Frans Schellekens/Redferns via Getty Images
Nigeria’s Afrobeats stars love to identify with Fela’s activism and music - but their tributes are becoming opportunistic and empty.
Burna Boy performs in Glastonbury, England, 2022.
Joseph Okpako/WireImage via Getty Images
Afrofusion is a music style that existed even before Burna Boy was born.
Nigerian musician Fela Kuti and his band in Harlem, New York, 1989.
Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images
Nigerian popular music - Afrobeats - is storming the world’s stages. But it’s just the latest stage in a vibrant century of recorded music in the country.
Orlando Julius Live in Concert in 2015.
Photo by Kmeron/Flickr
The Afrobeat star used music to promote and preserve his Yoruba culture - while entertaining diverse global influences.
Orlando Julius (left) on stage with his wife, the dancer and singer Latoya Aduke.
Photo by Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images
The man who taught Fela Kuti a thing or two has been all but erased from formal music history. He deserves much better treatment in death.
Musician Orlando Julius with his wife, dancer Latoya Aduke Ekemode.
Photo by Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images
He played every venue that mattered, a global face of Afrobeat. Orlando Julius embodied the groove.
Nigerian pop star D'banj performing on stage in London.
Robin Little/Redferns/Getty
When pop star D'banj signed up to help get Goodluck Jonathan elected president, fans turned on him. But a hit song turned things around.
The Tempos band were known for their political songs.
JCollins-BAPMAF Archives
Ghana’s history shows a strong connection between music and politics that has evolved over six decades.
Victor Olaiya’s Papingo Davalaya album was released in 1986.
Premier Records
Highlife champion Victor Olaiya will be missed for his affable personality and resplendent performance style.
Street vendors sell their wares beneath a mural of musical great Victor Olaiya in Lagos.
Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images
Victor Abimbola Olaiya took up highlife music in the late 1950s and combined it with the trumpet to improve on its texture and aesthetic quality.