919 Spotlight: Afrobeats to The World

OCTOBER 18, 2022

Afrobeats, a musical genre covering popular west African music originating in Nigeria and Ghana with ties to the UK. Not to be confused with Afrobeat, a highly political non commercial music style pioneered by legend Fela Kuti. Afrobeats or Afropop came about as a way of commercializing the west African sound to be more digestible for an international audience/UK audience. These days everyone wants a piece of the Afrobeats pie with major music labels opening up offices in Lagos and the success of Afrobeats continuing to grow at an exponential rate with Nigerian artists like Burna Boy, Davido, Tems and others selling out shows in huge stadiums like O2, Madison Square Garden among others. Energetic sounds and upbeat tempos, repeating vocals coupled with the beauty of pidgin English, it’s no wonder Afrobeats has everyone in a chokehold!

Photo cred: @mimo_masri

It is interesting to see the rise of Afrobeats on an international scale, for native Nigerians it is nothing new but to see our sounds and culture taking off on such a huge scale, our artists collaborating with influential global artists and Djs dominating the club scene and further pushing afrobeats to the forefront. The market is so huge that there are now afrobeats events in key cities in America such as LA, Atlanta, Houston and others. A popular event in LA is Afrobeats to The World, a bi-weekly event hosted by Blaq Pages, a Ghanaian American DJ who is a huge supporter of our label as well as British Ghanaian DJ Juls who played a set at the event. The effect of these two DJs who are committed to globalizing afrobeats coming together for such an event creates a home away from home for Nigerians in the diaspora and encourages us to continue to feel proud about our heritage.