In her article “Great Art Comes From Pain", Leigh Huggins writes that …what we are all referring to when we say that art comes from pain is that pain experienced fully is a part of a life lived honestly. Great art is often the product of a need for expression, for a processing that can't be done any other way, but it doesn't need to come from suffering.
This is true with the musical genre Afrobeats, a West African music genre, that fuses the influences from Nigerian (such as Yoruba and Igbo music) and Ghanian (such as highlife) music, with American funk, jazz, and soul influences. With a focus on chanted vocals, complex intersecting rhythms, and percussion.
Fela Aníkúlápó Kútì (born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti) was a Nigerian musician and political activist. He is regarded as the principal innovator of Afrobeats.
With political injustice and human suffering around him, music became a Weapon, he sharpened the blade on his music and used it, like the title states, as a weapon to at least alleviate, if not ameliorate the means of that suffering. And it is this suffering that has produce the genius of Afrobeats genre. A musicologist, Alaba Ilesanmi, write on his article, Fela Kuti is more famous today than ever – what’s behind his global power… He was beaten, bruised and imprisoned, sealing Afrobeat with sweat and blood. To perform Afrobeat is to enter Fela’s arena, and performing the genre without addressing political issues is almost sacrilege.
Afrobeat roots is felt in West African rhythms and melody, textually on African verbal art particularly Yoruba praise poetry, the harmonic backdrops of Fund and Soul and the improvised nature of jazz.
Afrobeat's experience and as a monumental event, marks the cultural, artistic, political and economic “rebirth” following colonization in Africa, which soon reverberated throughout the entire African continent.
I guess, Afrobeat is Aníkúlápó, a Yoruba phrase meaning “one who has captured death and put it in his pouch”, to convey a sense of invincibility. Afrobeat continues to live today, and will forever influences today’s artist like Divine Ikubor, known mononymously as Rema, Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, known professionally as Wizkid, Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu MFR, who is known professionally as Burna Boy, David Adedeji Adeleke OON, known professionally as Davido, Oyinkansola Sarah Aderibigbe, known professionally as Ayra Starr and many more who will enter Fela’s arena.
