MUSIC
The Sound of Now: Inside Africa's Most Exciting Music Moment
From Afrobeats to amapiano to experimental electronics, African music is having a global moment — but the real story is what's happening at home.
By Kofi Asante7 min read
The numbers are staggering. African music streams have grown by 400% in the last five years. Afrobeats artists are headlining festivals in Europe and North America. Amapiano has become a global phenomenon. And yet the most interesting music being made on the continent right now is not the music that is crossing borders — it is the music that is staying home.
In Johannesburg, a new generation of producers is making music that is too strange for mainstream radio but too good to ignore. In Accra, experimental musicians are building instruments from found objects and recording in spaces that were never designed for music. In Nairobi, a collective of women producers is creating a sound that has no precedent anywhere.
What unites these scenes is a refusal to optimize for export. The music is not trying to cross over. It is trying to go deeper — into local traditions, local languages, local experiences that have never been the subject of a song before.
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