Almost two years ago now, Burna Boy, the Grammy Award Winning Artiste was on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. On that show, Burna talked about his style of music, he called it – “Afrofusion”.
Trying to explain the concept, Burna said, “It is like a Pizza. Afro Music is like the dough and the cheese at the base, and then you have all these other kinds of music on it standing as the pepperoni and the onions and the sausage and all of that”. Burna also said that all Music started from Africa and so it’s all Afro anyway.
(I should confuse you by saying that, the first “Afro” above refers to the style/genre created by the G.O.A.T – Fela. While the last one refers to all African Music. And they can easily be exchanged for each other in Burna’s music and hence, in this article as well).
As original as all of that sounds, when Burna was 4 years old and probably crying for his mommy somewhere in the U.K, an absolute genius – Lagbaja, dropped the masterpiece – “Africalypso”. The song – Africalypso, only 7mins long, encapsulates all of Burna’s ideologies.
Here’s some of the lyrics:
“Some four hundred years ago, they carried my forefathers from Africa to America.
They took along the music and some became jazz, some became raggae, and some became Calypso.
…wherever the music is hit, behind it you’ll find the African”.
Besides the lyrics, the music contains a perfect mixture of Salsa and Highlife with just a sprinkle of Latin Traditional Jazz. And it’s not just Africalypso; most of Lagbaja’s music does this. When you think of “Far Away,” you are amazed by the perfect mixture of Blues, a dice of the Classicals and beautiful Bàtá.
When you think about “koko Below,” “This is Lagos,” “Baby ta ni ko fe wa,” what you hear is a sweet combination of Disco music and Highlife. “Bad leadership” and “Did I” are a nice blend of Funk and Afro. “Bass Man” is Hiphop and Salsa and Highlife all at once. And when you hear “Emi Mimo”, that’s just Jazz bathed in slow Highlife.
Although one of these artistes is like a big brother to some of my favorite people; I will not be picking sides in this article. However, this is no news, I don’t work with Punch. Hence, one (not me) could easily argue that Burna Boy’s style is more “Alternative Beats” than Afrofusion.
From “Ye,” to “23,” to “Wonderful,” to “Gi dem”. From “Killing Dem,” to “Anybody,” to “Alarm Clock,” (really love that one BTW) one can hardly say that they hear more than one style/genre in these songs.
I don’t know, maybe it’s the over-reliance on digital music in this generation that makes it less glaring for Burna, or maybe I just don’t know what I’m talking (in which case you may have wasted 3mins of your time), no one really knows.
However, what we do know is, Afro music is the greatest and these two artistes though generations apart, have in their own way, pushed the limits with Afrofusion.
