Oladele Akinseye
Yes, ID Cabasa is spot on and bang and right on the money that Afrobeats is NOT a music art form influenced by American sounds.
*Afrobeats is autochthonously African in origin; or, if you please, of purely, absolute, complete and total African descent and extraction, and to pigeonhole Afrobeats accurately and better, Afrobeats is proudly Nigerian, to wit, “Nigerian-made” or “Made in Nigeria” and is the new Nigerian “crude oil”.*
The Grammys needs to promptly and with immediate alacrity redact and retract their statement about Afrobeats being influenced by American sounds mainly because many a Nigerian listens to American music nowadays. Most, if not almost all Nigerians, know next to nothing about the current crop of American music cats. The only Nigerians who listen to American music who are *EXTREMELY* few and far between do so out of nostalgia and they listen to what we call “old school” and know virtually zilch, yea, diddly-squat about the neophyte, to wit, whippersnapper American music cats who are on the scene now. I speak affirmatively and authoritatively on this wise because I am one of such Nigerians and that’s probably and *MOST DEFINITELY* because I am a musician!!! And, by the way, the major old school American musician I listen to with religious devotion and fervour is Stevie Wonder whom I have not listened to in some eons now and I also listen to Steel Pulse, who are of British-Jamaican descent!!!
Once again, the Grammys have to do the needful and not try to take the shine off Afrobeats and attempt to steal it from us and pass it off as some kind of offshoot of extant American music. That is not what Afrobeats is. *That is blatant and brazen larceny right there* and an attempt to say that nothing good can come out of Africa which implicitly means everything good has Western/Caucasian provenance. *THAT IS A LIE FROM THE PIT OF HELL!!!* Afrobeats is not only good but also excellent and was created lock, stock and barrel in Africa by Nigerians to be exact!!! So, Grammys, or better still, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in America, *EAT YOUR HEARTS OUT!!!*
*AFROBEATS NO BE YOU NOR YOUR PAPA’S MATE!!!*
