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Music of Africa

Afro-pop

African popular music – commonly referred to as African pop or afro-pop – is as vast and varied as Africa's traditional music. Most contemporary African popular genres have developed through cross-pollination with Western popular music. Many Western genres, including blues, jazz, and rumba, derive in part from African musical traditions carried to the Americas by enslaved Africans. These rhythms and sounds have subsequently been adapted by newer genres like rock, soul, and rhythm and blues. In turn, African popular music has adopted elements of Western music, particularly musical instruments and recording studio techniques. In 1933, Solomon Linda formed Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds. Although Linda was illiterate, he composed songs from an early age while guarding cattle. The group's most internationally acclaimed hit, "Mbube," released in 1939, became the first African record to sell more than 100,000 copies. Another 20th-century South African singer was Miriam Makeba, who played a key-role in the 1960s in drawing global attention to African music and its meaning.

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