When Tems released her debut album, Born in the Wild, in May, it felt as if it had been a long time coming – and not just because, two years earlier, the now 29-year-old singer-songwriter had been the first African artist to debut at number one on the United States’ Billboard singles chart.
It was also because the Nigerian star had by then already worked with some of the biggest names in music, including Beyoncé, on her album Renaissance, with Drake, on Future’s 2022 album I Never Liked You – for which she won a Grammy – and with Rihanna on the Oscar-, Grammy- and Golden Globe-nominated Lift Me Up, which they recorded for the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Tems, aka Temilade Openiyi, is one of many African artists who, in crossing into the mainstream here, have been cementing African music’s stand-alone identity in the Global North, where it had long been bundled under the contentious label of “world music”.
Its profile has been rising since the early 2000s; the past year has seen African music gain even more ground. Last month Tems’s fellow Nigerian Wizkid played to 60,000 people at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, in London, and in February the inaugural Grammy for best African music performance went to the South African singer Tyla, for her hit Water.
African and western stars have increasingly been appearing on each other’s records, too, including on huge hits such as Calm Down by Rema and Selena Gomez, which last year became the first track led by an African artist to hit a billion streams on Spotify. It has now reached almost 1.5 billion streams, plus almost a billion views on YouTube.
Multiple factors are contributing to the rising profile of music from Africa. A baby boom means the continent has the youngest, fastest-growing population on the planet. In the next 25 years its total population is expected to almost double, to 2.5 billion people, by when Africans will account for a quarter of the people on Earth.
It is being called a youthquake that will reshape the continent’s relationship with the rest of the world. As the New York Times puts it, you can already sense this seismic change in the entrepreneurial drive of young Africans, in the scramble for jobs and in the music the world listens to.
With more than 200 million people, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation. More than two-thirds of its citizens are under the age of 30, about half under 20. Millions of young people registered to vote in last year’s presidential election, many galvanised by the need to help navigate the country out of its economic crisis.
“Nigerian music, in particular, deals in escapism,” says the Irish artist Plantain Papi, who was born in Nigeria. “Nigerians are currently dealing with hyperinflation, joblessness, rigged elections ... As a result, the music is full of humour and joy to distract. It’s music to take your mind off everything else.”
Stars such as Rems and Rema are good at connecting with, and talking to, those young people – who, because they make up such a huge proportion of the country, are probably even more significant than young people in the Global North at providing the momentum that artists need to become international stars.
Internationally, that growth has been helped by TikTok, which encourages artists to use jazzy hooks, biting lyrics and easy-to-replicate dance moves. “If someone uploads a few good videos, it shows they know what they’re doing,” says Plantain Papi. “I feel like the music would still spread, but this kind of accelerates it. Like, if someone in South Africa drops something that relates to someone in the middle of Galway, that’s going to get them listening. And that is becoming more and more common.”
“African music is all about collaboration,” says the Zimbabwean-Irish rapper God Knows, aka Munyaradzi Jonas. “Growing up there, you’re not just privy to music from your country but the whole continent. There’s no separation: we listen to it all. Like, it would be very weird for someone in Ireland to say they’d never heard of any artists from the UK. As neighbours, it’s the same for us.”
[ God Knows Jonas: ‘I’m 100% Irish but I’m also 100% Zimbabwean’Opens in new window ]
A lot of that collaboration happens at December homecomings, the end-of-year festivities also known as Detty December. “It usually happens in Ghana and Nigeria,” says Sampa Tembo, the Zambian artist better known as Sampa the Great, who is headlining the 10th Another Love Story festival, in Co Meath, next weekend. “We get to engage with cultures, dance until 6am and eat.”
“It’s kind of like Fashion Week, except we come together to collaborate and get creative,” says Plantain Papi. “Nigerians in general are very loud people,” he adds, laughing. “We make a lot of noise, as does our music. But there are a lot of silent partners in African music that are really making things work. Like amapiano” – a hybrid of deep house, gqom, jazz, soul and lounge music – “in South Africa, which borrows sounds from house music. Or in the Congo you have sebene”, an instrumental section commonly played in Congolese rumba music. “They are all doing things. Some are just louder than others.”
There are “dozens, if not hundreds” of other reasons for the growing identity of African music, says God Knows. “There are so many moments over the past few years where artists from these nations have done something that has hit the zeitgeist,” he says. “But outside of that, the grassroots reason is down to the diaspora.
“African diaspora worldwide were filling out arenas for these artists before they hit stadium tours. Like, if I’m in the US and I hear Davido is coming, I’m going to book a plane to see him, because I know he might not come around again. And that’s not just me, that’s all of us. These artists have been huge for years – but it’s only now that people outside of the continent are really listening.”
Much as with hip-hop in the 1970s and K-pop in the 2010s, music from African countries is now benefiting from the circular nature of a more global audience. Popular playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, such as African Heat and Africa Now, have helped to spark international interest – which in turn is helping a range of African genres, such as Kenyan gengetone, Ghanaian drill and Ethio-jazz, to grow. That success brings the resources to make the music even better, so attracting ever more fans. “All genres have their incubation period,” says Plantain Papi. “Then mass adoption happens.”
As with most overnight sensations, the roots of this trend were planted some time ago. Fela Kuti, the late Nigerian musician regarded as the principal innovator of Afrobeat, is a big part of it, according to Plantain Papi. “He was huge – I only recently found out he played Glastonbury. He mixed 1940s and 1950s jazz with traditional African music, and that was kind of the start of what we have now.”
“Akon also played a huge role,” says God Knows. The Senegalese-American singer and producer “was one of the first big artists to embrace Africa in the way that African people do. Then he worked with names like Lady Gaga, and went on to champion African artists in a way they had never been before.”
The growing identity of African music outside its home continent is reflected in the way that it has been recognised around the world. The US has had the Billboard Afrobeats chart since 2022. The UK has had an official Afrobeats chart since 2020 – and saw the first Afrobeat single enter the wider British top 10 more than a decade ago, in 2012, when the singer and rapper D’Banj released Oliver Twist. That hit could be taken as an early sign of the success that has ultimately seen fellow Nigerian stars such as Wizkid, Davido and Burna Boy embark on stadium tours.
Some of the awards Burna Boy has been nominated for also help to chart the developing identity of African music internationally. This year he won Billboard’s first award for top Afrobeats artist. (He dedicated his prize to “Africa and every artist coming out of Africa”.) And, like Tyla, he was a nominee for this year’s first Grammy for best African music performance. He was also up for the Grammys for best global-music album and best global-music performance, as he had been several times before – including when they were known as the awards for best world music.
Fellow artists are glad to see the industry begin to move away from the idea of world music. “What a topic,” says Sampa the Great. “To place the African continent into one thing called ‘world’ completely overlooks any significance genres of African music have. A lot of the music we know and listen to today actually came from Africa. Now we finally get to categorise ourselves on a world stage, like we’ve been doing at home for some time.”
African musicians, she says, finally have control over their narrative. “This is the first time we’ve been in leadership roles ... For the Grammys to focus on our home, that’s never happened before. So we are actually able to dictate how we want to be seen. It’s a very special time where we get to create the blueprint for what we want African music to be known as globally.”
How does the genre’s rise make her feel as a proud Zambian artist? “Like I don’t have to change my story for people to understand. You know, for the first time, we’re not asked to change our songs and add more English. I can just sing in my language, and that’s not controversial. This is the first time we actually get to just be ourselves and just see different audiences singing our languages. It’s beautiful, shocking and freeing all at once.”
Another Love Story is at Killyon Manor, Co Meath, Friday-Sunday, August 23rd-25th. Sampa the Great is appearing as part of an Irish Aid partnership project between Irish and Zambian organisations to establish a centre for the creative arts at Evelyn Hone College in Lusaka
