Download 2022 Afro Beat |TOP|
Slainie Garala
Afrobeat (also known as Afrofunk) is a Ghanaian/Nigerian music genre that involves the combination of West African musical styles from mainly Nigeria such as the traditional Yoruba and Igbo music and highlife with American funk, jazz, and soul influences.[1] With a focus on chanted vocals, complex intersecting rhythms, and percussion.[2] The style was pioneered in the 1960s by Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Fela Kuti, who is most known for popularizing the style both within and outside Nigeria. At the height of his popularity, he was referred to as one of Africa's most "challenging and charismatic music performers."[3]
Distinct from Afrobeat is Afrobeats, a combination of sounds originating in West Africa in the 21st century. This takes on diverse influences and is an eclectic combination of genres such as hip hop, house, jùjú, ndombolo, R&B, soca, and dancehall.[4][5][6][7][8][9] The two genres, though often conflated, are not the same as Afrobeat is just the amalgamation of afrobeats .[5][6]
Afrobeat evolved in Nigeria in the late 1960s by Fela Anikulapo Kuti,( born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun) who, with drummer Tony Allen, experimented with different contemporary music of that time. Afrobeat was influenced by a combination of different genres, such as highlife, fuji, and jùjú,[10] as well as Yoruba vocal traditions, rhythm, and instruments.[11] In the late 1950s, Kuti left Lagos to study abroad at the London School of Music where he took lessons in piano,[12] and percussion[13] and was exposed to jazz . Fela Kuti returned to Lagos and played a highlife-jazz hybrid, albeit, without commercial success.[2]
Upon arriving in Nigeria, Kuti had also changed the name of his group to "Africa '70". The new sound hailed from a club he established called the Afrika Shrine. The band maintained a five-year residency at the Afrika Shrine from 1970 to 1975 while Afrobeat thrived among Nigerian youth.[5] Another influential person Ray Stephen Oche [de], a Nigerian musician touring from Paris, France, with his Matumbo orchestra in the 1970s.
Prevalent in his and Lagbaja's music are native Nigerian harmonies and rhythms, taking contrasting elements and combining, modernizing, and improvising upon them. Politics is essential to Afrobeat, due to Kuti using social criticism to pave the way for change. His message can be described as confrontational and controversial, which relates to the political climate of most of the African countries in the 1970s, many of which were dealing with political injustice and military corruption while recovering from the transition from colonial governments to self-determination. As the genre spread throughout the African continent, many bands took up the style. The recordings of these bands and their songs were rarely heard or exported outside the originating countries but many can now be found on compilation albums and CDs from specialist record shops.[citation needed]
Many jazz musicians have been attracted to the aromatic genre of Afrobeat. From Roy Ayers in the 1970s to Randy Weston in the 1990s, there have been collaborations that have resulted in albums such as Africa: Centre of the World by Roy Ayers, released on the Polydore label in 1981. In 1994, Branford Marsalis, the American jazz saxophonist, included samples of Fela's "Beasts of No Nation" on his Buckshot LeFonque album.
Afrobeat has also profoundly influenced various important[according to whom?] contemporary producers and musicians, such as Brian Eno and David Byrne, who credit Fela Kuti as an essential influence.[16] Both worked on Talking Heads' highly acclaimed 1980 album Remain in Light, which brought polyrhythmic Afrobeat influences to Western music. The new generation of DJs and musicians of the 2000s who have fallen in love with both Kuti's material and other rare releases have made compilations and remixes of these recordings, thus re-introducing the genre to new generations of listeners and fans of afropop and groove.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a small Afrobeat scene began in Brooklyn, New York, with projects including Antibalas, The Daktaris and the Kokolo Afrobeat Orchestra. Since then, other artists like Zongo Junction have come onto the scene. Many others have cited Afrobeat as an influence like Daptone Records-adjacent groups The Budos Band and El Michels Affair. The horn section of Antibalas have been guest musicians on TV on the Radio's highly acclaimed 2008 album Dear Science, as well as on British band Foals' 2008 album Antidotes. Further examples are Val Veneto, Radio Bantu, Tam Tam Afrobeat, Combo Makabro, Marabunta Orquesta, Minga!, Antropofonica, Guanabana Afrobeat Orquesta, El Gran Capitan, Morbo y Mambo, Luka Afrobeat Orquesta or NikiLauda. Some Afrobeat influence can also be found in the music of Vampire Weekend and Paul Simon. In 2020, Antibalas was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Global Music Album.[17]
Afrobeat artists of the 2000s and present, continue to follow in the footsteps of Fela Kuti. Some examples of these artists are his sons Femi Kuti and Seun Kuti,[18] Franck Biyong & Massak (from Cameroon), London Afrobeat Collective (from London, UK), Segun Damisa & the Afro-beat Crusaders, Shaolin Afronauts (from Adelaide, Australia), Newen Afrobeat (from Santiago, Chile), Eddy Taylor & the Heartphones (from Cologne, Germany), Bantucrew, the Albinoid Afrobeat Orchestra / Albinoid Sound System (from Strasbourg, France), Underground System / Underground System Afrobeat (from Brooklyn, New York), Abayomy Afrobeat Orquestra, Chicago Afrobeat Orchestra, Warsaw Afrobeat Orchestra, Karl Hector & the Malcouns (from Munich, Germany), Ojibo Afrobeat (from Vilnius, Lithuania), Afrodizz and Dele Sosimi and the ex-Africa '70 members Oghene Kologbo (guitar) with Afrobeat Academy, Nicholas Addo-Nettey (percussion), who is also known as Pax Nicholas [de], with Ridimtaksi (both based in Berlin, Germany). Namibian artist EES (Eric Sell) associates Afrobeat with reggae and kwaito.
Hey all just wanted to share an afro beat playlist me and my girlfriend made. This is her first time using Spotify so it was fun curating all these songs together. Hope anyone who gives this playlist a listen will be able appreciate afrobeat's like we do.
Antibalas want to destroy capitalism. Really. They say so right in their liner notes: "Time to destroy capitalism before it destroys us." A holy imperative. And they have the beginnings of an army to back it up: fourteen people contributed musically to this record. Based out of Brooklyn, Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra is a collective of like-minded revolutionaries bent on liberating minds from the bounds of a free-market economy through the performance of mostly instrumental funk in the tradition of Fela Kuti. Failing that, they hope to create a space beyond in which they and others are not held down by "corrupt institutions like governments, armies, and banks," and can start anew, cooperatively rather than competitively. As they state in the less Mumia-esque-than-Metaphysical Graffiti-ish spoken-word intro to the album closer, "World War IV," this struggle is just that: a war. Liberation Afro Beat Vol. 1 is their first missile.
So where's the explosion? Certainly not in that ultimate track, recorded live at the Jazz Café in London. In an unexpected turn, both the live tracks on the record emphasize how much stronger Antibalas is in the studio. Thankfully, it's not the rhythm section that falters in performance situations (what would a funk band be without a rock-solid beat?), but the horns. While the brassists and reeders do manage to piece together some nice soloing when they're in the glass booth, they end up faltering mightily when playing out live, letting their lines trail off into unexciting sighs. Or, at least, that's what happened during the Jazz Café show. In any case, the live recordings are about the least explosive thing on Liberation Afro Beat Vol. 1, which is a bit like saying sparklers are the least explosive things in a box full of caps.
The truth is, for a band that makes so much noise about being political revolutionaries, they end up coming off, musically, rather boring. This is not to say that the music itself is tepid; played for a party full of open-minded friends, it would cause more than one head to bob. It's just that Liberation Afro Beat Vol. 1 should be so much more than head-bobbing music. It should grab you by the heart and the loins, lift you out of your chair, and force you to fuck with the world. Songs like "N.E.S.T.A. (Never Ever Submit to Authority)" promise, in their titles, that kind of experience; in their execution, however, they become seven-minute exercises in Fela Kuti/James Brown worship. And these two artists, at their pinnacles, could achieve this kind of affective artistry by translating a type of music that was, in itself and its time, politically incendiary, into an even more radically politicized context. All Antibalas do is take the gestures of afro-funk and graft them onto the current political climate; in doing so, they end up speaking for no one.
Hip-hop is the music of the politically oppressed now; Jay-Z has more to say than Antibalas about the dangers of complacency in a corporate-ruled world, and he does it by acting as a case study. We can't forget, of course, that rap has its roots in funk, dating back to the first Kool Herc James Brown breakbeat; however, it would be truly something for a group like Antibalas to capture some of the emotional heat generated by hip-hop and "sample" it, integrating a real magma flow into their currently dormant volcanoes. Then maybe they could live up to their liner-note goals.
Most of the stock beats are going to be very urban/hip-hop oriented. You might be able to find something of interest by browsing the included content sets. Click the Media tab in the right zone, then Loops and Samples:
Attendees will enjoy a day filled with performances by Afrobeat artists, visual art installations, engaging activities, tasty traditional African food from local vendors and a bustling marketplace featuring Black-owned businesses.
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