We are Naijapop!

Do not call us Afrobeats

Hi, welcome to Sayakone.

Any music lover you ask nowadays will refer to African music as Afrobeats. This is a generic term to refer to all things African, as if Africa is a country that speaks just one language.

In order to break out of the shackles of generalities, Nigerian music has to be given a new name, one that puts Nigeria first so that whoever hears it will think of Nigeria, a country in Africa and not Africa, the continent.

There has always been the tendency to classify everything African using the Afro prefix. For example: Afrobeats, Afropop, Afrorave, Afrobeauty, Afro-rock etc.

While these are, at best, mediocre attempts to create an identity for Africans, I do not think they give us Nigerians enough spotlight as the originators of some of the world's most loved songs. What we need is a name that incorporates Nigeria into it, a name that the entire country recognizes as our own identity, one that everyone Nigerian will hear and know instantly that they are the ones being spoken of.

My research has brought several options forward, however, I have concluded that the best name to represent Nigerian pop music right now is Naijapop. When we refer to popular music that originates from Nigeria as #Naijapop, we are telling the listeners that everything involved in the creation of the song is from Nigeria: the music, the lyrics, the performance, the performer(s), the instruments, everything.

We also get a chance to invite people to be interested in Nigeria as a part of Africa and open them to the knowledge that Africa is not a country but rather a continent with diverse languages and cultures.

BTW, do you ever hear Kpop referred to as Asian music?

So why should Nigerian music be forced to remain under the umbrella of Afrobeats?

Should we allow ourselves to be forever forced to fit the African stereotype that the external world created?

Do we not have a duty to educate the world about the beauty of Nigeria, a country in Africa?

Or should we just allow ourselves to remain Africans and not Nigerians?

Since we have taken the initiative to name our film making industry Nollywood, what then is stopping us from claiming Naijapop as ours?

The first step to truly take control of our power as a nation is to create an identity that establishes Nigeria as the owner of its own innovations.

Going forward, in all my writings, I will refer to Nigerian popularised music as Naijapop.

Before we are Africans, we are Nigerians!

#Naijapop