Tyla’s complaint joins several others from South African artists who say the West classifies all African music as “afrobeats.”
Tyla, nominated and declared a winner in the Best Afrobeats Song category during this year’s MTV Video Music Awards held on Wednesday night, called out Afrobeats, saying that while Afrobeats opened many avenues for African music, classifying the whole of continental music under one genre was wrong.
She said she is from South Africa and represents the Amapiano genre.
She said, “The global success of ‘Water’ just proves that African music can be mainstream music, too. It’s so special and yet it’s so painful knowing sometimes all African artists get used under one category called Afrobeat.
“Afrobeats has been in the forefront and opened so many doors for us. There is more to African music; it is not just Afrobeats.”.
That means so much to me, just being from South Africa-reppin’ Amapiano. I just show my culture and represent it. And I’ll like to say thank you to all the Afrobeats artists in this category with me, shout out to all the Afrobeats artists: Tems, Ayra Starr, Wizkid, Burna Boy, Rema, Lojay.
