Nigerian Artists Davido, Wizkid Taking Afrobeats To Next Level
Pop star Davido gets the same reaction wherever he goes in Africa, whether itโs in Guinea or Mozambique, Botswana, Kenya or Sierra Leone: teeming crowds and adoring fans.
The 24-year-old icon is one of the favourites for best artist at this yearโs All Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA), which take place in Lagos this weekend.
AFRIMA โ sponsored by the African Union โ are the continentโs equivalent of the American Grammy Awards, with interest reflecting the continentโs rich seam of emerging talent.
Davido and his Nigerian compatriot Wizkid, Tanzaniaโs Diamond Platnumz, Sarkodie of Ghana and Ivory Coastโs DJ Arafat are leading a musical revolution: Afrobeats.
The genre was born in Nigeria but has spread across Africa as fast as the rhythm of the bass in a nightclub.
โNigerians knew how to mix all the influences of Afropop: Congolese soukous, Ivorian coupe-decale, Ghanaian Highlife, Jamaican dancehall,โ said video journalist Hugo Claveau, who wrote and directed the documentary, โAfrobeats, From Nigeria to the Worldโ.
โThey created a sound for all of Africa. They created the first pan-African music,โ Claveau told AFP.
Banning Eyre, an African music specialist, added: โItโs very interesting for me, because itโs totally different from what weโve seen in the African scene for the past 30 years.โ
โ Breaking boundaries โ
Afrobeats (with an โsโ) โ a name given in homage to the Afrobeat (without an โsโ) of the 1970s โ was born about 10 years ago with pioneers such as 2Face, DโBanj and P-Square.
The internet and satellite television channels did the rest.
โMusic channels like MTV or Channel O made a big impact on exporting Nigerian music,โ said Efe Omorogbe, 2Faceโs manager and the head of the Now Muzik Limited label.
โFor the first time you could sit at home in South Africa and you see the best of Nigerian artists.โ
In its wake came the French channel TRACE, which in turn led to TRACE Naija (slang for Nigeria) two years ago, where Nigerian music accounts for about 60 percent of its output.
TRACE Africa is one of the most popular channels in French-speaking Africa and about a third of its programming is exclusively Nigerian.
Omorogbe said the channels โbroke the boundaries. Now Africa makes one boundary, not 53โ.
The increase in festivals and events such as AFRIMA has equally allowed artists to meet, exchange ideas and collaborate.
Wizkid, for example, sings on โMy Soweto Babyโ with the South African DJ Buckz.
Ivory Coastโs DJ Arafat and Nigerian Iyanya use their song โFeverโ to call on โAbidjan, Cote dโIvoire, Nigeriaโ to dance together.
The internet has again been a game-changer.
Kenyan afro-pop star โSauti Sol sent me a beat and I liked it, I thought it was cool,โ said Kritzbeatz, a 22-year-old Nigerian music producer.
โSo I did a mix with my sound and now we have โWhine for meโ. He came to Lagos for an event, so we took this opportunity to shoot the video clip.โ
โ Huge market โ
African pop stars are fighting among themselves to work with Nigerians in hope of breaking into a huge market of nearly 190 million people, where pop music is ever-present.
โSmaller markets naturally look towards Nigeria,โ said Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, a journalist with the Music in Africa magazine.
โTanzanians canโt afford to do music for the Tanzanian market only. But Nigerians are very proud of their music and very resistant to whatโs coming from the outside.โ