans of the genre faced hostility from the public, with accusations of Satanism. The first black metal band in South Africa with all Black members, Demogoroth Satanum, was formed in 2009 and works to change the perception of metal music as a genre for White people and to attract more Black fans. Vulvodynia is a deathcore/grindcore band with both Black and White members. Botswana The Botswana heavy metal scene started in the 1970s, with the introduction of classic rock, and evolved into a distinctive subculture with a cowboy-inspired aesthetic. Wrust, Overthrust, and Skinflint have achieved some international success and recognition. The 2014 documentary March of the Gods: Botswana Metalheads documents the heavy metal scene in the country. In 2009, South African photographer Frank Marshall made a photo exhibition called “Renegades”, documenting the metal scene in Botswana. The fashion encyclopedia Stylepedia uses the term “Renegades” as the name for the fashion movement derived from Botswana’s metal scene. Other countries Other southern African countries such as Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Madagascar have developing metal scenes as well. The documentary film Terra Pesada explores the metal community in Mozambique. Namibia held a metal festival in Windhoek intermittently between 2007 and 2014, called the Windhoek Metal Fest. Zimbabwe held its first documented metal concert in Harare in 2015, and the first album in Shona, by the band Dividing the Element, was released in 2018. The Angola metal scene was documented and featured in the film Death Metal Angola. Madagascar also has a growing metal community, covered by Banchs.

African hip-hop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Algeria#

Algerian hip-hop music, as a genre, includes the hip-hop music of both native Algerians and Algerians abroad. Algerians living abroad have contributed much to this genre, especially in France, where they are also considered part of the French hip-hop scene. Some of these Algerians have become prominent. Algeria also has a hip-hop scene, which, while less well known internationally, is among the most developed in Africa and the Arab world. Raï is a genre of music that developed in Algeria during the 1920s as rural migrants incorporated their native musical styles into the culture of the growing urban centers of western Algeria.

African popular music

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Influence of Afro-Cuban music#

Cuban music has been popular in Sub-Saharan Africa since the mid-twentieth century. It was Cuban music, more than any other, that provided the initial template for Afropop. To the Africans, clave-based Cuban popular music sounded both familiar and exotic. The Encyclopedia of Africa v. 1. states: “Beginning in the 1940s, Afro-Cuban son groups such as Septeto Habanero and Trio Matamoros gained widespread popularity in the Congo region as a result of airplay over Radio Congo Belge, a powerful radio station based in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa DRC). A proliferation of music clubs, recording studios, and concert appearances of Cuban bands in Léopoldville spurred on the Cuban music trend during the late 1940s and 1950s.” Congolese bands started doing Cuban covers and singing the lyrics phonetically. Soon, they were creating their own original Cuban-like compositions, with French lyrics. The Congolese called this new music rumba, although it was really based on the son. The Africans adapted guajeos to electric guitars, and gave them their own regional flavor. The guitar-based music gradually spread out from the Congo, increasingly taking on local sensibilities. This process eventually resulted in the establishment of several different distinct regional genres, such as soukous. Cuban popular music played a major role in the development of many contemporary genres of African popular music. John Storm Roberts states: “It was the Cuban connection, but increasingly also New York salsa, that provided the major and enduring influences—the ones that went deeper than earlier imitation or passing fashion. The Cuban connection began very early and was to last at least twenty years, being gradually absorbed and re-Africanized.” The re-working of Afro-Cuban rhythmic patterns by Africans brings the rhythms full circle. The re-working of the harmonic patterns reveals a striking difference in perception. The I, IV, V, IV, harmonic progression, commonly used in Cuban music, is heard in pop music all across the African continent, thanks to the influence of Cuban music. Those chords move in accordance with the basic tenets of Western music theory. However, as Gerhard Kubik points out, performers of African popular music do not necessarily perceive these progressions in the same way: “The harmonic cycle of C-F-G-F I-IV-V-IV prominent in Congo/Zaire popular music simply cannot be defined as a progression from tonic to subdominant to dominant and back to subdominant (on which it ends) because in the performer’s appreciation they are of equal status, and not in any hierarchical order as in Western music.” The largest wave of Cuban-based music to hit Africa was in the form of salsa. In 1974 the Fania All Stars performed in Zaire (known today as the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Africa, at the 80,000-seat Stadu du Hai in Kinshasa. This was captured on film and released as Live In Africa (Salsa Madness in the UK). The Zairean appearance occurred at a music festival held in conjunction with the Muhammad Ali/George Foreman heavyweight title fight. Local genres were already well established by this time. Even so, salsa caught on in many African countries, especially in the Senegambia and Mali. Cuban music had been the favorite of Senegal’s nightspot in the 1950s to 1960s. The Senegalese band Orchestra Baobab plays in a basic salsa style with congas and timbales, but with the addition of Wolof and Mandinka instruments and lyrics. According to Lise Waxer: “African salsa points not so much to a return of salsa to African soil (Steward 1999: 157) but to a complex process of cultural appropriation between two regions of the so-called Third World.” Since the mid-1990s African artists have also been very active through the super-group Africando, where African and New York musicians mix with leading African singers such as Bambino Diabate, Ricardo Lemvo, Ismael Lo and Salif Keita. It is still common today for an African artist to record a salsa tune, and add their own particular regional touch to it.

African reggae

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The popularity of Reggae in Africa started with the spread of music by Jamaican artists like Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff in the late 1960s and 1970s. While their music was popular around the world, it was particularly well-received in Africa. More groups followed suit, and reggae was one of the most popular genres of music in the late 1970s in Africa. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, John Nunley said that reggae was all over the urban soundscape.

African-American music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Historic traits#

Most slaves arrived in the Americas from the western coast of Africa. This area encompasses modern-day Nigeria, Mali, Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Gambia and parts of Sierra Leone. Many of the characteristic musical forms that define African-American music have historical precedents. These earlier forms include: field hollers, beat boxing, work song, spoken word, rapping, scatting, call and response, vocality (or special vocal effect: guttural effects, interpolated vocality, falsetto, melisma, vocal rhythmization), improvisation, blue notes, polyrhythms (syncopation, concrescence, tension, improvisation, percussion, swung note), texture (antiphony, homophony, polyphony, heterophony) and harmony (vernacular progressions; complex, multi-part harmony, as in spirituals, doo-wop, and barbershop music). American composer Olly Wilson outlines “heterogeneous sound ideals” that define traditional and common patterns in African music, such as the use of timbre, pitch, volume and duration, and the incorporation of the body in making music. His findings include uses of call-and-response and the importance of interjections from the audience to express satisfaction or dissatisfaction. These heterogeneous sound ideals are also found in many other types of music. White people sometimes taught black slaves to play Western instruments such as the fiddle and violin. Since white colonizers viewed indigenous African religious practices that included drumming and dancing as idolatrous, the enslaved individuals conducted their music-infused religious ceremonies in private. During the eighteenth century, the slaves’ informal assemblies in praise houses and brush arbor meetings featured songs and chants such as the ring shout, a circular dance accompanied by chanting and handclapping. On occasion, the participants would enter into ecstatic trances. Paul Oliver, a Blues historian and historian of African American music and Samuel Charters, an American music historian, have suggested that the essential elements of the blues originated in the Sahel region of West Africa, brought over by Africans via the slave trade. Whereas the African slaves who were brought to South America and the Caribbean were largely from percussion based cultures in southern coastal west Africa (like southern Nigeria), central Africa and Bantu speaking parts of Africa, and lacked in many elements that created the blues, many of the slaves brought to North America were from the Sahel region and were much more familiar with stringed instruments basing the banjo on string instruments from the Sahel like akonting. Charters found that many Sahelian slaves were from Muslim cultures and favoured stringed, melodic, and melismatic solo singing, which differed from the drum-based group chanting music of other African regions. These traditions, which were sometimes permitted by plantation owners who feared drums as a tool of rebellion, thus evolved into the blues. The historian Sylviane Diouf and ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik identify Islamic music as an influence on blues music. Diouf notes a striking resemblance between the Islamic call to prayer (originating from Bilal ibn Rabah, a famous Abyssinian African Muslim in the early 7th century) and 19th-century field holler music, noting that both have similar lyrics praising God, melody, note changes, “words that seem to quiver and shake” in the vocal chords, dramatic changes in musical scales, and nasal intonation. She attributes the origins of field holler music to African Muslim slaves who accounted for an estimated 30% of African slaves in America. According to Kubik, “the vocal style of many blues singers using melisma, wavy intonation, and so forth is a heritage of that large Sahel region of West Africa that had been in contact with the Islamic world via the Maghreb since the seventh and eighth centuries.” African-American music is also influenced by European music and Native American music.

Afro (genre)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Influence#

According to George Torres, “the infectious rhythm of the Afro was used by American artists” such as Duke Ellington and Chuck Berry (in his song “Havana Moon”).

Notable examples#

The following afro compositions are often cited as the most representative of the genre. *“Babalú” (Margarita Lecuona) *“Tabú” (Margarita Lecuona) *“Bruca maniguá” (Arsenio Rodríguez) *“Drume negrita” (Ernesto Grenet) *“Drumi mobila” (Bola de Nieve) *“Ogguere” (Gilberto Valdés) *“Lacho” (Facundo Rivero) *“La culebra” (Obdulio Morales) *“Mata siguaraya” (Tío Tom) *“Rinkinkalla” (Juan Bruno Tarraza)

Afro fusion

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Term and widespread usage#

Vincent Mantsoe and Sylvia Glasser are the pioneering figures behind “Afrofusion,” a contemporary African movement vocabulary and technique that emerged in response to the political changes following the near-end and end of the apartheid regime, a system of racial segregation that took place in South Africa from 1948 to 1991. After the musical style was globally popularized by Freshlyground and Shakira’s Waka Waka (This Time for Africa), which showcased afrofusion and soca, the term “afro fusion” was increasingly used as a hypernym to refer to both historical and as present-day examples of African music blended with other genres, for instance, Western music. Some instances include, in 2015, John Collins described the musical style as “Afro-Fusion music of Africa itself” in his biography and music criticism book Fela: Kalakuta Notes. American rapper GoldLink’s 2019 album, Diaspora, merged African, Caribbean and North American music, inclusive of a song titled, “Zulu Screams”. “Zulu Screams” demonstrated Bibi Bourelly, a German singer-songwriter of Haitian and Moroccan descent, singing in Lingala alongside British-Nigerian musical artist Maleek Berry, who was described as an “afro-fusionist” by Pitchfork.

Afro house

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics and etymology#

Afro house may have emerged after or at the same time as Kwaito started to appear in South Africa. The BPM commonly shifts between 80 and 122 and, in some instances, can even reach 160 BPM. The etymology of the name uses the prefix ‘afro’ (meaning anything relating to Africa and African culture) and the suffix, ‘house’, referring to the main genre of house music.

Notable women in Afro house#

South African record label Afrotainment (Ezase Afro) housed one of the first notable female Afro house artists, DJ Cndo, Her 2007 debut album, Finest Lady of House Vol.1, obtained gold record status. Vocalist Bucie is regarded as “the female voice of South African house music”, including Afro house, particularly with regard her Afro house hit single “Superman” which was produced by Black Coffee in 2009 and was later sampled by Drake in 2017 for his More Life album featuring Jorja Smith. British singer Seal has stated that he likes her music and mentioned that Bucie is “a great singer and artist”. co-founded Fuse Academy, a DJ academy specifically for female DJs, together with Nomdeni Mdaki. In 2016, singer Alicia Keys enlisted Black Coffee to create a remix of her track “In Common”, which was recognized and well received internationally. Zimbabwean singer and songwriter Jackie Queens launched her record label Bae Electronica, which solely showcases female house artists such as Thandi Draai, who has been “heralded as SA house music’s femmetastic triple-threat” according to Mixmag.

Afro rock

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Influences#

Afro rock draws heavily from traditional African music styles and genres, including Afrobeat, Highlife, Jùjú, and Soukous. It is also influenced by Western musical styles such as psychedelic rock, funk, and blues. Prominent Western artists and bands like The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Santana, Jimi Hendrix, and La Fayette contributed to the development of Afro rock through their avant-garde approaches to rock music. In the late 1960s, bands including the Super Eagles and Psychedelic Aliens made important developments to the genre. Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician and activist, played an important role in the genesis of Afro rock through his influence on the development of Afrobeat, a genre incorporating elements from both traditional African music with jazz and funk. The lyrical content of the genre commonly addresses themes of social justice, economic inequality, freedom and cultural identity, relevant to the political and social movements in post-colonial African societies during the mid-20th century. Lyrics are typically delivered in a combination of local African languages and Pidgin English or French.

Afro tech

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Name and characteristics#

The name is in direct symmetry with Afro house whereas in frame of reference the prefix ‘afro’ defines anything relating to African culture as well as Africa. The suffix ’tech’ appeared to be designated on account of the evident immediate connection to techno. Vocals or lyrics are predominantly delivered in Xhosa and Zulu. Afro-tech is a combination of Afro house and techno sounds inclusive of various African percussion.

Afro-Brazilian music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Musicians#

There are many artists that influenced the Afro-Brazilian music and culture. Gilberto Gil is one of the most well-known Afro-Brazilian artists, not only because of his award-winning music, but also because of his political activism. In his career, he won two Grammys in the Best World Music Album category and received seven Grammy nominations. Other popular artists and groups include Pixinguinha, Abigail Moura, Nei Lopes, Agnaldo Timóteo, Racionais MC’s and many more. These artists play many different genres including, but not limited to, samba, rap, jazz, rock, funk, reggae, and disco. Afro-Brazilian music was influenced by African instruments, rhythms, cultures, and beliefs that are still present in the day-to-day culture of Brazil.

Afro-Caribbean music

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Local Caribbean#

Afro-Caribbean music began in the Caribbean as a result of the transatlantic slave trade and the creation of a neo-African culture among slaves. Afro-Caribbean music dates back as far as the 15th century, when the slave trade began. Although afro-Caribbean music existed for centuries, local recording and distribution officially began in the 1920s. Some of the earlier afro-Caribbean sub-genres to emerge included calypso, merengue, son, reggae and salsa. Due to multiple problems with production and distribution, music from the region struggled initially to gain global popularity.

Afro-Cuban jazz

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Spanish tinge”—the Cuban influence in early jazz#

Although clave-based Afro-Cuban jazz did not appear until the mid-20th century, the Cuban influence was present at the birth of jazz. African-American music began incorporating Afro-Cuban musical motifs in the 19th century when the habanera gained international popularity. The habanera was the first written music to be rhythmically based on an African motif. The habanera rhythm (also known as “congo” can be thought of as a combination of tresillo and the backbeat. Musicians from Havana and New Orleans took the twice-daily ferry between both cities to perform, and the habanera took root. John Storm Roberts states that the musical genre habanera “reached the U.S. 20 years before the first rag was published”. For more than a quarter-century in which the cakewalk, ragtime, and jazz were forming, the habanera was a consistent part of African-American popular music. “St. Louis Blues” (1914) by W. C. Handy has a habanera/tresillo bass line. The first measures are shown below. Handy noted a reaction to the habanera rhythm included in Will H. Tyler’s “Maori”: “I observed that there was a sudden, proud and graceful reaction to the rhythm…White dancers, as I had observed them, took the number in stride. I began to suspect that there was something Negroid in that beat.” After noting a similar reaction to the same rhythm in “La Paloma”, Handy included this rhythm in his “St. Louis Blues,” the instrumental copy of “Memphis Blues,” the chorus of “Beale Street Blues,” and other compositions." Jelly Roll Morton considered the tresillo/habanera (which he called the Spanish tinge) to be an essential ingredient of jazz. Morton stated, “Now in one of my earliest tunes, ‘New Orleans Blues’, you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz—Morton (1938: Library of Congress Recording).” An excerpt of “New Orleans Blues” is shown below. In the excerpt, the left hand plays the tresillo rhythm, while the right hand plays variations on cinquillo. Although the origin of jazz syncopation may never be known, there’s evidence that the habanera/tresillo existed at its conception. Buddy Bolden, the first known jazz musician, is credited with creating the big four, a habanera-based pattern. The big four (below) was the first syncopated bass drum pattern to deviate from the standard on-the-beat march. As the example below shows, the second half of the big four pattern is the habanera rhythm. In Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development, Gunther Schuller states, The Cuban influence is evident in many pre-1940s jazz tunes, but rhythmically they are all based on single-celled motifs such as tresillo, and do not contain an overt two-celled, clave-based structure. “Caravan”, written by Juan Tizol and first performed in 1936, is an example of an early pre-Latin jazz composition. It is not clave-based. On the other hand, jazzy renditions of Don Azpiazú’s “The Peanut Vendor” (“El manicero”) by Louis Armstrong (1930), Duke Ellington (1931), and Stan Kenton (1948), are all firmly in-clave since the 2-3 guajeo provides the primary counterpoint to the melody throughout the entire song.

Afro-Peruvian music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instruments#

Música Criolla includes Spanish-influenced guitar sounds and percussion instruments. Different instruments have been used throughout the evolution of Afro-Peruvian music, demonstrating the blending of Indigenous Andean, European, and African influences and cultures over time, making the genre a combination of musical structures and instruments that changed over time due to different adaptations. Some instruments include the following: * Gourds: Large gourds were dried and hollowed out to make different percussion instruments, such as the checo and different kinds of shakers that were typically filled with either seeds, pebbles, or beans to add texture and support rhythms made by the cajón. Before the creation of the cajón, gourds were used to create different rhythmic foundations during colonial times when Spanish authorities banned the use of traditional instruments. * Quijada: A dried jawbone from either a donkey, horse, mule, or cattle which is struck with a stick to produce a rattling sound from its loosened teeth. * Cajón: A large wooden box, built with coastal woods, that would be sat on and hit with the hand to create rhythmic beats. The cajón was made using local Indigenous wood techniques that were similar to the ones used to create ceremonial boxes. * Cajita: A small wooden box with a lid, stick, and a string attached to its side to be worn, a reflection on various Indigenous ceremonial boxes. To create complex beats, the lid would be opened and closed while being hit with the stick simultaneously. * Claves: Two wooden sticks that would be hit together to create a tempo. * Quena: A traditional Andean flute made from bamboo or llama bone with six holes.

Afro-punk

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The term originated from the 2003 documentary Afro-Punk directed by James Spooner and Matthew Morgan. But, Afro-punk music has been around since the mid-70s with Pure Hell. Pure Hell was the first all-black punk band that originated in Philadelphia, PA. In addition, black people have been intertwined in the punk scene since its birth in the 1970s, with black-led bands such as X Ray Spex having connections and associations with key figures in the scene such as Johnny Rotten. During the late 90s, a series of feminist black punk concerts, under the moniker “Sista Grrrl Riots”, were performed in response to the lack of intersectionality found in the punk Riot Grrrl subculture. In the early 21st century, Afro-punks made up a minority in the North American punk scene. Notable bands that can be linked to the Afro-punk community include: Death, Pure Hell, Bad Brains, Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Kennedys, Fishbone, Wesley Willis Fiasco, Suffrajett, The Templars, Unlocking the Truth, Rough Francis, MAAFA, Rebelmatic, WinterWolf, Meet Me at the Altar and The Paradox. In the United Kingdom, influential black musicians associated with the late 1970s punk scene included Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex, Don Letts, and Basement 5. Afro-punk has become a movement, comparable to the early hip-hop movement of the 1980s. The Afropunk Music Festival was founded in 2005 by James Spooner and Matthew Morgan.

Afro-soul

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Notable musicians#

Brymo, Nigerian singer
Miriam Makeba, a Grammy Award-winning South African singer and civil rights activist
Zahara, South African singer
Efya, Ghanaian singer
Amanda Black, multi award-winning songstress from South Africa
Simphiwe Dana, praised as “the best thing to happen to Afro-soul music since Miriam Makeba”
Libianca, Cameroonian-American singer
Lira (singer)
Muma Gee, Nigerian singer
Scelo Gowane, South African singer
Siphokazi, a South African artist
Les Nubians, the French born sisters who are Afropean music singers
The Budos Band
K’naan
Ginger Johnson
Doug Kazé, Nigerian singer-songwriter
Manu Dibango, from Cameroon
Nomfusi, South African artist
Lekan Babalola
Grace Matata, Tanzanian singer
Kumbie, Zimbabwean singer-songwriter
Joe Nina, South Africa singer-Songwriter
Jabulile Majola, South African singer-songwriter

Afro/cosmic music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Descriptions#

The Afro/cosmic mixing style is freeform in that it allows for short hip-hop style transforms as well as long, beat-matched segues; it sometimes incorporates added percussion and effects; and it permits major speed variations to force songs into a 90–110 BPM range. Baldelli would also play 45 RPM records at 33 and vice versa. The cosmic sound included a very diverse range of musical styles, from electro and funk to jazz fusion and Brazilian music. Peter Shapiro described Baldelli’s music as a “combination of spaced-out rock and tribal percussion.” One genre that was usually not part of this mix was Italo disco, which Baldelli believes was generally too mainstream and commercial. In a 2005 feature on Daniele Baldelli, one of the style’s founding DJs, music journalist Daniel Wang describes Baldelli’s style as “psychedelic, churning, hypnotic.” In the interview, Baldelli emphasizes playing diverse selections of classical, African and Brazilian folk, and synth-pop at improper speeds, mixed with effects and drum machines: Cosmic music has been cited as a “touchstone” for contemporary “space disco” artists like Lindstrøm collaborator Prins Thomas and Andy Meecham of Chicken Lips. It has also been cited as an influence on some later Italian house songs, such as Sueño Latino.

Afrobeat

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Afrobeat evolved in Nigeria in the late 1960s by Fela Kuti, who, with drummer Tony Allen, experimented with different contemporary music of that time. Afrobeat was influenced by a combination of different genres, such as highlife, fuji, and jùjú, as well as Yoruba vocal traditions, rhythm, and instruments. In the late 1950s, Kuti left Lagos to study abroad at the London School of Music, where he took lessons in piano and percussion and was exposed to jazz. Kuti returned to Lagos and played a highlife-jazz hybrid, albeit, without commercial success. Upon arriving in Nigeria, Kuti had also changed the name of his group to “Africa ‘70”. The new sound hailed from a club he established called the Afrika Shrine. The band maintained a five-year residency at the Afrika Shrine from 1970 to 1975 while Afrobeat thrived among Nigerian youth. Prevalent in his and Lagbaja’s music are native Nigerian harmonies and rhythms, taking contrasting elements and combining, modernizing, and improvising upon them. Politics is essential to Afrobeat because Kuti uses social criticism to pave the way for change. His message can be described as confrontational and controversial, which relates to the political climate of most African countries in the 1970s, many of which were dealing with political injustice and military corruption while recovering from the transition from colonial governments to self-determination. Many bands took up the style as the genre spread throughout the African continent. The recordings of these bands and their songs were rarely heard or exported outside the originating countries, but many can now be found on compilation albums and CDs from specialist record shops.

Afrobeats

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Characteristics#

Afrobeats (with the s) is commonly conflated with and referred to as Afrobeat (without the s); however, these two are distinct, sound differently and are not the same. Afrobeat is a genre that developed in the 1960s and 1970s, taking influences from Fuji music and highlife, mixed in with American jazz and funk. Characteristics of Afrobeat include big bands, long instrumental solos, and complex jazzy rhythms. The name was coined by Nigerian afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. Fela Kuti and his longtime partner, drummer Tony Allen, are often credited for laying the groundwork for what would become afrobeats. 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. Afrobeats is most identifiable by its signature driving drum beat rhythms, whether electronic or instrumental. These beats harken to the stylings of a variety of traditional African drum beats across West Africa as well as the precursory genre Afrobeat. The beat in Afrobeats music is not just a base for the melody, but acts as a major character of the song, taking a lead role that is sometimes equal to or of greater importance than the lyrics and almost always more central than the other instrumentals. Afrobeats shares a similar momentum and tempo to house music. Usually using the 4/4 time signature common in Western music, afrobeats commonly features a 3–2 or 2–3 rhythm called a clave. Another distinction within Afrobeats is the notably West African, specifically Nigerian or Ghanaian, accented English that is often blended with local slangs, pidgin English, as well as local Nigerian or Ghanaian languages depending on the backgrounds of the performers. Sampling is sometimes used within Afrobeats music. Burna Boy and Wizkid, for example, have both sampled Fela Kuti.

Afroswing

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Characteristics#

Afroswing is largely defined by its melody rather than a specific tempo. Martin Connor, an expert in vocal melodies and rap analysis, described the characteristics of the genre as being " … technically in , what you will hear over and over again is this recurring pattern made up of three notes that are still repeated in the framework of a time signature … You can hear the inspirations of Jamaican music in the rhythm except Jamaican music doesn’t have a bass kick and the snare – that’s hip hop, that’s traditional rap. So this is that translation of cultures happening subtly in the instrumentation. Yet it still has a hip hop sensibility in terms of lyrical focus and music videos: cars, money, authenticity, hardness".