Is All This Because Of The Internet?
For answers we turn to a prominent UK based African DJ, DJ Shady. After all, who to give a better insight, than a native African DJ, spinning disk in the middle of London and who recently had a very successful mixtape that filled Royal Regency to capacity.
While shady admits that indeed the internet has played a role, he believes the core reasons for the transcendence of African music beyond its borders is that the music is simply good and different from everything else the world is offering. “African music has always been good and different, it just lucked the right platform to take it to the world market” he said. Shady gives an example of Lingala, (a style of music and dance mainly played in Congo) saying “there are very few music styles in the world that are better than Lingala, it was always good, all it needed was a springboard to fly to the world scene”.
Time is the other reason shady gives for the rise of African music. He feels African music has risen because it’s-its time now. He says genres change, the market may demand for a certain kind of music and two years later, they are listening to something else, he knows this because he has been playing for a world market for years. He talks about how music lovers change could move from rock, pop, soul, country, R&B, and rap/hip-hop, even in a particular genre they chose to love a specific style like the way hip-hop keeps changing throughout the years to keep up with demand.
Shady also attributes the position African music has taken on the world stage to the exodus of Africans from Africa to the rest of the world. Africans have themselves taught the world how to love their music by singing alongside it or playing it while people around them who come from the rest of the world are listening. Many Africans have gone to the rest of the world, intermarried and given birth to a new generation of kids who have never been to Africa but love it and so love its music, these kids are teaching their counterparts who have no attachment to Africa and the stone keeps rolling until it cannot be stopped.
“NOT THE OLD TRADITIONAL AFRICAN MUSIC ANY MORE”
While the means to market African music to the rest of the world have come with little or no effort. This does not mean the rest of the world is naturally going to accept what is marketed to them, what you see as good, might not be good to someone else. So why is the world readily accepting African music? “Because it’s been modernized”, shady says.
What we call afrobeat today is a fusion of other music genres like RnB, hip-hop or rock with African music instruments like drums, rattles or the Ngongi or sometimes it’s the singing that is African which then is fused with foreign RnB/hip-hop instrumental. Lingala now has a modern feel to it. That’s why Europeans, Americans and Canadians can easily relate to it, even if it is not sung in a language they understand, they still get to dance to it and feel the rhythm.
“IT’S JUST THE BEGINNING.”
Whether you want to call afro-beats a new music genre or just an afro-western-music-fusion, there is no denying that afrobeat is on the rise and it’s just started. If you are an African living in African society, you might assume that afrobeat has hit its maximum. Artists like Burna Boy OR Wiz-kid could fill up halls of up to 10,000 capacity at home, in London, New York or Even Paris, but when you check streaming sites like YouTube you will find that the amount of engagement afrobeat’s artists have is not comparable to their counterparts in the west. While a number of music records from America have hit up to 5 billion views, no afrobeat artist has even surpassed the 500 million mark. However, the fact that global recognized brands are investing in the new budding idea called afrobeat’s should tell you something. The business is there, the market is there, the forecasts are good, the groundwork has been laid. Afrobeat’s rise is inevitable and whoever wants to enter this industry has got to join it now or it will be too late soon, very soon, Says Shady.
