African and Caribbean sounds are dominating the British charts and often times fans are confused on what to call each. With obvious influences from Jamaica, over the past three years, the British charts have become dominated by songs with a West African and Caribbean vibe. Unable to put a finger on whether it’s the Afrobeats sound rising from West Africa going global. These sounds taking over the world have cultured origins.
For starters, Afrobeat(without the s) is the original genre of music invented in the 1960s/1970s and made popular by artists such as Fela Kuti. This is not to be confused twit the the contemporary term for West African pop music, Afrobeats. There is also another version made popular by British singer J Hus called Afroswing.
Afrobeats is sound from West Africa that takes on diverse influences and is an eclectic combination of genres such as highlife, dancehall, hip hop, house, jùjú, ndombolo, R&B and soca. Though many mix up the names they are not the same.
It is primarily produced in Lagos, Accra, and London. The term was created in order to package these various sounds into a more easily accessible label, which were unfamiliar to the UK listeners where the term was first coined. Afrobeats is most identifiable by its signature driving drum beat rhythms, whether electronic or instrumental.
The difference with Afrobeat is that it involves the combination of elements of West African musical styles such as fuji music, highlife with American jazz, soul and some funk influences. It include chanting vocals, complex intersecting rhythms, and percussion. The term Afrobeat was coined by Fela Kuti, who is responsible for pioneering and popularizing the style both within and outside Nigeria.
Afrobeat’s inspiration Highlife, began in Ghana in the early 1920s. During that time, Ghanaian musicians incorporated foreign influences like the foxtrot and calypso with Ghanaian rhythms such as osibisaba (Fante). Yoruba percussion and vocal traditions were incorporated as well. Highlife was associated with the local African aristocracy during the colonial period and was played by numerous bands including the Jazz Kings, Cape Coast Sugar Babies, and Accra Orchestra along the country’s coast. 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.
Legend has it that In 1969, Kuti and his band went on a trip to the U.S. and met Sandra Smith, a singer and former Black Panther. Sandra Smith (now known as Sandra Izsadore or Sandra Akanke Isidore) introduced Kuti to many writings of activists such as Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, Jesse Jackson, and his biggest influence of all, Malcolm X.
Kuti was interested in African-American politics, Smith would inform him of current events. In return, Kuti would fill her in on African culture. Since Kuti stayed at Smith’s house and was spending so much time with her, he started to re-evaluate his music. That was when Kuti noticed that he was not playing African music. From that day forward, Kuti changed his sound and the message behind his music.
Upon arriving in Nigeria, Kuti also changed the name of his group to “Africa ′70“. The new sound hailed from a club that 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.[3] Also influential was Ray Stephen Oche [de], a Nigerian musician touring from Paris, France, with his Matumbo orchestra in the 1970s.
The name was partially borne out of an attempt to distinguish Fela Kuti’s music from the soul music of American artists such as James Brown.
Influence
Many jazz musicians have been attracted to Afrobeat. From Roy Ayers in the 1970s to Randy Weston in the 1990s, there have been collaborations that have resulted in albums such as Africa: Centre of the World by Roy Ayers, released on the Polydore label in 1981. In 1994, Branford Marsalis, the American jazz saxophonist, included samples of Fela’s “Beasts of No Nation” on his Buckshot LeFonque album.
Afrobeat has also profoundly influenced important contemporary producers and musicians, such as Brian Eno and David Byrne, who credit Fela Kuti as an essential influence. Both worked on Talking Heads‘ highly acclaimed 1980 album Remain in Light, which brought polyrhythmic Afrobeat influences to Western music. The new generation of DJs and musicians of the 2000s who have fallen in love with both Kuti’s material and other rare releases have made compilations and remixes of these recordings, thus re-introducing the genre to new generations of listeners and fans of afropop and groove.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a small Afrobeat scene began in Brooklyn, New York, with projects including Antibalas. In 2020, Antibalas was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Global Music Album.
Afroswing
Also known as Afrobashment, or less commonly Afrobbean or Afro-trap is a genre of music that developed in the UK during the mid-2010s, derivative of dancehall and afrobeats, with influences from trap, hip hop, R&B, and grime. The genre has been very successful commercially, with many afroswing artists climbing the British charts. Producers Jae5, Blairy Hendrix, Joshua Beatz, and rapper J Hus and Timbo distinguished the sound. They fuse afrobeats, bashment, and trap, along with a melodic style of rapping with gritty, hood lyrical themes derivative of road rap.
You can find the genre on YouTube channels such as GRM Daily, Link Up TV, and Mixtape Madness, which has allowed artists to release music videos to millions of listeners and grow genre.
