2016 marked the year of landmark leaps for African music. Particularly, the globally mapped success of Afropop following a spillover of attention the sub-genre gained in the previous year. First came Davido’s global distribution deal with Sony, then Wizkid’s feature on Drake’s first Billboard-topping, “One Dance”, and by the end of year several artists with recording and distribution deals with big-money labels or their West African entree. No doubt, the future we’ve all silently wished for Nigerian music seems to finally be coming true, the unanswered question however is a slight between sustainability and long-term value.

A look into the past will glean that we have been here before. In the early post-independence years, parent labels to today’s recording powerhouses, set up shop in Nigeria as a way of tapping into whatever viable sound the newly emancipated nation held within. Their operations spanned accross nearly forty years, with a handful of today’s greats: Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade etc, being recipients of management and recording contracts that saw them headlining concerts at the end of the world. Not only did they become world renowned, they also gave a first glimpse at the ubiquity of good music regardless of language. Political and economic instability may have caused these labels to close up shop at the cusp of the new millennium, but this history is a great indicator that Nigeria has always been a destination for a somewhat unique sound.

Thanks to the increasing cultural impact of the internet on globalisation, this second recursion of African music on global frontiers is opening doors for African music again via the Afropop of Wizkid, Tiwa Savage, Davido et-al. But while international appeal for Afropop means the former sub-genre with Afrobeat, Jamaican Dancehall and American hip-hop influences is now mainstream, it may also indicate it will soon run its course.

Social anthropology tells us after sub-cultures emerge from dominant ones, it begins to gravitate towards the mainstream until it reaches peak popularity and fades into obscurity. This doesn’t mean a future erasure of Afropop from playlist all over the world in one fell swoop, but global appeal is also a marker that it would soon cease to be a defining African sound. A great instance of this, is in how Dancehall was born out of Reggae’s inability to transcend its artistic value in the post-Bob Marley years and in how American and European artists have since appropriated the genre despite living physically outside of where it has come. Reggae and Dancehall are still spoken of today, but mostly in the shadows of rappers like Drake, occasional Top 40 hits by a relatively unknown Jamaican one hit wonder, or long think pieces about cultural appropriation and the use of Jamaican patois in music.

It’s noteworthy that this trajectory for Afropop is as inevitable as night and day. For the progress the culture to continue however, there should be a focus on discovery of sound over talent. The difference between the latter and the former is that while one is a mere mouthpiece, the other is a medium. If African music must go global, the take-over must be representative of all the sounds from the continent, not just the trendiest.

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