“Every genre we create doesn’t have to be ‘Afro’ something” – M.anifest
Celebrated Ghanaian rapper Kwame Ametepe Tsikata, popularly known as M.anifest, has criticised the growing tendency to attach the prefix ‘Afro’ to new African music genres and their derivatives. Speaking on the African Imaginary Podcast, the No Shortcut to Heaven hitmaker said he was appalled by the wanton knack to name African music genres and their derivatives with […]
Ghanaian rapper M.anifest has criticized the practice of adding the prefix “Afro” to every new African music genre. Speaking on the African Imaginary Podcast, the hitmaker expressed his dismay at the tendency to label African music with the term “Afro”. He questioned the lack of consideration in naming genres "Afro this, Afro that" and emphasized the need for African people to be innovative in creating new music forms without the need to precede them with “Afro”.
Kofi Ghanaba, better known as Guy Warren, was one of the first musicians to adopt the “Afro” prefix for a genre, creating Afro-Jazz. Long before Fela Kuti developed Afrobeat, Ghanaba fused jazz with Afro-Caribbean drumming. Professor John Collins notes in his Highlife Time 3 that Ghanaba and other members of his Tempos Band split from the group in 1951 to create a blend of highlife, calypso, and Latin American music, which preceded the later Afro-fusions artists in West Africa.
In the 1980s, Afro-pop emerged as an international label for African popular music. In the mid-2000s, with the advent of DJ Abrantee's term "Afrobeats," the genre became an umbrella term for West African pop music. However, some Afrobeats artists have since expressed dissatisfaction with the name, preferring alternative labels such as Afrofusion, AfroSoul, AfroRock, or AfroDancehall.
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