Afro Beats is going places far beyond where it originated.
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| Burner Boy. Source: Burner Boy Instagram Page |
The current Afro Beats (not to be confused with Afro Beat) started in Ghana, but, like a UK based Ghanaian DJ puts it, “the Nigerians pick it up and polished it, and they are gone.” Afro Beats is over ninety per cent Nigerian. A lot of Africans want to join what has become a band wagon. So, there is a dogged search of the formula to achieve this dream. In proffering solutions, sadly, we see a lot of lies from folks that are bent on feeding fat on the ignorance of wannabe musicians.
There will always be abuses of anything that is designed with a good intent to help people. Some assume, without researches, that what they think of something is what it is. Others are aware that they are ignorant of a topic, but care less and knowingly go on to dish out lies. YouTube is one platform that has been abused. There, there is this huge lie that why the Nigerians are successful in contemporary African pop is because many of them speak a lot of languages from across Africa. What that means is that Davido will probably speak Swahili, Zulu, Wolof, Hausa... in addition to the Yoruba and English that he speaks.
It is not true that if your music must succeed you must speak multiple foreign languages. “Theories” like these work against what they are intended to solve –helping intending artists. Artists would only get more confused, since there are multiple of these sorts of lies that are told. It is the reason why I am posting this to let people understand, precisely what is required to become successful in music.
Here are they:
Talent.
An “artist” must have the talent. The singer must have the vocal ability, if he wants to sing.You must know how to write professional lyrics.
If you are not sure how to achieve this, listen to successful musicians to study the structure and content of their songs. These days, with the internet, there are always lyrics of popular songs posted online. You can download and study it. And the word “study” shouldn’t scare you. Studying could just be ten minutes of you reading to see what the artist has said in the song and how it is related to his life.You must be original in your singing style.
This is important. Originality is the quality of uniqueness that is natural to you. Check out the vocal character of every successful artist. You will see that he is unique.You should be able to sing with an urban feel.
Growing up in a major city should give you an urban personality. But it is always good to start somewhere and grow.Find a good producer.
There is the need to find a good producer. How do you know if someone is a good producer? You know a good producer from the consistency of his good works.Your song must have a hook.
In this context, a hook is that mood that gets your head spinning or which “makes your head scatter” as the saying goes in Nigeria. When people keep coming back to your song, you surely find relevance.Understand when your song is good.
Not all good songs get heard. It does come from poor publicity or ill luck, sometimes. There could be other factors. If you know your song is good, despite its inability to get heard, you understand that the problem isn’t you.It is dangerous for an artist to be unable to understand that not all good songs or albums rise above the horizon. The danger is that the artist begins to try other needless and counterproductive approaches.
The Wailers songs weren’t known, for instance. It was after they broke off and found individual successes that people started looking into their past works to discover how good they were. What if they didn’t know that they were good?
Yiro Abari High is the author of How to Become a Music Maestro:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1523494999?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
