STORY · DANCEHALL
Reggae takes root in Africa
Well supported
From Abidjan to Benin City to Johannesburg, reggae became a continental voice for reconnection, protest and faith in the 1980s.
Alpha Blondy, Majek Fashek, Lucky Dube and a generation of African reggae artists translated Jamaican roots reggae into distinctly national and pan-African voices.
"The Bob Marley of Africa"
In Abidjan, Seydou Koné — performing as Alpha Blondy — was spotted on a television talent show and recorded Jah Glory, an album that went on to sell across the continent; by the mid-1980s many observers had taken to calling him "the Bob Marley of Africa." His countryman Tiken Jah Fakoly, born into a griot family in Odienné, has said he was heavily inspired by Blondy before building his own career of exile and protest song after fleeing Côte d'Ivoire's civil war for Mali.
In Nigeria, the reggae group Jastix, formed in Benin City in the early 1980s, became a launching pad for two of the country's defining reggae voices: Majek Fashek, whose 1988 hit "Send Down the Rain" won him the nickname "Rainmaker," and Ras Kimono, whose 1989 debut Under Pressure made him a national star. Orits Wiliki built a parallel career fusing reggae with pointedly Nigerian social commentary, while Evi-Edna Ogholi — first crowned "Queen of Nigerian reggae" by Majek Fashek himself — became the country's first prominent female reggae star.
Further south, Lucky Dube switched from Zulu mbaqanga to reggae in the late 1980s, framing the genre's universal appeal against apartheid, and went on to become Africa's best-selling reggae artist before his death in 2007.
Reggae gave a language of witness to musicians working under apartheid, civil war and dictatorship alike.
The lineage continues into the present: Ghana's Rocky Dawuni, who has shared stages with Alpha Blondy, became the first Ghanaian ever nominated for a Grammy when his Branches of the Same Tree was shortlisted for Best Reggae Album in 2015 — proof that the continent's reggae tradition, four decades on from Abidjan and Benin City, still carries internationally.