Top Afrobeats are Africa’s gift to the world. The continent is gifted not only with abundant natural resources and a teeming wildlife. More importantly, it is peopled by deeply musical inhabitants.
So it’s no surprise that a music genre that combines West African musical styles such as fuji music with American funk and jazz highlights–would be born in the 1920s in Ghana. It would be imported to Nigeria in the 1970s.
The genre would prevail with a focus on chanted vocals, complex intersecting rhythms, and percussion. Percussion musical instruments are played by striking with the hand or with a handheld or foot-operated stick, beater, or shaker. Drums, cymbals, xylophones, gongs, and bells belong to the category.
The genre has a rather mixed parentage. It comes from African mainstream music with subtle hints of jazz, funk, Highlife, Nigerian rhythm, and Jaiva. Like mixed DNA, no one knows for sure how it will evolve. Meanwhile, the world awaits.