Globalization and West African music: Adoption, adaptation, and agency
The relationship between globalization and West African music reveals intricate processes of cultural borrowing and transformation. Musicians and audiences across the region have actively shaped these exchanges, embracing outside influences while retaining local traditions. During the later twentieth century, advances in technology accelerated the movement of people and ideas, speeding up changes in West African popular music. Scholars often draw sharp boundaries between traditional and popular music, but the evidence presented here shows that such distinctions miss the mark. The forces driving musical development in West Africa connect past and present, blend African and non-African styles, and highlight artists who navigate multiple cultural worlds in an era of global connectedness.
Defining globalization in an African context
Any discussion of globalization in Africa typically begins with the expansion of capital and the economic dominance of Western powers after the Second World War. Yet economic, political, social, and cultural ideas have circulated across borders since the earliest human civilizations. Scholars increasingly recognize that the definition of globalization must extend beyond its original economic and chronological focus. Stanley Fischer, then First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, made this clear at the 2001 France–Africa Summit:
First, globalization is multi-faceted, with many important dimensions — economic and social, political and environmental, cultural and religious — which affect everyone in some way. … Second, globalization is not new. Economic globalization is as old as history, a reflection of the human drive to seek new horizons.
Globalization, therefore, demands that researchers work across disciplinary boundaries and discard narrow historical periods. A holistic, multidimensional framework is necessary — one that examines how economic, political, and socio-cultural forces interact and how global and local systems influence each other.
Even when scholars accept a broader scope for globalization, they continue to debate its cultural impact. Much of this debate pivots on questions of hegemony, homogenization, and agency. Cultural globalization is often equated with modernization, assimilation, and the spread of American culture at the cost of traditional diversity. Critics see it as a hegemonic force exercised by Western powers over vulnerable societies, destroying authentic local traditions and replacing them with Western forms. In a 2005 lecture, Ali Mazrui argued that the forces of cultural globalization had substantially penetrated and assimilated much of Africa. Few believe that even the most extreme versions of cultural globalization will produce a single, homogenized world culture. Nevertheless, the phenomenon is often portrayed as a menacing force intent on erasing whatever it touches.
To argue this point, however, denies the creativity and agency of people everywhere to choose what they accept or reject from foreign cultures. The power of globalization must be respected — even acknowledged — but individuals and groups who exercise choice when confronted with external influences deserve equal respect. Fischer observed that humanity is indeed moving toward becoming one world, but fortunately will never get there, since people and societies also want to retain their particularity. He refused to pass value judgments on globalization, noting that there is no point in asking whether one should be for or against it: globalization is here to stay.
The processes of globalization are unlikely to slow anytime soon, but their basic characteristics have existed for millennia. Adopting and adapting outside cultural influences is an active process — integrating and synthesizing local and global sources. In the second half of the twentieth century, expanding media, transportation, and telecommunications accelerated the flow of culture and people across borders. West African musicians and their audiences became active agents in producing and consuming music; they acted as cultural brokers, negotiating rhythms and performances to find meaning in an increasingly complex cultural world. Alan Scott captured this well: no matter how determined the attempt to transmit homogenous cultural material, actors are too savvy and culture too complex for any exchange — however unequal — to flow in only one direction. Music provides abundant evidence of these creative, multidirectional processes.
Traditional, popular, or something in between?
Just as globalization prompts multiple interpretations, West African music also sparks divergent opinions. One simple definition might be music produced and performed in West Africa. Scholars, at a minimum, distinguish between traditional and popular music — a binary that draws a rigid line from a traditional past to a popular, modern present. Some traditional genres have existed for hundreds or even thousands of years, but they are not re-created exactly as they were throughout their entire history. Traditional music cannot be defined solely by its longevity; one must analyze its performance context, instruments, and functions within specific societies. In short, it must be defined by the processes behind its production and consumption. Too often, studies focus on dissecting the end product — the music itself — in an attempt to link a fictional past to an essentialized present. The processes behind popular music formation do not follow a straight line that evolves from rural areas or traditional genres into modern urban spaces. Traditional music changes constantly; it adapts to societal needs from generation to generation and from one environment to the next. It can be influenced by new popular styles, and it can also shape them, Africanizing foreign cultural products in distinctive ways. Ethnomusicologist John Collins argued that claiming anything in Africa that sounds cultural must be ancient and anonymous oversimplifies reality and separates actual individual creators from their work.
West African societies have vast traditions of ethnic music that form an essential part of their social systems — music often called cultural music today. These genres help organize economic and social life, record history, and entertain audiences. The connection between globalization and West African music can be traced back at least to contacts through local and regional trade during the first millennium. Extensive local trading networks and intermarriage helped spread musical forms and structures across societies. In Ghana, for instance, genres of music combine various influences and share the same name across different regions. The asafo music of warrior organizations appeared among the Akan, Ga, Adangme, and Ewe; among the Dagomba, a music and dance type called kanbonwaa blended Akan and local styles. By the end of the first millennium, trans-Saharan trade accelerated not only economic growth but also the transfer of cultural traits between societies. People selectively adopted aspects of these exchanges and adapted them to their own social or environmental needs. New instruments — drums, lutes, reeds, and trumpets — entered the mix without always replacing existing ones. Islam came with the trade, and its instruments and styles were integrated into local cultures because some aspects reinforced existing musical structures. Among the Yoruba, for example, Islamic participants used orthodox Arabic music during worship but drew on indigenous forms during social activities and even some Muslim festivals.
Cultural music sometimes provided a springboard for popular music, and at other times gave way to neo-traditional forms that blurred the boundary between traditional and popular. These forms reflect a circular and continuous cultural path into and out of Africa. Many Ghanaians believe today that kpanlogo has existed for centuries, but what appears to be traditional may not always be what it seems. In the late 1950s, Accra youth created this music, which became popular along the entire coastal region. Kpanlogo incorporated traditional Ga drumming from Accra and blended it with popular music from other parts of Africa and abroad. Its development blurs the line between African traditional and Western modern by depicting a circular process of popular culture formation. On a global scale, African music arrived in the New World, where it transformed into genres like blues and rock and roll. In the 1950s, that rock and roll returned to West Africa, where youth adapted it into new music and dance. Kpanlogo symbolizes the ongoing transformation of a cultural form, tracing its path out of and back into Africa. One should be cautious, therefore, about applying a sharp distinction between modern and traditional music. For youth in the late 1950s, kpanlogo represented modernity; half a century later, it is considered part of the traditional repertoire.
Popular music as synthesis
What does popular mean in popular music, and how does it differ from traditional music? Popular music is first and foremost a synthesis — a blend of local and global influences that produces genres reflecting the environment from which they emerge. At the start of the twenty-first century, the vast array of West African music styles features cosmopolitan characteristics that link past and present, creating modern and dynamic forms.
Global cultural influence on West African music became more pronounced in the cosmopolitan cities of the twentieth century than in earlier eras. Advances in technology, the spread of global media, and an increased flow of people and ideas into, around, and out of the region began in the late 1800s but accelerated during and after the Second World War. This pace has continued to the present day. Cosmopolitan cities acted as cultural hubs for exchanging technological and media forms, attracted immigrants to experience urban life, and provided the environment to nurture new popular music into maturity. These new styles did not replace older ones but blended with them to produce hybrid forms. Drawing on a wide range of local and global influences, urban residents acted as cultural brokers, adopting traits into their own cultural repertoire and adapting them into new ideas and traditions.
Highlife: A case study in adoption and adaptation
The history of highlife — one of the earliest and most widespread popular music genres in West Africa — reveals the complex processes of adoption and adaptation common to the region. During the nineteenth century, European traders and missionaries along the Gold Coast introduced brass instruments, guitars, harmonicas, and accordions. These merged with other foreign styles, including those of the Kru people from Liberia, known both as accomplished sailors and innovative guitarists. All along the West African coast, new styles emerged in the early twentieth century, including Sierra Leonean ashiko music, which later became popular in the Gold Coast and Nigeria. In the Gold Coast, ashiko merged with local forms to create highlife by 1920. Highlife spread quickly throughout southern Ghana; by the early 1930s, orchestras playing Western popular dances such as the waltz and the quickstep began to integrate more local melodies.
The popularity of highlife in the 1950s grew out of these earlier dance band styles and the musical environment in Accra during the Second World War. New music venues in the bustling city supported smaller bands and brought changes to popular music. The sounds of E. T. Mensah (1919–1996) and the Tempos emerged from this period. During the war, Mensah — known as the King of Highlife — played with a Scottish sergeant in a band suited to the size of the small clubs opening at the time. Mensah and others incorporated elements of swing, Afro-Cuban percussion, and calypso, tailoring their sound for Ghanaian audiences. By blending Latin American and Caribbean influences, they created a music that became one of the most popular across West Africa by the end of the 1950s.
Advances in transportation and technology continued to shape highlife during the 1950s and 1960s. When Louis Armstrong visited Ghana in 1956 and played with E. T. Mensah, the popularity of dance band highlife exploded. Armstrong's playing style, combined with the growing availability of jazz recordings entering West Africa, promoted the role of individual soloists and especially highlighted brass instruments. As new technology made it easier for Western musicians to travel into West Africa, local musicians also began more international tours, gaining global fame. Mensah visited Lagos, Freetown, and Dakar in the mid- and late 1950s, and his brand of music became a hit. Dance band highlife became well established throughout the region, particularly in Anglophone countries. By the early 1960s, amplification became more widely available. Ironically, amplification and electric guitars allowed bands to incorporate more traditional West African instruments — such as drums — without overpowering vocals, guitars, and other instruments.
Juju music in Nigeria
Juju music first appeared in Nigeria in the 1930s, blending influences from Liberia and Ghana with local Yoruba traditions. With vocals that resembled praise poetry, early juju featured guitar or banjo, tambourine, and sekere (a gourd covered with beads). After amplification arrived in the early 1960s, juju musicians like I. K. Dairo (1930–1996) and the Blue Spots added more instruments, including the Yoruba talking drum and the accordion. Around the same time, they began offering more songs in local languages, and within a decade juju became one of the most popular music forms in Lagos. Adding new instruments and local dialects helped Africanize the music and bring it to a wider audience. By the end of the 1970s, Ebenezer Obey (born 1942), known as the Chief Commander, and Sunday Adeniyi (born 1946), better known as King Sunny Ade, replaced Dairo as the most popular juju artists, gaining fame through international tours. They continued evolving the music, adding more electric guitars while incorporating additional elements of traditional Yoruba music, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and rock and roll.
Francophone versus Anglophone paths
While highlife and juju remain popular in Anglophone West Africa today, having continued to change into new styles, the history of popular music in Francophone West Africa followed a different path. Popular music generally took root more slowly in Francophone cities. Despite a long history of cultural exchanges with the Caribbean, most areas had little of their own popular music at the time of independence. As Richard Shain observes, the Senegalese showed an early interest in Cuban music but did not develop their own unique genre until after independence. In Dakar, for example, the release of El Manisero by Cuban bandleader Don Azpiazu and his Havana Casino Orchestra sparked an interest in Cuban music as early as the 1930s. Yet Dakar, like other colonial capitals in Francophone West Africa, reflected French musical tastes more than local ones. After playing Abidjan in 1955, a Gold Coast highlife musician reported that the French treated the country as their own, running the nightclubs and importing European musicians and actors, and that he never saw an African dance band while there.
The differences between early musical production in Anglophone and Francophone West Africa can be debated, but they must be attributed at least partly to different methods and ideologies of colonial governance. British indirect rule generally held that even educated Africans could not equal the British themselves. The French, at least in limited areas like the Four Communes of Senegal where they ruled directly, believed that some Africans could become French citizens after passing certain tests. Indirect rule tolerated and even promoted a degree of cultural adoption and adaptation, whereas French direct rule tended to draw a clear line between French and African forms. Although attempts to transform the identities of colonized subjects in some urban areas may have limited the growth of new popular music forms, musical production in places like the Congo during the 1940s and 1950s flourished and spread throughout western Africa.
Congolese soukous dominated the popular music scene across Francophone West Africa during the late 1950s and early years of independence. The Congo served as a bridgehead, combining local musical influences with those from the Caribbean and Western societies. Early Afro-Cuban and Congolese styles paved the way for the development of new, uniquely Senegalese styles around the time of independence. In the early 1960s, new nightclubs like Dakar's Miami Club hosted bands playing Afro-Cuban, American, and French music. Over the next few years, the resident band of the club — The Star Band — began merging more indigenous elements, including local drums, into their sound.
Nearly two decades later, several of the band’s original musicians—most notably Youssou N’Dour—incorporated even stronger local elements, ultimately not only further Africanizing Cuban music but also creating an entirely new genre. M’balax built upon the Afro-Cuban foundation of Congo music but fused it with jazz, soul, and traditional Senegalese styles by the late 1970s.
Richard Shain described the shifting musical atmosphere in Dakar and its connection to a fresh generation of followers:
The orchestras initially enlarged the public for popular music in Dakar more than they transformed it. They pitched their music not to the generation of the 1950s but to the first Senegalese generation born after independence that was just coming of age in the late 1970s. This generation, as so often is the case, was looking for a music that could differentiate them from their elders. The new style of with its aggressive edge helped give this generation an aural identity.
Alongside m’balax’s rise, independent popular music styles began emerging in Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, and Benin. As new recording studios opened in Abidjan, musicians from across West Africa flocked there not only to record and market their work internationally, but also to connect with other artists and spark their creativity. One such musician was Salif Keita (b. 1949). Born in Mali, Keita’s music blended traditional griot music with West African, Cuban, and Latin influences while preserving a distinctly Islamic sound native to his homeland. His arrangements incorporated traditional Malian instruments alongside guitar, saxophone, and keyboards. The growing movement of people and ideas across borders also brought a new face—and gender—to the microphone. Angélique Kidjo (b. 1960) combined influences from her native Benin with rock ’n’ roll, soul, funk, and the vocal style of South Africa’s Miriam Makeba, becoming one of Africa’s most prominent female singers. Her songs addressed pressing social issues, and her African-infused funk attracted a new generation of listeners both within and outside Africa. Despite a slower start, Francophone West African music grew increasingly competitive as global culture became more accessible.
By the mid-1960s, dance band highlife’s popularity in Anglophone countries gave way to American soul music. After tours by prominent African American artists in West Africa, urban youth began seeing highlife as outdated and sought fresh rhythms from radios and loudspeakers. Unlike the European-derived dance beats that had spawned earlier highlife styles, West Africans recognized soul music as having originated with Black Americans, sparking renewed interest in transatlantic developments. Some West African musicians toured outside the continent and were profoundly influenced by the music and ideologies they encountered. This is especially true for Fela Anikulapo Kuti (1938–1997), whose musical evolution encompassed highlife, jazz, and Afrobeat.
As a young man in Nigeria during the 1950s, Fela played music with friends and occasionally sat in on highlife gigs. When he left Nigeria in 1958 to study music at Trinity School in London, he played in a highlife band called Koola Lobitos and immersed himself in the London music scene, particularly drawn to American jazz. Returning to Nigeria in 1963, he played what he called “jazz highlife” but felt uninspired. When he encountered American soul music, he redirected his creativity. By 1969, Fela took his new band, Fela Ransome-Kuti & Nigeria 70, to the United States.
There, encounters with Black activists like Stokely Carmichael profoundly shaped his ideology, leading him to create a new genre: Afrobeat. With his new focus on Africans as a global culture, Fela renamed his band Fela Ransome-Kuti & Africa 70, and again in 1980 to Egypt 80. The latter name emphasized that Ancient Egypt’s civilizations were African—a key tenet of Afrocentric thought at the time. Further reflecting his shifting ideologies, he dropped his family name Ransome, viewing it as part of a colonial mentality, and adopted Anikulapo (“he who carries death in his pouch”).
Fela’s bands incorporated diverse local and foreign instruments, including a large horn section, multiple guitars and basses, keyboards, and numerous percussionists. His music merged aspects of African and Western cultures by integrating elements of Congo music, West African highlife, and African American soul. His lyrics also reflected his varied experiences and musical tastes. Singing largely in Pidgin English, he garnered a devout fan base in politically turbulent Lagos by using music as a weapon against government excesses. His emotional messages and powerful sound brought international acclaim after a US and European tour in the 1980s. Fela’s eccentric personality and innovative Afrobeat inspired West African artists to move beyond the cover band identities of the late 1960s and early 1970s and create original music.
Following a vibrant period of musical production across much of West Africa in the 1960s, the economic difficulties of the 1970s forced many prolific musicians to make a living outside the region, often relocating to Europe or the United States. Life in the UK, Germany, and the US pushed West African music in new creative directions. Claiming a role as founders of world music, four Ghanaians and three Caribbean musicians living in London formed the Afro-pop band Osibisa in 1969. They blended highlife and rock ’n’ roll with Afrobeat and other indigenous styles. During the 1970s, Osibisa toured the world with their African dance pop, becoming the most globally recognized West African band at that time. By the late 1970s, another Ghanaian, George Darko (b. 1951), moved to Germany and helped create another distinctive popular music by adding synthesizers and electronic percussion to dance band highlife. He called it “burger highlife” after his base in Hamburg. For Africans living abroad during this period, lyrics began reflecting their new environment. Daddy Lumba (b. 1964), another Ghanaian residing in Germany, built upon the original dance highlife foundation and tailored his sound to Africans worldwide. His first hit, a collaboration with Nana Acheampong, was “Yereye Aka Akwantuo Mu,” a song lamenting the conditions of Africans who left home in search of jobs but lingered abroad, never returning.
West African musicians’ ability to adopt and adapt a wide array of global music styles coincided with the rising prominence of world music generally and reggae specifically. Though Caribbean influences had appeared in earlier forms, Jamaican reggae’s impact remained limited until Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley burst onto the international scene, winning devoted fans among urban West African youth. Reggae’s global dissemination began in the mid-1970s, sparking interest in most West African countries, including Nigeria. Sonny Okosun (1947–2008) found success creating Ozziddi music, a blend of reggae, highlife, soul, funk, and traditional sounds. Like Fela and others, Okosun exemplified the global musical heritage to which he was exposed. As a teen, his inspirations included the Beatles and Cliff Richard; he founded the Postmen, a British pop cover band. After moving to Lagos, Okosun played with the Melody Maestros, a contemporary Nigerian pop band, and later formed a psychedelic rock band called Paperback Limited.
By the mid-1970s, however, he embarked on a new musical path, forming Ozziddi. Okosun’s lyrics conveyed messages of Pan-Africanism and Black pride while condemning political and social excesses across the continent. His Pan-African sentiments peaked with his 1977 international hit “Fire in Soweto,” calling for an end to apartheid in South Africa. His 2008 obituary quoted Okosun: “All my mates were singing love songs. I was trying to talk about what was happening to black people.” His music and message appealed to urban youth seeking new styles that fit their generation’s needs.
After a few early adopters, Jamaican reggae gained real traction in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tours by Jimmy Cliff, Toots and the Maytals, and Bob Marley fanned the flames, and local musicians began West Africanizing reggae. The genre spread quickly, partly because its lyrics told stories of oppressed Africans worldwide and emphasized mental and physical liberation. Musicians like Alpha Blondy (b. 1953) merged local styles with Jamaican reggae, creating Afro-reggae. Born in Côte d’Ivoire, Blondy first gravitated toward Afro-rock, forming the band Atomic Vibrations in high school. He moved to New York to study to become an English teacher, but exposure to Jamaican reggae changed his path. Returning to Abidjan, he worked on his first Afro-reggae album, Jah Glory, achieving immediate success across the continent. Like reggae generally, Blondy’s lyrics decried the inequalities forced upon Africans. His 1985 release Apartheid is Nazism reprimanded Western governments for supporting apartheid-era laws in South Africa. Singing in English, French, and various indigenous languages of Côte d’Ivoire, he reflected his global experiences and cultivated an international presence.
More recently, radio and television have played an increasingly prominent role in globalizing West African music. Before 1990, radio was generally government-owned and operated, but airwaves liberalized and private FM stations emerged, granting new access to global music. Most private stations targeted specific groups with tailored tastes, making radio a valuable tool for spreading African and Western popular styles. Similarly, television had been state-controlled since independence. But the growth of independent stations, satellite TV, VCRs and DVD players, and wider internet accessibility radically accelerated the exchange of global music, bringing sounds and images from around the world to more West Africans. People can now turn on a television or computer to watch a South African music channel or YouTube videos of a favorite performer from anywhere. Whereas in the recent past people had to travel to experience other forms of popular culture directly, they are now exposed to international styles and personalities daily. The most prominent genre of popular music today, African hip hop, directly results from this expanded media access.
Highlife, Afrobeat, m’balax, and Afro-reggae paved the way for today’s African hip hop. As West Africans entered the last decade of the 20th century, the substantial library of local and global popular music built over the previous 50 years formed the foundation for numerous styles of African hip hop. When American rap and hip hop first caught on in the US during the 1980s, West African listeners showed little interest. By the mid-1990s, however, musicians began integrating local rhythms and lyrics, giving rise to individual variations. Ghanaian hip hop, or hiplife, features undertones of Ghanaian highlife and is typically sung in local languages. Its creator, Reggie Rockstone, lived in the UK and US, experiencing the early rap scene firsthand.
When he returned to Accra in 1994, he combined his knowledge of Western rap and hip hop with everyday life and languages in Accra, creating a musical form that swept the country. West African hip hop has also won fans in Dakar. Senegalese hip hop blends different rhythms and languages, including French, English, and Wolof. When Positive Black Soul (PBS), Dakar’s first hip-hop group, opened for French hip-hop artist MC Solaar at a 1992 show, Solaar recognized their talent and invited them to perform in France. Their subsequent success brought more international tours, and they remained one of Senegal’s most prominent groups throughout the 1990s. PBS, like other Senegalese hip hop artists, acted as modern-day griots, voicing concerns about contemporary social, economic, and political problems. Like a griot, they used their voices to convey their people’s thoughts and actions—but through a communication form that reflected the increasingly globalized culture surrounding them daily.
Conclusion
In September 2009, the BBC featured a special asking readers whether African music was commercial enough to attract a global following. The question itself revealed the globalizing nature of African music, and the replies carried that theme further. Kwesi from London commented: “Music from around the world is shaped by influencing factors, and some of the best results are from fusion of different cultures, where emotions bubble to the surface, and creativity flourishes.” Overall, post-independence urban music styles are marked by an increased presence of Western instruments and technology—electric guitar, brass and woodwinds, keyboards, synthesizers, and samplers. The rising influence of African American music (jazz, blues, rock ’n’ roll, soul, hip hop) alongside the continued presence of Caribbean styles (calypso, rumba, maringa) plays a major role in shaping West African music. However, West African popular music is not mere imitation or straightforward adoption; it is a continuous adaptation incorporating sounds from indigenous and neo-traditional African influences. One can hear the same music in New York and Abidjan, but it is erroneous to view this globalization as a hegemonic process imposing Western tastes and destroying local forms. West African musicians and audiences have thrust themselves into the global musical conversation by acting as agents—selecting what they value in foreign styles and discarding the rest. Many have lived abroad, symbolizing a global citizenship capable of navigating the complex space between nations and cultures. By merging foreign and local musical styles, West African artists create new, more relevant global forms that increasingly satisfy local audiences while attracting an international following on an unprecedented scale.
Let me offer a short biography of an African musician living in the United States. Born in Côte d’Ivoire, Seguenon Kone perfectly illustrates the interplay between globalization and West African music. At fourteen, he was a member of the Ivorian National Ballet; by twenty-one, he had established his own cultural dance troupe. Over the next decade, Kone traveled the globe, even playing a regular gig at Disney World in Florida during 2005. He toured with Jimmy Buffet and eventually settled in New Orleans, where he established a new cultural troupe, Ivoire Spectacle. Reflecting the dynamism of globally oriented West African musicians and their ability to push musical boundaries, Kone also formed an ensemble fusing his images of the African past and present with the eclectic sounds of New Orleans. The group, Fatien Ensemble, comprises a traditional jazz clarinetist, a contemporary jazz drummer, a blues singer, a zydeco accordionist, a steel guitarist, a bassist, and a saxophonist. The band plays a variety of styles, with their accordionist declaring in a 2009 interview: “It’s all African-based music... The vocal and rhythmic traditions from West Africa... that’s the sound of the blues. That’s the sound of jazz. That’s the sound of zydeco. There’s all kinds of hybridizations taking place out there, but we’re talking about a bunch of people in New Orleans doing a mixture of old New Orleans forces, African forces, but at the same time, still on the cutting edge.”
Seguenon Kone is certainly not unique; others like him live all over the world. He exemplifies African artists’ innovation—symbolizing both the continuous global flow of people and ideas and the ability to blend traditional African sounds with a range of foreign styles, creating new genres that blur boundaries and expand our very definition of African music.