Tag: Afrobeat

Afrobeat is a Nigerian music genre that involves the combination of West African musical styles (such as traditional Yoruba music and highlife) and American funk, jazz, and soul influences, with a focus on chanted vocals, complex intersecting rhythms, and percussion.

Afrobeat was developed in Nigeria in the late 1960s by Fela Kuti who, with drummer Tony Allen, experimented with different contemporary music of the time. Afrobeat was influenced by a variety of genres, such as highlife, fuji, and jùjú, as well as Yoruba vocal traditions, rhythm, and instruments.

In the late 1950s, Kuti left Lagos to study abroad at the London School of Music where he was exposed to jazz. He returned to Lagos and played a highlife-jazz hybrid, albeit, without commercial success.