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SOUND STRATEGIES: The Innovators Going Global With African Music

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THE 100th ISSUE: 100 Innovations, Inventions & Icons From Africa

Nigeria leads the proliferation of Africa’s new sounds in the West.



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In an Africa fresh from economic liberalization, music found
a new voice, thanks to social media and platforms like YouTube, Spotify and
Apple Music, which streamed thousands of African songs into the homes of
millions in the diaspora. 



The western world, suddenly, was introduced to Africa’s new
sound, Afrobeats. Free from the shackles that had previously plagued the
Nigerian movie industry, known locally by the moniker, Nollywood, artists, now
empowered with this new distribution platform, could begin to experiment in
different languages, sounds and genres that had, until then, remained confined
to only regional pockets. 



The past few years, however, have seen a rapid evolution of
the Afrobeats scene across Africa and Nigeria is leading its explosion
globally. 



Events such as the One Africa Music Fest, an African musical
experience showcasing Africa’s best and brightest talents, have solidified
Africa’s position in the global entertainment industry. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1030097404-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-39819" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1030097404-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1030097404-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1030097404-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1030097404-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1030097404.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>BROOKLYN, NY &#8211; SEPTEMBER 09: Yemi Alade performs on stage at 2018 Essence Street Style Festival on September 9, 2018 in Brooklyn City. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for Essence)</figcaption></figure></div>



Afrobeats has not only captured a new western audience but
has also influenced the sounds of some of America’s biggest artists.



“Afrobeats is absolutely taking over. In 2016, Drake’s One
Dance, which featured Wizkid, was arguably one of the biggest sounds globally.
Then you had French Montana with Unforgettable, which was also huge and both
videos were shot in Africa. So, this thing is becoming a movement,” says
D-Black, a Ghanaian Afrobeats artist and founder of Black Avenue Muzik record
label.



It’s almost impossible to attend a party or wedding in
Africa and not be treated to one of Afrobeats’ ubiquitous chart-toppers. 



With hits from artists like Davido, Wizkid, Yemi Alade and
many more pounding out of speakers across the continent, the movement of
Afrobeats not only covers major cities in Nigeria, but also some far-flung
locales.



“You cannot really talk about Afrobeats without talking
about Lagos. The music scene is very fast-paced and colorful. Each local area
has its own unique sound. On the mainland, we have the heart music being pushed
by artists like Small Doctor. 



“We also have the live Afrobeats scene and then the Alte
scene, which is a different music on its own. People like to identify Alte
sound with the western crowd and mainly people who live on the island,” says
Paul Yusuf, DJ and founder of Music Revolution Nigeria.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">But that doesn’t mean that the artists are benefiting from the buzz. Similar to Nollywood, piracy remains rampant making it impossible for artists to sell their music. </blockquote>



“There are several ways of accessing music locally in
Nigeria, from the streets, where you have street vendors selling illegally
obtained music or in a well-known tech hub called computer village, where
consumers can download thousands of illegally obtained new music onto their
hard drive from as little as N2,000 ($5),” Yusuf says. 



“In Africa, the model is different. It is all about putting
out as much free music as you can without necessarily charging, then you become
a big artist once you have enough hit songs and then make your money back from
being booked on shows. When you think about it, some of the biggest stars in
the United States make most of their money from tours,” says D-Black.



Despite these challenges, the advent of Web 2.0 and
community marketing mean the Afrobeats scene has been digitalized, providing
savvy entrepreneurs like Don Jazzy, with a new revenue model.



“Back in the day, we didn’t care too much about online streaming platforms like YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify, but now it is a major focus for generating revenue. Nigeria still lags behind on online platforms but there are people in the diaspora who because of the growth and exposure of the Afrobeats music patronize us online by buying from these streaming platforms. 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="685" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1026043782-685x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-39820" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1026043782-685x1024.jpg 685w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1026043782-300x449.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1026043782-600x898.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1026043782-201x300.jpg 201w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1026043782-768x1149.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-1026043782.jpg 1369w" sizes="(max-width: 685px) 100vw, 685px" /><figcaption>PHILADELPHIA, PA &#8211; SEPTEMBER 01: Davido performs onstage during the 2018 Made In America Festival &#8211; Day 1 at Benjamin Franklin Parkway on September 1, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Lisa Lake/Getty Images for Roc Nation)</figcaption></figure>



“The numbers from Nigeria is not big because most people prefer to download from free sites and most of them use Android, boom play apps and others to get access to the music,” says Jazzy.



Born Michael Collins Ajereh, he is a record producer,
singer, songwriter and entrepreneur. He is also the founder of one of Nigeria’s
most successful record labels, Mavin Records, with a roster of stars including
Tiwa Savage and Korede Bello. 



He pioneered the proliferation of Afrobeats into countries
like the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) when he created his
first record label, Mo’ Hits Records, with former partner, D’banj. The pair was
signed by US music mogul, Kanye West, to his GOOD Music imprint, at a time when
the industry was still in its infancy bringing global attention to the world of
Afrobeats.



“Everything changed with D’banj. Oliver Twist opened up the
labels to want to invest in Africa because that was the first single that was
pushed by a label properly. Kanye West signed D’banj and Don Jazzy and that was
big news. When Mo’ Hits came out with their sound, it was easy to get the
world’s attention on Afrobeats, coupled with improved production and quality
music videos,” says the London-based DJ Flex.



According to Jazzy, the digital revolution of the Afrobeats
sound has led to the proliferation of the music into the diaspora, leading to
different sub-categories like Afro-pop, Afro-dance and Afro-reggae. This has
also affected the revenue model of the business.



“When it comes to Afrobeats, we have to look at two main
revenue streams. The type of songs that impact the clubs and Nigeria locally;
and secondly, the type of sound that moves numbers online, thus digitally. So,
you have to be very conscious of the type of music you make at the moment. You
have to consider whether you are trying to do this song so that you will be
popping in Nigeria and thus offline or are you doing the song for
international.



“For example, Korede Bello has Godwin, which was a very big
song offline and translated into him going for more shows and getting club
plays and party plays. But a song does like that, if you go on YouTube, Spotify
and Apple, the numbers are ridiculously crazy because the diaspora market
preferred that kind of sound and they streamed it more. So, you definitely have
to be conscious about what you want to achieve,” says Jazzy.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="725" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DonJazzy12571-725x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-39821" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DonJazzy12571-725x1024.jpg 725w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DonJazzy12571-300x424.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DonJazzy12571-600x847.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DonJazzy12571-212x300.jpg 212w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DonJazzy12571-768x1085.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DonJazzy12571.jpg 1450w" sizes="(max-width: 725px) 100vw, 725px" /><figcaption> Don Jazzy. Picture: Getty </figcaption></figure>



Social media has played a big role in this new trend by
making artists connect with audiences outside Nigeria. It has also influenced
the new sound of Afrobeats by giving Nigerian and African artists a window into
the world of pop culture in America by removing geographical barriers. 



“You no longer have to travel to the US to see what your
favorite artists are doing because they are all vying for attention on social
media platforms out of fear of dying out,”&nbsp;
D-Black says. 



With a population of 180 million in Nigeria, its music
industry is projected to grow, buoyed by the increase in smartphones and
platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. According to the
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry,&nbsp; the global recorded music market grew by 8.1%
in 2017, reaching $17.3 billion that year on the strength of digital streaming
revenue. 



The big question is, with a largely unregulated industry,
how are these artists making their money?



“Money comes in when you have a good product and you make FX
from digital sales and when that artist starts growing and you go for shows,
then they get paid and you split the proceeds, depending on the sharing ratios
you have with the artist. 



“Different artists have different sharing ratios and that
depends on how long you have been with the artist and how badly perhaps you
want the artist. There are also endorsements from brands as well,” Jazzy says.



His Mavin Records label recently made news for securing an
undisclosed investment from Washington DC-based investment firm Kupanda
Capital, a firm with the goal of creating, capitalizing and scaling up
pan-African companies.&nbsp; 



“We are trying to build a long-term structured platform that
can connect African music on the continent and beyond for further global
consumption. We intend to use the investment for distribution of our own music,
product development and hire new staff to take the brand to the next level,”
Jazzy says.



The alleged multimillion-dollar investment by Kupanda into
the Nigerian record label presents yet another compelling case for the
Afrobeats genre, which presents revenue generating opportunities that are too
big to be ignored.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="706" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-831170890-1024x706.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-39822" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-831170890-1024x706.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-831170890-300x207.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-831170890-600x413.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-831170890-768x529.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GettyImages-831170890.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>LOS ANGELES, CA &#8211; AUGUST 13: French Montana performs onstage during the Teen Choice Awards 2017 at Galen Center on August 13, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure>

Red Bull Music Academy At Notting Hill Carnival – Day 1

Put Your  Money Into These Rhythmic Beats

Nigerian domination, presidents under fire, a controversial voting system, a prophecy foretold, tension over a last-minute switch. The African Union? No, the MTV Africa Music Awards (MAMAs) 2016, at the Dome in Johannesburg, heavy with the heaviest music in Africa and laden with controversy.
Before a note was played, the first controversy struck. Rising African star Trevor Noah – who is tripping the light fantastic on The Daily Show in New York – pulled out from fronting this shimmering night in the country of his birth. He was ill.
In stepped Bonang Matheba, for a whispered R500,000 (about $36,000), with just 24 hours to go, to become the first African woman to present the event in its nine-year history. Founder of the MAMAs, Nigerian Alex Okosi, claimed it was “exciting” and “it’s girl power tomorrow”. You can only imagine how chuffed he was to lose his host 24 hours before the awards and how stressful the last-minute rehearsals must have been.
Women took center stage on the night and were outspoken. Co-host Nigerian Yemi Alade retorted to her President Muhammadu Buhari over his comments on a visit to Germany recently along the lines that a woman’s place was in the kitchen and the so-called “other room”.
“Women, don’t forget! We are not only good in the kitchen and good in the living room and good in the other room; we are also good anywhere we want to be,” snapped back Alade from the stage.
This drew rapturous applause from the thousands in the crowd.
When the awards came, it was women again to the fore. One touching moment amid the glitz was the awarding of the Africa Re-Imagined Award to Mary Taedzerwa who is fighting in Zimbabwe against the marriage of children. She was married off at the age of 15. Her efforts helped persuade Zimbabwe to increase the legal age for marriage to 18 in January. According to UNICEF, 34% of girls in Zimbabwe, aged 20 to 24, were married by the time they were 18.
<div id="attachment_5555" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5555" class="wp-image-5555 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-617684068-300x230.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="230" />Wizkid (L) and Emtee perform during the 2016 MTV Africa Music Awards</div>
As the awards were handed out, there were questions in the audience about the Google voting system. Many claimed it didn’t reflect Africa. The system allows every person five online votes a day and they can return to the system the next day. This means people can easily pile up the votes, making it more of a popularity contest than an appreciation of music on the continent.
On top of this, a mere 28% of the population are on the internet meaning most Africans can’t vote.
More than half of Nigerians are on the internet – about 100 million users, 60 million more than anyone else – and that could explain why, yet again, the West African nation did well.
It also may be that Nigeria has the second-fastest growing music industry in the world, after Indonesia, and is getting stronger every year. According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, it will be worth $86 million by 2020.
Maybe the self-proclaimed South African Prince of Hip-Hop, from the other end of the continent, knew what he was talking about. Love him or loathe him, AKA made a sidewalk prophecy in FORBES AFRICA (December/January 2015) saying Nigerians have attitude to burn.
“Nigerians are told to be great,” he says. “In South Africa we are told to be humble.”
On this night he was right. Nigerian artists stole the show winning both Male and Female of the Year awards, Best Song as well as the outright Artist of the Year. The big winner of the night was 26-year-old Wizkid who released his first album at the age of 11, under the name Lil Prinz, at a time of life when most of us were learning how to ride a bike. He is taking the continent by storm, making music with Drake, Chris Brown and Tinie Tempah.
As the crowds melted away into a night full of insects and summer rain, they reflected on the band of talented Nigerians who came to South Africa’s city of gold and shone.

No Humility As Nigerians Prove They’re Great

He dreams big yet it all started in a small corner. It was in a corner of the dusty streets of Mafikeng in the North West province of South Africa where he first drew a crowd, in school theater, at the age of six.
He’s broken barriers, filled the 20,000-capacity Dome, in 2015, and this year, he’s pushed it further by attracting around 36,000 fans to Orlando Stadium in Soweto – most football teams fail to do this. He’s proved that nothing you put your mind to do is impossible.
This is Refiloe Maele Phoolo, known as Cassper Nyovest to the world. Rapping is his game.
He steps out of a minibus with his entourage, they stop for a selfie, and I’ve noticed how spruce his style is: a bandana, a R500,000 ($37,000) watch, gold neck chain and all-white outfit. A closer look at Cassper reveals puffy eyes; he is exhausted from back-to-back performances.
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Cassper is best known for his hit song, Doc Shebeleza, and his ponytail that he cut off not long ago.
“It kind of made me look like a gimmick; there are certain things that hold you back. When you are animated it makes it too difficult to grow up. It was time to take it off because I am more mature now,” he says.
“I wouldn’t want to be this version of myself forever, I want to get better.”
All of this didn’t come easy.
The 26-year-old was born into a family of teachers, where education was important, yet he doesn’t have a qualification beyond school. He dropped out of school in grade 10, at the age of 16. His parents didn’t approve.
“It was a very emotional part of my life, and theirs as well because they are passionate about education. I sat them down and said look I’m not saying I wanna quit school and sit at the corners and smoke weed and drink my life away. I want to work, on my dream and my purpose,” he says.
Luckily they understood.
“I understand that school is very important, I wouldn’t say that school wasn’t for me but it’s just that my path was a little bit different from the normal life and what my parents thought I would do.”
He had a plan up his sleeve and went to the big city of Johannesburg for music.
“I was signed to a label called Impact Sound under Thabiso Tsotetsi; he didn’t wanna be associated with a child who dropped out of school so he watched from a distance. That’s when HHP, a fellow artist, saw me and we did a song Wamo Tseba Mtho,” says Cassper.
After two years of struggle in Johannesburg, he moved back home.
“My grandmother gave me a mattress because I didn’t have anywhere to sleep and it took a very long time for anything to happen.”
“Nobody cares who you are, people function by the monopoly of those who know each other, pull each other up, it’s not even about talents, it’s about connections and who you know,” says Cassper.
He used his sister’s last R100 ($7.50), meant for a transport fare, to buy himself a return ticket to Johannesburg.
Things started to turn around. Cassper started his career with Childhood Gangsters, a group he started with his friends. When it disbanded, he went to launch his solo career and produced the hits Gusheshe, Malome and Mama I Made It. He also shared stages with international artists Kid Cudi, Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Wizkid and Wiz Khalifa.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5534" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Casper-316-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
The rapper also started his own record label, Family Tree, the same year he released his debut album, Tsholofelo – a taste of sweet success followed by a string of awards.
“Artists get only eight percent of their record sales, [it’s the] industry standard, and 50 percent of their show money. I didn’t want that, I wanted 100 percent of everything,” he says.
His favorite line: “God is good all the time and all the time God is good.”
It hasn’t always been good for Cassper who was involved in a public fight with fellow South African artist Kiernan Jordan Forbes, known as AKA, which led to both artists recording diss tracks about each other. Much to the public’s surprise, after Cassper’s show at Orlando Stadium, a picture went viral on social media of the two artists congratulating each other.
“Kiernan and I have been cool for a while now. We didn’t even know what we were fighting for and it didn’t make sense anymore. We were just talking how the fight was pathetic and it was over and we had to move on. We couldn’t believe how far we had made it in our careers. Every time we see each other we greet, so that picture for me wasn’t like the moment everybody made it out to be.”
“Kids really look up to us and they would do anything and everything that we do. If I’m always in the paper for doing some dumb stuff, what am I teaching them?” he says.
A few months ago, Cassper was accused by his idol, Kanye West, of stealing his floating stage idea. The rapper denies this.
“I did that stage last year at the Dome before Kanye did his show. How could I possibly have stolen his idea? I just think that it’s great that my idol knows my name and we’ll have something to talk about the day we meet. For me, it was a compliment no matter how it came out.”
Cassper has been through a lot of bad publicity in his career; he says negativity is a thing of the past.
“I can’t deal with fights. I just become a person I’m not,” he says.
Cassper says getting to the top is the easy part; staying there is harder.
“The hardest part is maintaining the same spot. In South Africa, people move on very quickly and they forget and what you have done in your career doesn’t matter in South Africa.”
His worst fear is to be forgotten.
“I don’t ever want to get to a place where nobody knows who I am, where I’m not celebrated  and people don’t love me as much as they do right now, I don’t ever wanna get to that place.”
Even though Cassper fell short of filling up the 40,000-seat stadium by just a few thousand it did not dampen his sense of accomplishment and musical bravery. In 2017, he’s looking to fill up the 94,000-seat FNB stadium.
“At the Dome I lost R3 million ($220,000) but the concept was not to make money but to shift culture. The value was not in money but an investment… I want to get to a point where an artist can walk away with R8 million ($600,000) a show.”
“South African hip-hop is the biggest music. We are African hip-hop,” says Cassper.
Love him or hate him, what is clear is that Cassper has shaken up the music industry.
“Maybe I should start acting broke now coz my success turned the game into a cold heart”. These are the lyrics from his popular hit Malome.
“Me and my dad never have one-on-ones anymore” are lyrics directed at his father who separated with his mother, at the same time when his 19-year-old brother died in an accident.
“When my brother passed away, it was a sad time for my family and it was also the first time someone from my immediate family died. Then my parents separated so, at the age of 15, I had to grow up and be a man of the house,” says Cassper.
According to Cassper, South African artists are far from famous.
“The only guy who’s actually gaining traction is Black Coffee; he has a following that’s growing all over the world. But when I travel the world I perform for mostly South Africans. I just had my first show in Germany, for Germans, who liked my music. Before that we’d create our own shows.”
“As much as we’re making it look like we’re flourishing out there, in the US, we are very far. But we’re fighting and I think our time will come.”
He is too humble to offer any estimation of how much he has banked this year.
“When I started to make money I mentioned it too much to my fans and then I became the guy with a lot of money. I’ve learned that it creates a wall between me and my crowd because they don’t see me as one of their own anymore. It’s a big mistake that I made at a very early stage in my career,” he says.
“I’ve also lost too much but it happens to a lot of us who don’t know what to do with money. I posted everything I did and everything I bought.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5535" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Casper-385-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
According to reports, the rapper makes R120,000 ($9,000) a show, excluding accommodation, flight and his entourage.
One of his challenges is getting his music played on radio; he asked his 685,000 followers on Twitter to help him get his new song Abashwe played.
“Please help me push it. I still don’t understand why I don’t get radio airplay so I need my fans to request Abashwe. Hope that will help.”
He’s got this far without radio; imagine where he’ll get to if his songs are on the airwaves.

Tag: Wizkid

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

SOUND STRATEGIES: The Innovators Going Global With African Music

THE 100th ISSUE: 100 Innovations, Inventions & Icons From Africa

Put Your Money Into These Rhythmic Beats

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