Africans often complain, rightly, that the size of their continent is greatly underestimated by most of the rest of the world. You wouldn’t know this from the Mercator projection that most of us think of as the map of the world, but Africa is larger than the combined landmass of China, the US, India, Eastern Europe, most of Western Europe and a few other countries.
The international perception of the continent’s popular music is likewise distorted: To much of the global audience, it’s all about Afrobeats. The genre is partly influenced by Afrobeat (the missing “s” is significant), which was created in the 1970s from the synthesis of funk, jazz, blues and traditional Nigerian music by the great Fela Kuti. In recent years, Spotify has introduced Afrobeats to new legions of fans all over the world by showcasing artists like Burna Boy and Davido.
