THE ORIGIN OF AFROBEATS

The forerunner of afrobeats

 

No doubt, Fela Kuti, a Yoruba musical god, from the southern part of Nigeria created his own sound, which is today known as Afro beat music. There was nothing like Afro beat before Fela came to the arena of African music. Striving to make his own impact in the musical world, he created Afro beat music. Before now, what we have then in the southern part of Nigeria was, fuji, juju, apara and sakara music from the southwestern part of Nigeria and egwu nkwa and egwu ekpiri from the southeastern part of Nigeria. Fela kuti, after studying music in London, joined several musical bands and performed in many occasion. When he became tired of learning and performing western music, he decided to come back to his home country Nigeria, to continue his musical career. In the southwestern part of Nigeria then, the most popular music in the western part of Nigeria was fuji, and Highlife which came from Ghana. And as at then, Nigeria was making music with their own version of highlife in their local dialect. Fela being a full-fledged Yoruba man and a Pan-Africanist, who wants the world to identify him and his music as a masterpiece of African origin. He discarded most of the western composers’ music theories, and fused highlife, fuji, Jass and Funk, to create another genre of music he called African beat, which is popularly called Afro beat in today’s contemporary music categorization. Fela was a multi-instrumentalist, who can juggle from, keyboard to saxophone, from drum to wooden gong, and other instruments while performing on the stage. His vocal prowess is perfect, in delivering the kind of music he do. he created also his own pattern of dance, called Fela dance, which he throws his legs severally to the left as he move to the left and repeated the same to the right. His best instrument is saxophone, it’s always within his reach. Before fela started his music career, many African nations had not gained their independence, and right before his eyes, many secured theirs’. Including Nigeria, which got hers in the year 1960. Like they said, ‘’travel is part of education’’. Fela who had broadened his horizon of knowledge and experience through travel, had come to grip with the fact that most of the African nations, who have gained their independence were not adequately effective in their infrastructural and human capital development. And that gave fela a lot of concern. He witnessed imperialism first hand. The so called African politician enslaving the people of Africa through inadequate infrastructure and social amenities. They were puppets, whore were placed in the corridors of power to do the bidding of their colonial master. And when the thought become unfathomable to young and bright mind of Fela, he lend his voice to the suffering masses and used his music to fight the corrupt government who is impoverishing the people of Nigeria and Africa at large. Fela created Afro beat music as a revolutionary music. An anti-government music. He used his music to point out the evil the government was unleashing to the people. He fearlessly stood in the front burner with his music from late 60’s till 1997 when he died, criticizing the bad government, western domination in the value systems of African extracts. Having put up all these struggle against the military government. He suffered dearly, he was arrest over 200 times, jailed several times and his longest time in detention was 20 months when he was arrest in 1984. Afro beat, then, became a new brand of music chiefly structured for struggle, either to numb pains and sorrow, or to stir up the spirit of revolution which lied dormant deep down in the soul of millions of African youths. It was the kind of music that can be classified as reality music, in the line of the cognitive massages it carries and passed down to the people. Afro beat lovers, whole heartedly embraced it because, it was like a sweetener to sour, hope for the hopeless, a lone voice speaking for the millions of the downtrodden. Afro beat, through Fela touched many lives positively, healed broken hearts, and gave hope to scores who had lost hope in the government. Through Afro beat, Fela Kuti became a musical oracle, a warrior and a voice to the voiceless. The new generation came and identified with the soul and the spirit of the Afro beat which was being blended with both western and African musical instrument, with thick African vocals and the touch of western delivery. Making the background of the music to accept every language, be it vernacular, pidgin English, English and any other language. The new generation also, fused Afro beat with other genre, like Reggae, Soul, Rock, Hip-hop, R&B, Calypso and many more. That why in today’s music genre, some songs are classified as Afro Hip-hop, Afro Soul, Afro Reggae, Afro R&B, Afro Rock, Afro Calypso, name them. And music artistes are also categorized as such which they render. The like of late 90’s and early 2000’s musical groups like Remedies, Plantainshun boys, Style-plus, Psquare helped shape the contemporary Afro beat that has gone nuclear today. They all and many other incredible artistes played a vital role in secularizing the genre and making it more internationally acceptable. Today, Afro beat is competing with the world class music genre from America, Europe and Asia, penetrating deep into the souls of music lovers’ all over the world, and also gaining momentum in the international music market. That why, Nigerian Afro beat is influencing other musicians from the other African countries, like, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Kenya lets mention but few. Nevertheless, the Afro beats has featured top American and European top musicians, and Afro beat artistes have perform alongside with the western artiste in the international Music Festivals. Todays’ Afro beat is lavishly rich in musical instruments, lyrics, composition, languages etc. this is because Afro beats is highly receptive. It does not reject any genre, it can take any music genre and make it, its own in a unique way.