By Yusuf Bangura
In his new hit single Ojapiano, which is taking TikTok and the African music scene by storm, Kcee combines amapiano (currently South Africa’s most popular music genre) and the sound of the traditional Igbo flute Oja.
Amapiano uses log drums that produce a deep but less heavy bass, piano melodies, a touch of jazz and South African rhythms.
A variant of the South African log drum also exists in West Africa. The Kailain, a traditional log drum of the Limba, is widely used in Sierra Leone. The sound of the log drum varies according to the size of the log, the with and length of the top slit, and where and how the log is struck.
Adding value to Afrobeats?
The Igbos’ Oja is made from bamboo or wood, and has a unique high pitched, melodic sound. When used in traditional ceremonies, it is combined with other instruments, such as bells, rattles and gongs.
It is easy to see why Nigerian musicians are increasingly incorporating the amapiano sound in their music.
The deep bass of the log drum in amapiano shares a lot in common with the sound of the famous West African or Yoruba Dundun talking drum, which was historically used to send messages to distant places and, especially among the Yoruba, adorn music genres like Juju and Fuji.
The Nigerian musician Asake, whose music is highly popular among young people, combines amapiano sounds and the traditional Yoruba Fuji call and response style to create a melodic and irresistible sound. My son doesn’t understand Yoruba but is a big fan and rates his music highly.
I listened to Kcee’s interview on a Nigerian YouTube channel a few days ago in which he and his interviewers celebrated the Ojapiano sound as potentially the new game in town.
Kcee announced that he already has multiple recordings of the sound, which he will release as an album. He boasted that Ojapiano will chart a new trajectory in Nigerian and African music.
Kcee is not a rookie in the Nigerian—indeed African— music industry. He rose to fame in the early 2010s with two smashing hits: Limpopo and Pull Over.
I had relocated to Sierra Leone in 2013 when those two records hit the airwaves, nightclubs and dancehalls of Freetown.
Every evening, for almost a year, I enjoyed the sweet melodies of those records at the balcony of our house, thanks to the wind conditions of the Lumley valley that allowed the sounds to travel over a long distance from a popular nightclub in the neighbourhood.
Flashback to Africa’s recent Grammy show
Kcee disappeared from the music scene (or at least failed to sustain his early success) after those two blockbusters. His Sweet Mary J single in 2020, which is a fusion of reggae and afrobeats, was underwhelming.
It is clear, however, that he has a huge talent. His ambition to turn Ojapiano into a music genre, or at least a sub-genre, should be taken seriously. He has his work cut out.
The current top dogs of afrobeats—Burna Boy, Wizkid, Davido, Tiwa Savage, Kiz Daniel, Ayra Starr, Asake, Yemi Alade, Rema and Ruger—will face a serious challenge if Kcee runs with this new sound.
Unlike reggae, rock, R&B, country, jazz and blues, Afrobeats cannot be reduced to a single music sound.
An incredibly wide variety of sounds have been fused to create afrobeats—borrowing from the melodic style of R&B, jazz, Jamaican dancehall, fuji, highlife and other traditional beats.
Anyone familiar with the music of Burna Boy, Wizkid, Davido and Asake will agree that their sounds are very different even though they are all lumped to together as afrobeats.
Burna Boy even prefers to describe his sound as Afro Fusion. And some of the music of Wizkid and Tems can pass as R&B. Tems’ Free Mind has enjoyed the Number 1 spot for 17 weeks on the US Billboard’s R&B/Hip Hop Airplay chart. And Essence, performed by both Wizkid and Tems, reached the top 10 spot on the R&B/Hip Hop chart in 2021.
The complexity of afrobeats reminds me of the joke about the difficulty of defining an elephant. When faced with this challenge, someone retorted that he didn’t know how to define it but could identify it if he saw one. It’s the same for afrobeats. I can identify an afrobeats song if I listen to it but will struggle to define it.
Creating a new music genre or sub-genre depends, however, on whether other artists can link up and aid the genre’s development.
Asake, for instance, now has a competitor in Seyi Vibes in pushing his Fuji-influenced call and response afrobeats sound. If more artists join them, their sound can become a sub-genre of afrobeats —or even an entirely separate genre if it generates a large output and following.
Will the new Ojapiano inspire other artists to push the frontiers of this great sound? Only time will tell.
But one thing seems clear: traditional African music provides a rich reservoir of sounds that contemporary musicians can mine to further enrich the African music landscape.
The author wrote from 12 Nyon, Switzerland
