Difference Between Afrobeat and Afrobeats is an elaborate comparison between the two genres that rose from each other. While one was the first and mother of the other, the latter is the child that now has become more popularly accepted in the world with more than one artiste to its practice.
Difference Between Afrobeat and Afrobeats.
AFROBEATS.
Afrobeats with an ‘s’ is a modern category of the more old and original style of Music started by the great musician, Anikulapo Fela.
It, also believed to be Afro-pop or Afro-fusion, is a popular music from West Africa and the diaspora was originally initiated in Nigeria, Ghana, and London in the 2000s and 2010s.
Apart from being just a now popular style, it is the fusion of sounds flowing out of Ghana and Nigeria. And this new trend of music style comes in various forms such as hiplife, jùjú music, highlife, Naija beats, and many more which were brought together to be classified under this style.
As it is said earlier in the preceding paragraph, Afrobeats is a diverse fusion of various different genres such as British house music, hiplife, hip hop, dancehall, soca, Jùjú music, highlife, R&B, Ndombolo, Naija beats, Azonto, and Palm-wine music.
It is more of an overarching term for contemporary West African pop music. The term was created in order to package these various sounds into a more easily accessible label, which were unfamiliar to the UK listeners where the term was first coined. It is now widely accepted all over the world and particularly in the universe of music. Many crop of artistes are flooding the stage form the coasts of Africa, especially from Nigeria.
These artistes adopt the different rhythms of Afrobeats, waking up unimaginable sizes of crowd across all stadia, thereby drawing up international attention which finds them deserving international awards.
AFROBEAT.
While Afrobeats and Afrobeat are two different styles popular in modern day music world, the latter, without an ‘s’, is a genre first STARTED in the 1960s and 1970s. It took influences from Fuji music and Highlife, mixed in with American jazz and funk.
Characteristics of Afrobeat include big bands, long instrumental solos, and complex jazzy rhythms. The name was coined by Nigerian afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti.
Fela Kuti and his longtime partner, drummer Tony Allen, are credited for laying the groundwork for what would become today’s modern style.
OTHER CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE TWO GENRES.
The dissimilarities are numerous:
- While Fela Kuti used his music to discuss and criticize contemporary politics, the new crop of artistes of the new genre typically avoid such topics, thereby making it less politically charged than that of Fela.
- Fela’s genre is a clearly defined genre for its history and originality, while its modern variant is more of an overarching term for contemporary West African pop music.
- Fela’s music is most identifiable with its diapason of different instruments and its major focus on the lyrics, while the modern music depends only on the melody than the instrumentals or the lyrics.
- The new hiplife music is notably accented pure English that is often blended with local slangs, pidgin English, as well as local Nigerian or Ghanaian languages depending on the backgrounds of the performers, but Fela’s variant is simply sung using pidgin English.
