Celebrated Ghanaian rapper Kwame Ametepe Tsikata, popularly known as M.anifest, has criticised the growing tendency to attach the prefix ‘Afro’ to new African music genres and their derivatives.

Speaking on the African Imagery Podcast, the No Shortcut to Heaven hitmaker said he was appalled by the wanton knack to name African music genres and their derivatives with the prefix ‘Afro’.

“So now everyone wants to do, Afro this, Afro that. Where is the camera? Can I look at it and make a statement? We are very innovative people. Every genre we create doesn’t have to be ‘Afro’ something. We can create new forms. We have to let our imaginations run free,” he said.

Guy Warren, aka Kofi Ghanaba, was one of the first musicians to use the ‘Afro’ tag for a genre.

He coined the term Afro-Jazz to describe his kind of music, long before Fela Kuti conceived Afrobeat (without the ‘s’).

Professor John Collins writes in his Highlife Time 3: “…in 1951, Kofi Ghanaba and most of the other members of the Tempos Band split and left for Liberia. The reason for this was that E.T. Mensah, who owned the musical instruments, wanted to create a synthesis of highlife with calypso and Latin American music, whereas Ghanaba was more interested in fusing jazz with Afro-Caribbean drumming.”

He adds: “…what Ghanaba was doing then preceded the later generations of Afro-fusions artistes in West Africa.”

In the 1980s, Afro-pop, as a broad label, also became established. African popular music was initially marketed internationally as ‘Afro-pop’, before London-based record companies and music journalists adopted ‘World Music’ as a broader marketing category in 1986/87.

When DJ Abrantee popularised the term ‘Afrobeats’, with the ‘s’, in the mid-2000s, it was used as an umbrella term for West African pop music.

Nigerians picked it up and developed it into a more marketable brand that has brought both their country and the continent considerable recognition.

Years on, some Afrobeats giants have expressed reservations about the name. Some would rather identify their music as Afrofusion, AfroSoul, AfroRock or AfroDancehall.