Broadly defined and incredibly diverse…

In this module, we’ll be looking into the recent history of popular music found in both the continent of Africa and the broader African-American diaspora. Largely discluding the U.S., this will include the styles of music found in several African regions, as well as in South America and Caribbean nations. Not dissimilar to the context provided in our K-Pop and J-Pop module, the westernization of African pop music was not merely a coincidence, and its rising popularity as a global genre warrants a discussion. We’ll explore the historical throughlines where possible by making connections between the diverse musical styles found in Afro-Pop before diving into jazz in the next module. As for now, let’s start with a bit of context surrounding the initial development of these genres.

Global westernization - again

Underpinning the popular music culture of the Afro-pop and Afro-Latin genres is, again, European and North American imperialism and the cultural influence that it brings to other countries. Let’s start making these connections with the most preeminent popular music founded in the U.S. - jazz.

The precursor to the founding popular genre can be seen as a collection of musical traditions and styles from Western African indigenous peoples. A majority of slaves taken from Africa through the trans-Atlantic routes were from the Western coast and north-central regions of the continent - contributing to the similar styles that would develop across the U.S., Caribbean, Brazil, and several other American countries. In the U.S. specifically, the preservation and derivation of these styles evolved into African-American spirituals before and after emancipation, ragtime in the 1890s, and jazz in the 1920s. We will cover further developments in jazz in the next module. For now, just keep in mind that most U.S. pop music of our recent history and today can be traced back to these progenitors.

Starting in the 1930s with radio and spanning to the 1960s with media (vinyl records, cassettes), cultural exports from the U.S. back to West Africa grew significantly. As musicians do, they iterated on their own traditional songs in new ways and styles that often resembled jazz and rock. Additionally, the advent of electronic equipment such as amps and guitars would also fuel this musical fusion. Geo-politically, the development of Afro-genres also coincides with the recent independence of many African countries from Europe - again a factor that contributes to cross-cultural music fusion¹. One of the main figures in popularising Afrobeat (a precursor of the broader Afro-pop) as a genre is found in Fela Kuti, a Nigerian performer/composer. You can check out a snapshot of his work here to the right from the 70s.

In North-Central Africa, the music was more closely influenced by Mediterranean nations, Middle-Eastern countries, and the European colonial powers that occupied them. A particularly popular musical genre in this region that came out of Algeria is raï. Raï can be best described as a fusion of traditional Algerian music, U.S. jazz, and French electronica - commonly featuring Arabic lyrics². A popularizer of the genre is Bellemou Messaoud, and you can check out his sound here. Though this piece is from the late 1980s, raï has been around since the early 1920s.

South Africa, both the country and its neighbors, had its own share of jazz and rock in the 1900s that was broadly influenced by local traditions and western styles. Several genres, particularly rock artists, fused the common languages of Afrikaans and English into their music while others utilized Sotho, Zulu, Swati, and many other regional dialects. By the turn of the century, the region took hold of many popular genres including reggae, gospel, alternative, and contemporary pop³.

Central and South America saw a similar dispersion and evolution of traditional music that evolved with the popular genres at the time. Music that was developed by the African diaspora across Latin America is generally referred to as Afro-Latin - again, mostly as a geographical signifier. In addition to the colonial presence of France, Spain, and Portugal and the population of African slaves, the culture of indigenous people across the South American continent would also fuel developments in music. Throughout the 1900s, we would see the popularization of now common dance movements such as salsa and samba. Musically, rhythmic ideas, pitch collections, and variations on existing styles would be the basis for defining the popular sub-genres, which when considering the entire continent provides incredibly varied results. To listen to examples of these 20th-century genres, check out this article here. Some of the media is broken on the page, but it provides a ton of great info on specific countries throughout Latin America.

Often included in the broad Afro-Latin genre is music from the Caribbean, also known as Afro-Caribbean music. We can identify the birth of many notable genres from the region in the last century, while also keeping in mind the common roots from which they are derived (jazz, beat music, etc.). Reggae is just one example of these genres coming out of Jamaica in the 1960s, which in itself is a derivative/fusion of calypso music from Trinidad and Tobago and rocksteady. These genres typically feature downtempo pieces, wind instrument sections, and “off-beat” emphases in the rhythm section⁴. Dancehall in the 70s and Reggaeton (out of Panama) in the 90s provide two more landmark genres that move us closer to the modern-day genres we may be most familiar with. And if you will remember - dancehall music was a major inspiration for hip-hop and rap out of New York in the 1970s as well!

Afro-Pop

As I preface in almost every conversation about genres, the labels we create are a combination of stylistic and geographical qualifiers. Afro-pop is probably most defined by the later qualifier as being a broad collection of popular music from African regions - not unlike K-pop or J-pop before - with each country or artist having a different take on the genre. That being said, we can still observe some of the music in its style by comparing it to what we are familiar with so far in the world of pop and hip-hop as well as in recent music history.

Take the song Dignity by Beninese musician Angélique Kidjo and Nigerian musician Yemi Alade for example. Released in 2021, the song is stylistically a combination of late 1900s Afrobeat and contemporary Afro-pop with hip-hop verses dispensed by Yemi. The piece serves as a eulogy for laborers and other marginalized groups - especially those who lost their lives in protests against police brutality in Nigeria.

Themes and social messaging aside, the stylistic distinctions of the piece are perhaps made clearer through the performance careers of these two artists. Angelique comes from an older generation of musicians, starting her career in the 80s. Her work seems to be most inspired by the jazz forms of the mid-1900s including soul and R&B. Meanwhile, Yemi is an up-and-coming artist whose works feature far more contemporary sounds influenced by electronica, hip-hop, and pop. The collaboration featured here can be viewed as a pure fusion of these different styles - perhaps most informed by the generational gap between the two artists.

Afro-Latin and Afro-Carribean