Afrobeats

Afrobeats and Afro-fusion from Arab artists, strongest among Sudanese and North African musicians.

This is the newest term in the vocabulary and the fastest moving. Afrobeats came out of Lagos and Accra and reached Arab listeners the way it reached everyone else, through streaming, and the artists picking it up tend to be those with a foot in both worlds: Sudanese musicians whose own tradition already sits on the Nile-valley side of the map, and North African artists working with West African rhythm and West African producers.

Worth knowing that Afrobeats and Afrobeat are different things. Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat is horn-driven band music from the 1970s; Afrobeats with the s is the contemporary pop style. Both are filed here, and the older one is much the rarer of the two.