Princewill Pius
It all started when Cynthia Morgan left a comment on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s photo of his trip to Nigeria.
Specifically the one where he said “he visited Nollywood, crashed a hip hop music video, and met some of Nigeria’s biggest stars”. Cynthia took offence to the tag of ‘Hip – Hop’ commenting that “we do Afrobeats, not hip hop”.
Now, Cynthia is not wrong. But trust Nigerians, they weren’t having it. They came for Cynthia and made their feelings known see their comments below:
Cynthia has responded to the jibes sent her way in true ‘bad gyal fashion’. Her response below:
In this situation, both parties are saying the same thing. It just boils down to how each person chooses to describe African music. Some feel any music released by an African should have the tag ‘Afro’ attached to it even our national anthem. That’s why the tag is added to the generally known genres of music I.e. Pop, R&B, Dancehall and others. It’s just a way of making sounds from this part of the world stand out. It doesn’t take anything away from the ‘Africanness’ of the song or the musicians who created it.
So this brouhaha brought about by Cynthia’s comment is really uncalled for. It’s something of an identity crisis for music lovers all over the world. Music is a general language spoken by the whole world. Let us as Nigerians not get offended. There is no need to go up in arms.
