Could somebody tell me who is framing contemporary African music as “Afrofusion?” Because I’m not convinced it’s a valid genre 1/

It seems to me that because we all cling to the preconceptions we have about what African music sounds like, we think there’s something about a term like “Afrofusion” that gives us information about a certain sound. But if you look closely, the term is meaningless 2/

Fused with what? Would we ever say “Amer-fusion”? 3/

I’m asking for more specificity when talking about African music. Burna’s music could be described as dancehall-inflected afrobeats. Why is it so hard to state that? Why can’t we be more specific about the sounds African musicians are creating, performing & experimenting with? 4/

Because they’re African, we feel the need to ghettoize their music by qualifying it as Afro- (this is different when it comes to afrobeats, which descends from the Fela-coined Afrobeat — this was a case of an African musician purposefully framing his music in a particular way) 5/

We can’t accept that Africans are making plain old pop music. That they are in conversation with other global black musics. That Africa has a place in the global, the contemporary 6/

Would love to know and understand more 7/