Ye Master, Burna Boy (pictured), was as surprised as you are right now when a UK journalist during an interview was trying to lay claim to the origin of Afrobeat. In a video obtained by Linda Ikeji, the musician who clinched almost all the awards at the recently concluded Soundcity MVP Awards, was seen educating the journalist, “What started off in the UK?” “The name? I don’t get anything you are saying. The UK has no input in Afrobeat. Let me make myself very clear. The UK has no influence in the creation or naming or anything that has to do with Afrobeat’ roots or beginnings. Do you understand? The UK is a place that accepted Afrobeats and you know, Afrobeats inspired a lot of the culture, that I can say, but when you try and say the UK, no’ let’s not do that.” Burna Boy schools UK journalist for saying the United Kingdom started “Afrobeat.” There has been debates over the difference between Afrobeats and Afrobeat, a genre started by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Perhaps, the journalist’s belief stems from the story that DJ Abrantee, a UK Afrobeats radio show host founded Afrobeats, a claim he clarified. HuffPost, on the difference between Afrobeat and Afrobeats in the article “Afrobeat(s): The Difference a Letter Makes” writes, “Afrobeats is both the evolution and in many ways antithesis of its prefixed forebear. Having slowly emerged over the past several years, it exists in diametrical opposition to all Kuti and his movement stood for, a mutated spawn in flat cap and British accent. As such, its existence is polarising. “Perhaps, in contextualising Afrobeats’ fractured existence and its ties to Afrobeat, there’s something to be learnt about both and their relation to the shifting landscape and position of “Africa” within global culture, a kind of Freudian attempt at psychoanalysis: “In order to understand the son, first we must understand the father.” Agencies.
