54 albums · 1958–2024

Afrobeat, from highlife and Fela Kuti to Benin, the revival and today's Afrobeats

· 2 min read · by 1001 Albums

Fela Kuti bare-chested, with beads round his neck and white paint on his face, raising both fists above his head, in a black and white photograph
Tony Allen in glasses and a light shirt playing a drum kit, a cymbal in front of him, in a black and white photographEbo Taylor in a checked hat and a red patterned shirt playing a sunburst electric guitar and singing at a microphone
Fela Kuti on stage, in a photograph his record label sent out in 1986. Photo: Celluloid Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. · Tony Allen at the Patronaat in Haarlem, March 1988. Photo: Fotoburo De Boer, Noord-Hollands Archief, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Ebo Taylor with his band at the KULT in Niederstetten, Germany, February 2013. Photo: Schorle, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Afrobeat grew out of highlife, the dance band music of Ghana and Nigeria in the fifties, led by bandleaders such as E.T. Mensah in Accra and Victor Olaiya in Lagos. Fela Kuti played trumpet in that world, and after a stay in the United States in 1969 he joined it to James Brown's funk, jazz horns and Yoruba rhythm, with the drummer Tony Allen in his band Africa 70: long pieces, a whole side of a record each, with sung words against the government. Afrobeats, with an s, is another thing: the pop of Lagos and Accra since the 2000s, with drum machines, R&B and dancehall in it, which took the old name and went round the world in the 2010s.

Fela's records run from Fela's London Scene and the live album with Ginger Baker in 1971 through Gentleman, Expensive Shit and Zombie to Beasts of No Nation in 1989, and Tony Allen's go from Progress in 1977 to Rejoice with Hugh Masekela. Around them come Manu Dibango's Soul Makossa from Cameroon, Ebo Taylor, Gyedu-Blay Ambolley, Hedzoleh Soundz, Marijata and Pat Thomas from Ghana, Monomono and the Lijadu Sisters from Nigeria, and the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou from Benin. Fela's sons Femi and Seun Kuti and his grandson Made Kuti carry it on. Antibalas in Brooklyn, Newen Afrobeat in Chile, and Ibibio Sound Machine, Kokoroko and Ezra Collective in London play it now. The Afrobeats run from P-Square and D'banj to Davido, Wizkid, Burna Boy, Mr Eazi, Tiwa Savage, Rema, Asake and Tems in Nigeria, and King Promise, Black Sherif and Amaarae in Ghana.

The list has 54 records from 1958 to 2024. It leaves out the singles, where most of highlife and much of Afrobeats was first heard, the compilations of rare seventies records from Nigeria, Ghana and Benin, most of jùjú, fuji, hiplife and amapiano, and the albums Deezer does not have, among them Osibisa's first album, Orlando Julius's Super Afro Soul, Wizkid's Superstar and the records of Lagbaja and the Budos Band. About 41 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

World 66%Soul & R&B 17%Jazz 10%Other 7%
  • World 66%
  • Soul & R&B 17%
  • Jazz 10%
  • Other 7%

The genres named most: afrobeat, afrobeats, jazz, highlife, funk, afro-funk.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 6 countries: Nigeria 33, Ghana 10, United Kingdom 4, United States 2, Cameroon 1 and 1 more. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1950s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Genres first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.