His name is Abdul Karim Abdullah, founder and CEO of Afrofuture, a festival and company which had to change its name from ‘Afrochella’ due to a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the organizers of the more popular Coachella Festival which grossed more than $100 million this year . After a successful five year run as the “Coachella of Africa” Adbul and his team had to discontinue the the use of the name.
The late 30s African music boss insist painstakingly that ‘Afrochella’ had nothing to do with Coachella and says “we wanted to speak to sounds of Africa. ‘Chella’ is a latin term that means “sound of” and we wanted to communicate African sounds”
As both festivals move on with Coachella, a spring time show on the U.S. West Coast over two weekends with multiple genres on stage and artist from all over the world, Afrofuture have its inaugural show in Ghana during the Christmas holidays with a direct focus on African music and culture.
There is a direct relationship between Ghana and Jamaica Abdul says, and he looks forward to seeing more Jamaicans in Africa for this year’s event marked for December 28. “I just wanted to create a space where the global black diaspora can connect over very simple things like food, art, fashion, and music definitely. These are the things we use to communicate out cultures around the world and we wanted to test out theory that our differences are very minor compared to out similarities.”
He also has some advice for Jamaican artists who want to maintain a longer career in the music industry.
“I would say that they should expand their audience beyond the reggae-dancehall listeners, come to the continent, the continent is in love with reggae music, is in love with dancehall culture they just need to be able to feel the artist more,” Abdul told WMV.
As Abdullah and his co-founders hinge their bets on Africa being the future of pop music as Burna Boy, StoneyBwoy, Wizkid, Rema and Tems dominate the US pop charts, he says the influence of Jamaica is still dominating the motherland with cool factor.
“I think Popcaan coming to Ghana has been a big thing in Ghana, the youth love to see him, the youth love his style, his swag, his feature, people want to be like Vybz Kartel even on the continent, so I encourage they to definitely come to the continent and vibe out for sure,” he explained.
