Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 2, 2022

Today, the page boasts a similar format. Theres an amapiano playlist and Kenyas Gengetone right at the top, but there are also more esoteric additions: one named Gone Abroad, another titled Internet Famous. The former includes Nigerian TikTok favourite CKay and, puzzlingly, DJ Snake; the latter has the simple description, iykyk (or, if you know, you know).

By late 2021, Spotify had successfully launched in 40 more African countries, leaving the Swedish company fewer than 10 countries away from total penetration of the continent. Listening to its Radar Africa playlist, highlighting the most exciting new artists on the rise from the African continent & diaspora, its striking how similar it all sounds.

Outside of Nigerian and South African languages, its dominated by English, and the range of genres is limited. Rather than showcasing the diversity of the continent, it seems more interested in showing how different parts of the continent can sound the same, or at least evoke the same mood.

The underside of greater access and visibility is that when it collides with a profit-driven economy, a community becomes a market. Listening becomes engagement, a metric understood through views, followers and comments. Our connection to our musical culture gets mediated through a corporation thats gunning for more paid subscriptions rather than through people we know.

Its a new form of exploitation, Boima tells us. The old way is usually when some white, middle-class male, whos trusted by hipsters with disposable income in the Global North, positions themselves as an authority and says, Boom, this is cool, and it blows up. But now, people are uploading the music themselves. The intermediary is cut out of the picture. The forms of exploitation have transformed over the years, but theyre still fundamentally about empire, white supremacy and capitalism.

Even within the framework of making money, distribution is far from equitable. The cost of data on the continent remains prohibitively high. In 2019, in the Americas 1GB of data accounted for 2.7% of a persons income on average. Across Africa, that number jumped up to 8%. What were calling visibility on the global stage is limited to those privileged enough to afford enough data on a regular basis to upload their music, shoot videos and travel abroad.

For African artists in the diaspora, these challenges dont have to be diminishing. They can be opportunities to build bridges. Nazar acknowledges his privilege, but feels hopeful that it can have a positive effect on the music as a whole. Having a European passport has had a profound impact on my career, he says. I can be around for shows, while many of my peers in Africa are stuck with visa issues and all these obstacles. Its not always because they dont have the means.

They also havent spent enough time in Europe to know the labels and how the industry works, he continues. Because I grew up idolising artists who always had these shows around the world, and became big without compromising their art, I want to try to do the same with kuduro. We cant all be in the same category, but we are all African artists.

If anything is clear about this moment, its that however much changes, the spirit of the community lives on for Africans in the diaspora, searching for a piece of home.

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Nations of nostalgia: African music, across the diaspora - DJ Mag

Category: Diaspora
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