Accra (AFP)
Saturday night is a day of celebration at the Purple Pub in Accra, the capital of Ghana. And even in the midst of a pandemic, when bars and clubs are officially closed, Afrobeats is dancing and … is exported.
In bustling Osu, early revelers pour local beers onto plastic chairs, as speakers pushed to full volume drown out voices.
After midnight, the bodies wake up and the chairs are emptied. The whole street then sways to an air of Sarkodie or Stonebwoy, the kings of Ghanaian afrobeats.
“Not only is Afrobeats hyper-popular here in Ghana, it is now gaining real recognition on the international stage,” says Stonebwoy in his recording studio, lined with international awards.
“We are seeing Afrobeat festivals appear in Europe, I am happy to see West African music go so far. I even have hardened fans in India and Bangladesh!”, Explains the singer who counts 3.6 million Instagram followers.
Afrobeat – which takes its name from Afrobeat (without S), a musical genre of the 1970s popularized by the immense Fela Kuti – was born and exploded in Nigeria, the West African giant for several years .
Already in 2016, Western audiences discovered the afrobeats scene thanks to the hit “One Dance”, a featuring between Canadian superstar Drake and Nigerian Wizkid, which became the most played song of all time on Spotify, surpassing the billion streams.
– In the footsteps of Nigeria –
And now, alongside the Nigerian stars with millions of subscribers – Wizkid, Burna Boy, Davido – emerge in turn, and in their lineage, Ghanaian musicians.
Gyakie (398,000 subscribers on Instagram), Joey B (430,000 subscribers), KiDi (1.6 million), but above all Sarkodie (4.4 million), Stonebwoy and Shatta Wale (3.2 million subscribers), whose song “Already”, featuring Beyoncé and Major Lazer was one of the hits of the summer of 2020, bring Ghana among the countries which now count on the pop music scene in Africa.
Jefferson Seneadza, co-founder of the Ghanaian music streaming platform Aftown, intended to promote African music, confirms having noted “a massive interest in Ghanaian music”.
“Our music industry is finally being taken seriously,” he says, “and can now take his talents to the international stage. Stonebwoy’s latest album, for example, has been listened to over a million times in a week on our website. platform. And a lot of those plays came from abroad! “
The young singer Gyakie signed a contract with the American giant Sony Music at the beginning of the year, shortly after a delegation from the label traveled to Ghana for a scouting on the local market.
“In Afrobeats, Ghana is now in a position to compete with Nigeria,” said Jim Donnett, public relations manager of Sony Music West Africa. “But it’s healthy competition!”.
The musicians attribute this success to the mixture of genres. “My music is Afro-dancehall influenced by Caribbean music,” explains Stonebwoy, a bright red cap resting on her braided hair.
“I borrow from Jamaican dancehall, reggae, and cook it all in the big pot of African music, adding the rhythms and melodies unique to the continent.”
– Highlife –
The result: contagious rhythms which, served by a powerful voice, compose irresistibly catchy pieces.
But the Ghanaian afrobeats stand out above all from its Nigerian big sister thanks to one particularity: the heritage of highlife.
This musical genre appeared in colonized Ghana, then called Côte-de-l’Or, at the beginning of the 19th century, by adapting the traditional rhythms of the Ashanti people to Western instruments brought by the settlers.
It was thanks to highlife that Ghana had its first success on the international music scene.
“As early as the 1970s, large highlife groups like Osibisa were already filling entire stadiums,” recalls Ghanaian-Romanian musician Wanlov the Kubolor, avant-garde cultural icon and author of an offbeat album called “Afrobeats LOL”.
“The recent popularity of Afrobeats is of a different nature. Thanks to the internet, young Ghanaian artists can achieve viral success very quickly. The whole world now has direct access to our bubbling music scene,” he said. .
© 2021 AFP
–
