This article was originally published in Turning Heads. You can find it here.
One evening as I was listening to Juls' new song, Injabulo Riddim, I decided to check if he was performing live somewhere near Bristol. Checking my phone, I found out that Juls was going to be performing- but in London. As a student past mid-way through my month’s budget, London was definitely a no-go zone for me. The following day, debating whether or not to go for the Warwick Africa Summit, I saw a LinkedIn post mentioning that both Juls and Bien were going to attend the summit. God’s timing! I wouldn’t see him perform, but at least I’d get to listen to what he thought about Artistic Development on the continent. Similar thing? So, I decided to make the trek to Coventry to listen to what Stephen Tayo, the photographer, and Comfort Arthur, the animator, graphic designer, and visual artist, had to say about Artistic Development on the continent. Here are three things I took away from the panel.
‘Africa is not underdeveloped, it is overexploited.’
Answering a question related to the growth of the continent, Juls said that ‘Africa is not underdeveloped, it is over exploited.’ This isn’t the right article to go into depth about the vast potential of Africa but suffice it to say that Wakanda isn’t merely the creation of its director's imagination. Unfortunately, the vast resources literally lying at our feet on the continent, coupled with the resilience, creativity and drive of our people juxtaposes the levels of poverty and desperation on our land.
Unfortunately, the African continent, as Juls said, is overexploited. Not only by many in the Western world who, if they don’t see Africa as a charity project, view us as a pawn in their century’s old chess game with the East. And if not as a business opportunity, an untapped market where they can bend and twist the rules on fair treatment and human rights in the name of creating jobs and supporting African economies.
Worse still is the exploitation of Africa and African people by African people. For example, those who drive around in Land Cruiser Prados that should have been ambulances, like they are driving ambulances. The levels of corruption that are present from the embezzlement of public funds to the kitu kidogos exploit the laxity of law enforcement. The poorly paid proletariat and embarrassing state of public healthcare show the exploitation of people. In the face of all this, we keep on moving, living, innovating, and thriving. In my opinion, music is a large part of what keeps the continent going.
Is Afrobeats a misnomer?
I was fortunate enough to pose the question which I centered my last article on to one of the artists I named. Again, God’s timing! Managing to grab Bien, lead singer of Sauti Sol and recently starting his solo career as well, just before he left, I asked him about whether he thought Afrobeats was a misnomer. I prefaced my question with the story about my friend and I having a discussion about the 2019 Lion King album and the dominance of Nigeria in Afrobeats. Pausing for a second and listening intuitively, he said that even from the backend of the industry, at the top of most of the labels and companies he’d engaged with is a Nigerian. But also mentioning that it isn’t just Nigerians in those spaces, with East Africans gradually getting seats at the tables. Nonetheless, he stressed that we need to be visible and show up to get into those spaces. Fair enough.
Before posing the question directly to Bien, I listened to him and Juls discuss the issue of Afrobeats on the panel itself. Discussing the categorization of African music, Juls, interestingly, said that:
Afrobeat is not a genre. Instead, it is a name ‘slapped’ on different kinds of African music. There's no African sound.He went on to stress that we listen to Highlife, Afrobeat, Soukous and other kinds of African music. He pointed out that the kind of music that Sauti Sol does is not Afrobeat. It’s a blend of soukous, Afro-pop, and R&B. A sort of neo-soukous I’d say- with rhumba undertones. Anyways, the point is that there is no one African sound. His answer was that Afrobeat is a term used to generalize music that ‘they’ (Western world, those with power in the large labels and distribution companies) are not really familiar with.
A common thread in their insight is that, although it is dominated by Nigeria, there is more to African music than what we call Afrobeat. There is a wealth of diversity, to use the classic phrase, in the continent's sounds. Bien himself said something to the effect of- why should the Beyonce album even be the standard? Sorry to the Bey Hivers. I completely agree. As I had said in that article, Afrobeat contributes so much to African music. Aside from its intrinsic worth and direct contribution to the African music portfolio, it creates space for other forms of African music to thrive and be heard. Space for these sounds to be heard in their own right.
Depiction of Africa in movies
On the topic of generalizing Africa, the panelists started talking about the Black Panther movies. Comfort Arthur, although praising the movie, criticized the generic ‘African accent’- as if there is such a thing. Juls pointed out that in Australia one person even asked him if he had ever been to Wakanda. Although that I think cannot be attributed to the creators of the movie, the ignorance of people about Africa as well as just poor geographical knowledge.
On this basis, a critique was made of the Black Panther movie as giving off the wrong impression of Africa. Perhaps- no African country possesses the exact characteristics of Wakanda. But there are elements of the movie that many Africans can relate to. The sense of community, the pride, the strength, grace, and vulnerability of the mother figure (not advocating the notion of the ever ‘strong black woman’). In my more radical teenage days, when Black Panther was first released, I saw Wakanda as a vision of the past glory days of Africa. Free from colonial intervention and left to grow beautifully like a wildflower. That was my dream of Africa- to go back to what we were before the white man came and messed up our social structure. But now, in my less, actually moderate, radical early twenties days I see Wakanda as a dream. A vision for the future of the continent. A deep-rooted pride in ourselves for who we are (without a desire or need to leave home to prosper), proper governmental and defense structures and the ability to negotiate, not beg to, with the rest of the world on an equal playing field and taking proper advantage of our strengths. Perhaps a crazy dream right now, but it is still a dream, nonetheless.
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