A friend of mine recently made some interesting observations on Twitter, after King Beyonce’s ‘tribal’ influenced track, ‘Grown Woman’ was leaked. (I’m not even going to comment on the popular abuse of the nuanced word ‘tribal’ with reference to all things African, or its many questionable connotations). Anyways my friend took to Twitter to observe the state of ‘Afrobeats’, the heavy influence of foreign music in African songs and the hope that African music would be more ‘African’ as more people show a love for our sound, including Beyonce.

Hmmm. I mean I see her point but a lot of what Africans in the diaspora hear and regard as African music is really the generic stuff that manages to make it across the border and is played at African-inspired club nights usually in questionable parts of south London, African student events and generally event organised by other Africans in diaspora. I won’t lie, the proliferation of Nigerian musicians has diluted the quality. Now, it is common place to find our radio waves clogged by prophets of foolishness bleating over a bass beat, merge this with the unintelligible yodelling and harsh barking of some ‘singers’ and clearly you see that we are suffering from sound abuse and noise pollution disguised as ‘Afrobeats’. Meanwhile who came up with that word, “Afrobeats” ugh, we sound so unserious.

If you can distil the mess, the content of our continent, from Cairo to Soweto is rich. We are music lovers and our sound is deep. The sort of music that can creep into your bones and make all your muscles feel light, flexible and utterly gyratable. That’s what we do here. If you’ve been out at a real Nigerian celebration with young people more interested in dancing than fronting, all we need is a good DJ, we actualise the phrase “…dancing your troubles away.” A lot of our music is conscious, infact Nigerians are probably the most invested in politics in the sense that even as young people, we are so politically aware. The shame is that it is merely an oral awareness, a theoretical discourse that never actialises into results; we like to talk.

My friend’s Twitter tirade on ‘Afrobeat’ made me think about something. Our artists keep being accused of imitating foreign music, but why is it such a surprise to find that American Hip-Hop so heavily influences us? I grew up (as a child not a teen) under military rule, at the time cool Nigerian music sang by young Nigerians was non-existent. Today’s profusion of young artists is as foreign to us as the American Hip-Hop itself. At the time, Fela, Onyeka Owenu, Raskimono, Alex O. and co. were the popular Nigerian musicians I knew of. And I think a lot of that obviously has to do with the military regime.

My uncles and aunts that lived with us growing up, might have been in their late teens/early 20s and besides the ones who found Jesus early (btw where was my Saviour hiding please ? Why do we always say “…found Jesus?”), all my older relatives vibed to the same 90’s rap that the kids in Brooklyn listened to; Heavy D, MC Hammer, Bobby Brown and later Biggie, Tupac and co. I mean by 7 I knew my Shabaranks far better than I knew any Fela. *screams “Maxi priest and Shaba!!!” and does the flex* Lol. There was a gap in the music market, we were growing up with a system that stifled individual expression within the nation and so we filled the gap with what was available.

So how can we criticise these artists for having any western influence in their sound? If kids in England wouldn’t be criticised for making music that’s influenced by the Notorious Biggie, there is no reason why Nigerian artists shouldn’t be influenced or even from time to time sample off, or sound like artists they’ve idolised from childhood. I’m not encouraging consistent adaptation and adoption over originality and authenticity, I am just saying that there might be a logical reason for the similarity in sounds. There is still a very individual Nigerian sound despite the influence, and so its just surprising that we act scandalised, heckle and trash so many young artists trying to find their sound as soon as we think they are not being true to what we essentially think of as core African music.

Interestingly, what the world thinks of as core African music is actually that tribal sound that people like Youssou N’dour do so well but even that is a cultural reflection of his hometown rather than a generic African sound. There is no uniform or generic African sound. Like the continent itself, the music is variegated, heterogeneous, spontaneous and consistently evolving.

Sound is borderless so let the harmonies arrange themselves without the obstructive noise of opinion. Our music is the one true way that our stories have always been told, and will continue to be told in this way. Sometimes the pages of a book are insufficient to hold the tragedies, truths and tales of a continent. Our story is ours to tell… so no Americanah can tell our story for us.