20
Black Excellence
The Afrobeats Movement: We've Come a Long Way Fam!
Written by Efe Omorogbe
One of my minor but regular irritations these days is the unavoidable online encounters with the sometimes hilarious, sometimes annoying bants by younger members of the Afribeats nation. As the culture grows and numerous deserving talents make inroads into the global music industry, a section of fans appear to be infected by the e-syndrome known as "vawulence", brought about by an e-virus which causes sufferers to believe that they can only celebrate the winning strides of their faves by denigrating otherwise impressive achievements of others, especially perceived rivals. The notion that one person's win is a lift for the entire culture is foreign to these fans and it's not very difficult to understand why. Most of them belong to the generation of privilege. For a guy whose initiation into the world of music fandom coincided with the timing of a Chris Brown feature on a Davido hit single and a Tekno's feature in Beyonce's "The Lion King: The Gift soundtrack album, it is easy to believe the mainstream has always been next door. Nothing can be farther from the truth. A lot has changed. In twenty short years, a whole lot has changed and there's the promise of bigger things to come. Just a couple of years ago, Nigerian talents created equally fantastic music but found it extremely difficult to showcase and monetize it. A North American or European tour for the hottest Naija pop acts was mainly anchored on a string of small banquet hall shows in mainly backwater locations, parlour parties and African clubs. The circuit was as far removed from the mainstream (venues and players) as the NPFL is from the EPL.
