The Arrival of Afrobeats Documentaries: The Culture Needs It
Apart from publishing a book on my all-time bucket list, one of the other reasons I wrote History Made was because I wanted to read something like that which wasn’t available. As I was born in the mid-80s, growing up in the 1990s allowed me to experience the coming of age of modern Nigerian music, having been raised on the classics. As an older millennial, I’m from the generation that played records and cassettes before moving to CD players and now to streaming. We’re the generation that learnt philately in Social Studies, and before we turned twenty, snail-mail was outdated. (Philately, by the way, is the study and collecting stamps. Please don’t ask me what stamps are.) The point is: I’m from the generation that saw Shina Peters, Ras Kimono, and Blackky live, but that generation also saw modern urban music – which would later be called Afrobeats- be borne from the Shakomo Era to Wizkid being the most prominent African star in the world. I wanted to read some of the beginnings of these artistes and the moments that made them. I didn’t find it, so I Kuku wrote my first book about the most influential songs of our Afrobeats era.
It’s the same case for audio-visual content. I remember watching the notorious Up In Smoke Tour in 2000, and while it wasn’t a documentary in the true sense, its BTS-heavy footage made me thirst for content that showed – as we say on Nigerian Twitter – workings. It’s the same thing when American hip hop started investing in and producing documentaries. There are several of them: The Defiant Ones, Hip Hop Evolution, and ReMastered. Even digital media services like Complex and Noisey have produced documentary series, and the music is the better for it. It used to irk me that some of these foreign media and personalities have been at the forefront of telling the Afrobeats story. Until now.
Over the course of one week, two documentaries are focused on telling the Afrobeat’s story: Journey Of The Beats, executive produced by Obi Asika – Nigerian music mogul and culture entrepreneur, is streaming on Showmax. The other is Afrobeats: The Backstory, created by Ayo Shonaiya, music entrepreneur and culture custodian, and is streaming on Netflix. I am fortunate to know them and have worked on both documentaries. Between the two, there’s nearly a century of experience in the global Nigerian movement. Interestingly, both men have similar career trajectories: they were born in the UK to Nigerian parents, spent parts of their lives growing up in Nigeria, are trained lawyers and have worked almost exclusively in the music business in Nigeria, putting talent on and driving the Nigerian culture a place where virtually every leaf on the Afrobeats tree can trace itself to them. There is nobody better positioned than either of them to tell the journey and backstory of our music as it stands today.
Today’s world belongs to storytellers, and it’s obvious how the most prominent content companies operate. There’s a massive demand for Nigerian music and, by extension, Nigerian stories. Nearly all the global record companies have some footprint here. From SONY to Universal to Island to Empire, it appears that the execs at these companies recognize that African music is of extreme importance to the continued existence of the music ecosystem and are trying their damndest to key in. music has benefited immensely from attention and resources the majors have provided to artistes. Nollywood is getting there too. From Netflix to Amazon Prime to Showmax, there have been commissions and acquisitions of movie projects, and actors are getting almost the same level of superstardom our artistes have reached. It is now the turn of storytellers who provide history and context to this thing of hours that has now held the world spellbound. I love to see it!
Jide Taiwo is a writer and media executive. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria and tweets via @thejidetaiwo.
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