The Rise of Afrobeat, One Tree Many Roots

The Rise of Afrobeat

You might have heard the term Afrobeats (note the ’s’) or Afropop, Afrofusion. That’s today’s music, of Burna Boy, Tiwa Savage, Wizkid and it’s super sharp, beat-heavy, sample-laden with classy production and smooth vocals, but its soul is derived from Fela Kuti’s 1970s Afrobeat (no ’s’). In our internet-saturated world, full of savvy musicians who listen to everything from everywhere, this is a rare example of African music returning to its home, altered by the sounds of black America, European classical traditions, recombined with Ghanaian highlife and Nigerian beats.

FELA ANIKULAPO KUTI MUSICIAN (1982)

Fela Kuti (1982). Courtesy of Alamy.

Fela Kuti, a colossal musician whose impact on modern music rivals that of Louis Armstrong, Miles Davies and Jim Hendrix, left his home in South West Nigeria to study classical music and piano at the Royal College of Music in London during the melting pot of the early ‘60s, enjoying the night-life of Rock, RnB and Jazz where amongst the many he befriended was the jazz musician, and later Cream drummer, Ginger Baker. In 1967 he went to Ghana to listen for new sounds and visited Los Angeles two years later with a trip that politicised his musical mind. There he was introduced to the Black Power movement and Black American Civil Rights activists including LeRoi Jones. With the sounds of new Africa in his head, Kuti became alive both to the effects of colonialism on his continent and the post-colonial corruptions of his homeland.

Kuti returned to Lagos in the late 1960s a more political, jazz and soul-inflected, multi-instrumentalist, a charismatic musician. With the towering percussion of Tony Allen he carved the sound of Afrobeat, which encapsulated the heart of 1970s Africa and propelled his angry, sarcastic lyrics into uplifting, hip-swivelling big band music. The funky, exuberant rhythms of their band Africa 70 brought the bombast of James Brown to the clubs of Lagos as Kuti thrust excitement into a new generation, daring them to reject the injustices of colonial slavery, and home-grown corruption.

Elements of Afrobeat

Tony Allen, Afrobeat

Tony Allen, Oslo Jazz Festival, 2015

Many of the traditional African-origin musical ingredients, such as call and response, ritualistic repetition, and the Ghanaian forerunner of the son clave beat (3-2 in two 4/4 bar beats) found a natural home in Afrobeat as Fela Kuti, Tony Allen, and Fela’s sons Femi and Seun, continued to update the voice of the continent of Africa. Femi and Seun continued the activist message of their father, focusing their work in Africa, but for many years Tony Allen forged a more internationalist route by pushing further at the boundaries of the Afrobeat: Dub and Electronica with Doctor L, Techno with Jeff Mills, Dancehall Jazz with South African superstar Hugh Masekela. He also collaborated with rock and pop artists such as Grace Jones and Blur’s Damon Albarn and built on his long collaboration with Fela Kuti by extending the reach of their powerful mix of African and Black American music, highlighting virtuoso instrumental playing with powerful melodic lines.

Where Did It Go From There?

Afrobeats (note the ’s’) rose organically in the late 2000s. The broad musical influence of Fela Kuti, Tony Allen and Africa 70 updated the original traditions which slavery had brought to America in the 1800s, traditions that birthed the Blues, Jazz and most of modern music that surrounds us today. In dance floors, clubs and studios of West Africa (mainly Nigeria and Ghana) the music, the beats, the dancehall vibes of a modern, vibrant Africa bore Afropop, sometimes called Afrobeats. Stripped of the Fela Kuti’s generation’s political lyrics, Afropop fused Western pop with modern African beats such as Hiplife to bring dance hits that have taken pop worldwide by storm. For the first time African artists such as D’Banj and Mr Eazi have appeared in the Billboard Charts, capturing the positivity of a vibrant African continent. Burna Boy won the Best World Music Album accolade at the 63rdGrammy Awards, Tiwa Savage is one of the best selling African Artists of all time, showing the way to a new generation of female artists in a still heavily male dominated industry.

Now, Black American Artists from Beyoncé to Drake and Justin Bieber regularly call on Afropop artists, swopping ideas, refashioning their common influences and creating new pathways. The ever-present auto-tune, samples and the son clave beat sit side by side as the inheritors of the Afrobeat bring the music of Africa to the studios, clubs, festivals, streets and stadiums of the world.

Afterword on Afrobeat

So, Afrobeat represents that rare synthesis of music, a moment in time that hauled the past into the present, pricking at the politics while playing with the hips. Kuti in particular brought back the exported rhythms and chants that departed on the slaves ships a century before and assimilated those ancient sounds of Africa, with the new sounds of a reinvigorated continent, to shape a new voice that helped launched new African artists into the firmament of modern music.

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A version of this post originally appeared in the now defunct music magazine Cool:MusicMag