Reconstructing Afrobeat as a Scene-Based Genre

Abstract

In 1960s–70s Lagos, a nascent musical movement formed fusing West African highlife and American popular music, fortified by James Brown’s 1970 tour of West Africa. Political corruption was confronted by music, catapulting Felá Kuti to international fame and silencing ?égún Bucknor. Kuti’s positive impact is diminished because Afrobeat became more of a brand than a genre among international audiences. Evidence from an audio survey (n=168) conducted in Nigeria, musical analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, the blogosphere and a reexamination of the scholarly literature and music journalism supports an alternate history of Lagosian music, contesting the accounts of musicologist Chris Waterman and sociologist Jennifer Lena, among others. Based on converging evidence, we offer a resolution to the competing claims of creating Afrobeat from Orlando Julius and Felá Kuti: the genre developed as part of a new social scene that emerged in Lagos during the Nigerian Civil War.

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