Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to discuss the potential of social media to create global visibility for African popular music, which has hitherto remained on the margins, by drawing on the role of networked practices on TikTok on the global spread of Afrobeats music.

Paper long abstract:

During the Covid lockdowns TikTok became the social media platform people turned to for their entertainment, and it has remained an influential popular culture space where people of all ages flock to, to participate in cultural production. At the heart of TikTok practices is sound; this is encouraged by the platform and is manifested in very creative ways by platform users. As a platform that promotes imitation and privileges sound (Zulli &Zulli, 2020), TikTok provides a transnational mediascape (Appadurai, 1996) where people from all parts of the world converge to participate in the creation, sharing, and remixing of sound inspired content. Thus, creating possible global visibility for music forms that are used in content production. This epitomises social media’s potential to provide access to cultural forms from marginal cultures and marginal locations. One of such music forms that is engendering engagement on the platform is Afrobeats.

This paper maps the global spread of Afrobeats, as a popular music form originating from Africa, on TikTok. It interrogates how the platform’s organisation, and the networked practices thereon, promote the flow of Afrobeats within the global mediascape. Drawing from research using digital methods and digital ethnographic exploration, it seeks to map the geographic reach of Afrobeats through TikTok, and identify the networked practices, as well as explore the role of Africans, both home and abroad, involved in this global flow.