5 Ingenious Forgotten Female Pioneers Of Afrobeat You Should Know

When Fela Kuti introduced his ingenious Afrobeat sound – the disruptive genre founded on the harmonic backdrops of jazz, funk, highlife and soul, rooted in traditional West African rhythms and melodies – to the world, it changed the landscape of African music for generations to come, earning him the title of the Afrobeat patriarch. However, few know that the genesis of this sound was built on a mosaic of contributions from various figures along the way – many of them women.

Since time immemorial, women have played invisibilised, crucial roles in music history, and Afrobeat was no exception. The early ’60s and ’70s West African pop scene involved numerous women whose dabbling in funk, jazz and highlife helped shape the foundation of the dynamic genre. Yet, these women have been largely erased from our history and their stories are left untold. Cast into the lost crevices of time, or overshadowed by their male counterparts, their contributions to Afrobeat’s evolution have gone unsung.

It’s somewhat ironic how women are so absent from documentations of Nigeria’s early Afrobeat scene when, in reality, they made up the core of many bands and groups of pre-independence Nigeria. Indeed, various social factors prevented female artists from attaining prominence in Nigeria during the emerging 1970s pop scene. When Nigeria was colonised, the British introduced Victorian-era values with a patriarchal view of women that demanded they be seen and not heard. Back then, musicianship for women was viewed disreputably; it was deemed bordering on prostitution for women to be within the music scene. This perception relegated women to backing vocals, where they often transformed good songs into great ones.

The efforts of many of these women are lost to us mainly because recording and documentation of music back then was costly and the labels and individuals – local and foreign – with financial access to record these women and document their careers were simply uninterested. Nevertheless, despite the erasure, they paved the way for Nigerian female artists and continue to perform to this day. Here, five remarkable women to honour and celebrate.