2024-02-03 17:45:13
© Reuters
By Lisa Richwine
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – When music’s biggest names gather on Sunday to accept the industry’s top honors at the Grammy Awards, they will hand out a new trophy for best African music performance.
The award reflects the growing popularity of Afrobeats and other music from the continent, which is gaining a global audience with the help of social media platforms such as short video app TikTok.
Afrobeats originated in West Africa, mainly in Ghana and Nigeria, although the term is often used as an umbrella term for various musical styles originating from Africa. It features percussion rhythms mixed with various genres, from rap to jazz, R&B and others.
Modern Afrobeats “has a feel-good rhythm,” said Heran Mamo, R&B and hip-hop reporter for Billboard magazine, which created a U.S. Afrobeats chart in 2022. “It’s likely to reach a wider audience because it already It has a little something for everyone.”
On Spotify (NYSE:), Afrobeats music was streamed 13.5 billion times in 2022, compared to 2 billion in 2017.
In another milestone, Nigerian singer Burna Boy became the first African artist to sell out a US stadium when he played New York’s Citi Field last summer.
Musicians competing for the new Grammys on Sunday include Tyla, a 22-year-old South African singer. She reached the top 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart with the danceable “Water,” an example of a genre known as amapiano, a jazz- and piano-infused sound.
A TikTok executive in South Africa noticed that Tyla was gaining attention in her local market in 2020 and reached out to her with tips on how to maximize her presence on the app.
“Water” was released in July 2023, after Tyla was signed to Sony (NYSE:) Music Entertainment’s Epic Records.
In September, TikTok users were replicating Tyla’s #WaterChallenge dance moves. To date, 1.5 million videos have been created using the song, and the hashtag #WaterChallenge has been viewed 1.8 billion times, according to TikTok.
“I think TikTok has played the role of an incubator but also a distributor for the billion-plus global users, and that’s really happened,” said Ole Obermann, TikTok’s global head of music.
Tyla’s success illustrates the power of TikTok and YouTube to help artists find fan bases around the world, a role previously reserved for record labels.
“The proliferation of streaming along with new social media platforms (e.g., TikTok) has accelerated artist discovery and provided new ways for artists to grow their fan bases around the world,” said Jessica Reif Cohen, analyst at Bank of America (NYSE:) Securities, in a research note predicting media trends for 2024.
TikTok remains controversial in the United States because it is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, which critics consider a security risk. The Biden administration has banned the app on US government devices. TikTok officials say they have strict safeguards in place and reject allegations of spying on user data.
The app is also in a dispute with Universal Music Group (AS:) over the amount paid to use songs by Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and others. Songs from many Universal artists were not available on TikTok until Friday.
For US teens, TikTok is the second most common source of music discovery behind YouTube, according to a recent survey from MIDiA Research, which showed that 45% of 16-19 year olds found new music through middle of the platform.
Other Afrobeats artists who have found an audience on TikTok include Nigerian rapper Rema. He collaborated with Selena Gomez on a remix of her song “Calm Down,” which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 last June.
TikTok is helping to create new connections between American and African artists. Obermann said he played a short clip of a song called “Ojapiano” by Nigerian musician KCee for Ryan Tedder, songwriter and lead singer of the band OneRepublic.
Tedder liked the sound so much that he immediately contacted KCee, who flew from Lagos to Los Angeles two days later so the pair could remix the song.
Obermann hopes the soon-to-be-released remix breathes new life into “Ojapiano,” a combination of amapiano and a South African flute called Oja, and continues to fuel the Afrobeats craze.
“This is going to be a big and growing genre,” Obermann said.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Mary Milliken and Jonathan Oatis)
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