I’m Afrofusion Singer, not Afrobeat – Burna Boy
Grammy-winning music star, Burna Boy, has identified his style of music as Afrofusion and not Afrobeats as presumed by many.
Burna Boy spoke about his genre of music during the latest episode of, “The Million Dollaz Worth of Game” podcast with King Gillie and Wallace Peeples aka Wallo267.
He explained that African music though, comprises several genres are usually all classified as Afrobeats.
He faulted the school of thought that came up with that proposition, noting it was a “disservice.
The 31-year-old singer further argued, “Afrobeat is a legend called Fela Kuti but some persons decided to add the letter ‘s’ to the now globally celebrated music genre and began classifying every African music as Afrobeats.
“For me, it’s like the same way you’re going to say Nas is an R&B singer because he’s from America or Whitney Houston was a rapper because rap is the most popping thing now.
“I can’t accept that because I’m not a rapper. So now in Africa when you talk about music, the first thing they say is Afrobeats. Afrobeat is a legend called Fela Kuti.
“Years went by and Nigerian musicians started dropping music that was becoming something. So they needed to call it something to be able to identify with it.
“Somehow they just said Afrobeats and added an ‘s’. I don’t know how I don’t know what sense that made but that’s what happened. Somewhere along the line, all the music that comes from Africa just writes Afrobeats.
“We have Highlife, Juju music, Fuji music, South African Kwaeto music, Amapiano, Afropop, we have all types of genres in Africa. To be really sincere, for you to just call everything Afrobeats is kind of a disservice to the artists.
“For me, when I started the Afrofusion thing, it was like my music was not the same with anything that was out.
“It was like everybody else kind of sounded the same. It was one kind of move and for me, there was nothing I could identify myself with.
So, I just decided that I’ll call it Afrofusion because it’s a fusion of everything. The Afro-Africaness is the thing that covers it.”
Culled from the nationonline
