The future of African music

The future of African music is bright, says a CNN report posted on May 5 entitled ‘From Afrobeat to Akon: Why African music finally has the world’s ear’ by Phoebe Parke. An interesting piece, but that is something the continent has known for a long time now, what with names like 2face, D’banj, Wizkid, Tiwa Savage, Don Jazzy and their counterparts on the continent commanding six figure performance fees and mega online music sales.
In any case, citing a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the writer said income from consumer spending on recorded music in Nigeria and Kenya was predicted to reach $43 million and $19 million in that order by the end of last year.
Quoting artistes like Lira from South Africa, Nigeria’s May7ven and a host of others, the writer makes the case that indeed that the future would get even brighter if only the industry gets better organised on the continent.
Lira, for instance, said: “My hope is that an African pop star will win a Grammy, and occupy the number one position on a Billboard chart. At the moment, we work as best as we can with the platforms that are available to us, at some point the power and influence of African music will be unavoidable.”
Nigerian artiste, Mr. Eazi, who said this is an amazing time for African music, predicted that “Artistes will start getting proper publishing (deals) once the African music scene gets half as organised as that of the United Kingdom, once there’s distribution, once there’s marketing.”
For May7ven, language is a huge advantage for African music.
“When you compare the growth potential of African countries to China and India, the major difference is that English is not the main language in those territories. So despite their numbers, they may alienate the rest of the world, that’s the reason African music and film industry will be the world’s largest,” she said.
Makes you wonder why the industry has been so slow in actualising all of the above. Stakeholders have often pointed to the lack of unity among artistes in Africa, but it would seem that all that is changing with collaborations taking place between artistes on the continent and the internet shrinking distances artistes used to have to make across the continent.
But as the report points out, African music is on the up, as evidenced by the diverse range of exciting and internationally popular artistes that come from and are inspired by the continent. And before long, that Grammy for an African pop star of Lira’s dream will come to the continent.