When Tems released her debut album “Born in the Wild” in May, it felt like it had been a long time coming – and not just because the now 29-year-old singer-songwriter had become the first African artist to reach number one on the US Billboard singles charts two years earlier.
This was also because the Nigerian star had already collaborated with some of the biggest names in music at the time, including Beyoncé on her album “Renaissance,” Drake on Future’s 2022 album “I Never Liked You” – for which she won a Grammy – and Rihanna on the Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe-nominated “Lift Me Up,” which they recorded for the film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”
Tems, alias Temilade Openiyi, is one of many African artists who, by entering the local mainstream, have cemented the independent identity of African music in developing countries, where it was long grouped under the controversial label of “world music”.
Their popularity has risen since the early 2000s, and in the past year, African music has gained even more ground. Last month, Tems’ fellow Nigerian Wizkid played to 60,000 people at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and in February the first Grammy for Best African Music Performance went to South African singer Tyla for her hit “Water.”
African and Western stars are also increasingly appearing on each other’s records, including huge hits like Rema and Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down,” which last year became the first song led by an African artist to reach one billion streams on Spotify. It has now reached nearly 1.5 billion streams and almost one billion views on YouTube.
Several factors are contributing to the increasing popularity of African music. The baby boom means that the continent has the youngest and fastest growing population in the world. Over the next 25 years, the total population is expected to almost double, to 2.5 billion people. By then, Africans will make up a quarter of the world’s population.
There is talk of a youthquake that will reshape the continent’s relations with the rest of the world. As the New York Times puts it, this seismic shift can already be felt in the entrepreneurial spirit of young Africans, in the fight for jobs and in the music the world hears.
With more than 200 million inhabitants, Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa. More than two-thirds of its citizens are under 30 years old, and about half are under 20. Millions of young people registered to vote in last year’s presidential election, many motivated by the need to lead the country out of economic crisis.
“Nigerian music in particular is an escapism,” says Nigerian-born Irish artist Plantain Papi. “Nigerians are currently struggling with hyperinflation, unemployment and election fraud… So the music is full of humor and joy to distract. It’s music that takes your mind off everything else.”
Stars like Rems and Rema manage to connect with these young people and start a conversation with them. Because of their enormous size in the country, they are probably even more important than young people in developing countries when it comes to giving artists the impetus they need to become international stars.
Internationally, this growth has been fuelled by TikTok, which encourages artists to use jazzy hooks, snappy lyrics and easy-to-follow dance moves. “If someone uploads a few good videos, it shows they know what they’re doing,” says Plantain Papi. “I think the music would still spread, but this kind of accelerates it. If someone in South Africa, for example, delivers something that affects someone in the middle of Galway, that will make them listen. And that’s happening more and more.”
“African music is all about collaboration,” says Zimbabwean-Irish rapper God Knows, also known as Munyaradzi Jonas. “Growing up there, you’re not only familiar with the music of your country, but of the whole continent. There’s no separation: we listen to everything. It would be very strange, for example, if someone in Ireland said they’d never heard of artists from the UK. As neighbours, it’s the same for us.”
( God Knows Jonas: “I am 100% Irish, but also 100% Zimbabwean”Opens in new window. )
Much of this collaboration takes place at the December Homecomings, the end-of-year celebrations also known as Detty December. “This usually happens in Ghana and Nigeria,” says Sampa Tembo, the Zambian artist better known as Sampa the Great, who is headlining the 10th Another Love Story Festival in Co Meath next weekend. “We get to engage with cultures, dance and eat until 6am.”
“It’s a bit like fashion week, except we come together to collaborate and get creative,” says Plantain Papi. “Nigerians are generally very loud people,” he adds, laughing. “We make a lot of noise, just like our music. But there are a lot of silent partners in African music that really make a difference. Like Amapiano” – a mix of deep house, gqom, jazz, soul and lounge music – “in South Africa, which borrows sounds from house music. Or in Congo, there’s Sebene,” an instrumental group often featured in Congolese rumba music. “They all make something. Some are just louder than others.”
There are “dozens, if not hundreds” of other reasons for the growing identity of African music, says God Knows. “There have been so many moments in the last few years where artists from these countries have done something that has captured the zeitgeist,” he says. “But beyond that, the reason for the growing identity of African music is the diaspora.”
“The African diaspora around the world would fill arenas for these artists before they went on stadium tours. For example, if I’m in the US and I hear Davido is coming, I’ll book a plane to see him because I know he might not come anymore. And that’s not just for me, that’s for all of us. These artists have been big for years – but it’s only now that people outside the continent are really listening.”
Much like hip-hop in the 1970s and K-pop in the 2010s, music from African countries today benefits from the circular nature of a more global audience. Popular playlists on Spotify and Apple Music such as African Heat and Africa Now have helped generate international interest – which in turn is helping a number of African genres such as Kenyan gengetone, Ghanaian drill and Ethio-jazz grow. This success brings the resources to make the music even better, thus attracting more and more fans. “All genres have their incubation period,” says Plantain Papi. “Then mass adoption happens.”
As with most overnight sensations, the roots of this trend were planted some time ago. Fela Kuti, the late Nigerian musician considered the main innovator of Afrobeat, played a big part in it, according to Plantain Papi. “He was huge – I only recently found out he played at Glastonbury. He mixed ’40s and ’50s jazz with traditional African music, and that was kind of the beginning of what we have today.”
“Akon played a big role too,” says God Knows. The Senegalese-American singer and producer “was one of the first major artists to speak to Africa the way African people speak to Africa. Then he worked with names like Lady Gaga and championed African artists in a way that had never been done before.”
The growing identity of African music outside its home continent is reflected in the way it is recognized around the world. The US has had the Billboard Afrobeats chart since 2022. The UK has had an official Afrobeats chart since 2020 – and saw the first Afrobeats single in the UK top 10 more than a decade ago, in 2012, when singer and rapper D’Banj released Oliver Twist. That hit could be seen as an early sign of the success that eventually led to Nigerian stars such as Wizkid, Davido and Burna Boy embarking on stadium tours.
Some of the awards Burna Boy has been nominated for also help track the development of African music internationally. This year, he won the first Billboard award for Best Afrobeats Artist. (He dedicated his award to “Africa and every artist that comes from Africa.”) And, like Tyla, he was nominated for this year’s first Grammy for Best African Music Performance. He was also nominated for the Grammys for Best Global Music Album and Best Global Music Performance, as he had been several times before – even when they were still known as the Best World Music awards.
Fellow artists are glad that the industry is slowly moving away from the idea of world music. “What a topic,” says Sampa the Great. “To categorize the African continent into a thing called ‘world’ completely overlooks the importance of African music genres. Much of the music we know and hear today actually comes from Africa. Now we can finally categorize ourselves on a world stage, as we have been doing at home for some time.”
African musicians, she says, are finally in control of their own story. “This is the first time we’ve been in leadership roles… The Grammys putting our homeland at the center of things has never happened before. So we can actually determine how we want to be seen. It’s a very special time when we can create the blueprint for how African music should be known around the world.”
How does she feel as a proud Zambian artiste given the rise of the genre? “Like I don’t have to change my story for people to understand. You know, for the first time, we’re not being asked to change our songs and add more English. I can just sing in my language and it’s not controversial. This is the first time we can actually just be ourselves and see different listeners singing our languages. It’s beautiful, shocking and liberating all at the same time.”
Another love story is at Killyon Manor, Co Meath, Friday-Sunday, August 23-25. Sampa the Great performs as part of a larger collaboration that also includes Irish Aidwhich is a project to establish a Center for Creative Arts at Evelyn Hone College in Lusaka
