Yeni Kuti: Call it Nigerian Afropop not Afrobeats

Asked what the opinion on calling the music of pop artists like Wizkid, Tekno and Davido Afrobeat, Yeni Kuti, the first child of Fela, said she did not support the name.

“I call it Nigerian pop,” she said. “It is their own. The work that goes into Afrobeat is very different from what goes into hip hop. I love the music but I call it Nigerian Afropop. In fact, Fela has given me a few knocks because of this matter, so I’m still suffering.”

In going against the name given to the genre, which is said to have originated in London and popularised by DJ Abrantee, the London-based Ghanaian DJ, Kuti echoed a sentiment among some Nigerian listeners. Some have said the naming from outside of the country recalls the name Nollywood, which was given by a New York Times reporter years after the initial boom of making commercial films.

“I don’t feel strongly about it,” pop music critic Wilfred Okiche said. “Oyinbo people dropped it on our head and we didn’t interrogate it. But it has to be called something, and because we were not fast enough other people have done it for us."

“There is nothing like Afrobeats,” said music industry commentator Osagie Alonge in a video posted online months ago. “How do you pluralise a genre and call it another genre? Would you say hip hops or jazzes and name it as another genre?”

The blame, Alonge adds, is two-fold. “Nigerians not being able to control their narrative. And foreign media, not understanding Nigerian music, deciding to roll with what was popular at the time, which was Afrobeats trending in the UK.”

At the Felabration 2017 press conference, Sam Onyemelukwe of Trace, a television station that proclaims “We love Afrobeats”, said: “A new population of the world are calling our new strain of pop music coming out of Nigerian Afrobeats. We have chosen to interpret that in a positive way while acknowledging very clearly and repeatedly the difference between Afrobeat and Afrobeats. Femi has given us his blessings.”

At the mention of the name of her brother Femi Kuti, Yeni Kuti looked incredulous. “I will call him this night,” she said.