Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents excerpts from four online articles about Nigerian Alté music.
The content of this post is presented for cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Nigerian Alté music artists and thanks to the writers of these featured articles.
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ARTICLE EXCERPTS
These excerpts are given in chronological order based on their publishing dates.
Excerpt #1
From https://www.ft.com/content/82b8f19e-fc8e-11e8-b03f-bc62050f3c4e "Nigeria’s alté scene: ‘It’s not just about the music, it’s
about freedom’"
The movement is bringing together performers with disparate
styles but a common desire to escape the system
written by
"In a hotel in Lagos a group of Nigerian millennials in
bucket hats, small sunglasses and androgynous clothing are having a party.
Someone is filming the scene and will compile the best clips for a music video
for the song “Alté Cruise”.
The single, by musician Odunsi The Engine, featuring Zamir and Santi, is a nod to the alternative scene in Nigeria, a music-centric movement called alté, which cherishes individualism and experimentalism in a culture where fitting in is an unspoken rule.
“It’s not just about the music, it’s about freedom,” says Santi. “People don’t think it’s possible for you to be a Nigerian and have freedom to express yourself.”
[…]
“Alté describes
someone who is a bit different, a bit edgy,” Odunsi says. Although he didn’t
coin the term — it is believed to have first been used by the Nigerian group
DRB LasGidi in around 2010 — his album rare. has given the name prominence.
“The song, being almost like a cult success, kind of made the conversation go further,” he says. “People were asking what it is, and different people came up with their definitions and how they felt about it.”
Alté was born out of a rebellion against mainstream music. In 2016, Drake released the song “One Dance” featuring the Afropop musician Wizkid; it is the second most streamed song on Spotify ever. Wizkid’s style has become synonymous with contemporary Nigerian music, with African genres such as “Afrobeat”, “Afropop” and “Afrofusion” currently dominating international charts. But alté artists aren’t catering to a mass audience. “I think the lifestyle is kids just being able to express themselves without Nigerian entertainment industry restrictions,” says the musician Lady Donli.
[…]
…alté shouldn’t be mistaken for a genre. The alté community
grew out of the bonds the musicians formed with each other, having been lumped
together as “alternative”. Though they are all genre-bending, their music is
not the same: Lady Donli is more neo-soul; Santi moves through genres from
indie to dancehall to hip-hop; Zamir’s first solo album is hip-hop with a clear
trap influence; and Odunsi mixes R&B and African rhythms. These artists
help each other to perfect their own personal styles and work together on
different aspects of production, collaborating on albums or dancing in the
background of videos. “We are like a workshop: when I shoot my videos, Odunsi’s
there to help out on what I do because we do it ourselves,” Santi says.
“There’s just a sense of family,” adds Lady Donli."...
-snip-
"Santi" was (or still is?) known by the name "Cruel Santino":
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/santi-interview-2019 / written by Kathleen Johnston, 5 July 2019 "Born in Nigeria and now based between Lagos and Dubai, where he went to university, Santi (real name Osayaba Andrew Ize-Iyamu) is a major player in his country’s alté scene, a music-centric movement that is at once alternative and yet incredibly popular."
-snip-
That article includes an embedded YouTube video of "Rapid Fire" by Cruel Santino.
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Excerpt #2
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/23/alte-nigeria-pop-santi-odunsi-lady-donli "Alté, Nigeria's emancipated pop scene: 'People aren't used to being free'"
They’ve faced accusations of privilege and pretension – but alté artists such as Odunsi, Santi and Lady Donli are walking their own path through an often conservative culture
written by Yemisi Adegoke, 23 Sep 2019
… “as the Afropop sound began to dominate the music scene in
Nigeria – and has since gone global with artists like Wizkid, Davido, Runtown
and Tiwa Savage – some artists felt there was little room for those who
embraced different types of music.
“If you want to express yourself so much, and no one is giving you what you want, you just do it yourself,” says 22-year-old singer and producer Odunsi, whose sound is a heady mix of R&B, funk and Nigerian Afrobeat; his recent single Tipsy was a collaboration with UK pop success Raye. “I think that’s what’s happening: the kids outgrew a lot of the things that were being offered to them.”
Enter the internet and SoundCloud, where many alté artists
got their start. They were able to bypass the major blogs and radio stations
that typically pave the route to success, and release the music they wanted,
whenever they wanted. “The charts would be split into ‘SoundCloud artist’ and
‘mainstream artist,’” says 22-year-old Lady Donli, a longtime fixture on the
alté scene. “But now you can be a SoundCloud artist and be popping. You can be
selling out shows in Lagos, you can be doing tours in England, America. It’s a
shift in the industry.”
SoundCloud also meant that people outside Nigeria, particularly Nigerians in the diaspora, could access and embrace their sound. “The first set of people that were receptive to it were Nigerians outside Nigeria,” says Odunsi. “They directly saw the value in us. You speak to a lot of young people and they’d be like, ‘I’ve not been listening to Nigerian music for a while and I just started listening again.’”
But this proximity to the diaspora, often thought of as
wealthy in comparison to the population back home, and the middle-class
upbringing of some of the scene’s leading voices, has led to criticism. Some
have labelled the artists as privileged rich kids and derided the scene as
pretentious and elitist, something Odunsi rejects. “If anything is classist
music, it’s Nigerian pop,” he says. “They talk about things the average
Nigerian is never going to attain. The aim [of alté] is not to isolate
anything, it’s to let more people be expressive. People aren’t used to being
free, they aren’t used to seeing expression, so they don’t know how to react to
it.”
Lady Donli understands why some might think of alté as elitist, but says it’s not the scene’s intention, which is to include anyone open-minded. “If you’re about expressing yourself and not conforming to the norm, no one [in the scene] is going to be like, ‘You’re not alté enough’,” she says. Instead, she says, the lack of inclusion is a result of the focus on Lagos as the country’s entertainment hub. “You have people making music in Port Harcourt, but the greater Nigerian scene doesn’t know them because they’re not in Lagos,” she says. “If only one state is representing what the music industry is, that in itself is exclusionary.”
As for the future of the scene, who knows? Santi sees it “going crazy”, Odunsi sees it ushering in an “evolution of expression” in Nigerian music, and Donli thinks there may be another rebellion afoot, one that will in turn sweep alté aside. “I’d be happy if that happens, because there’s another set of people trying to do great things.”
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Except #3
From https://www.thefolklore.com/blogs/editorial/exploring-nigerias-alte-music-scene-in-africa "Exploring Nigeria's Alté Music Scene and Its Biggest Stars"
Written by Natalie Jarrett, July 17 2020
"In the West, alternative music is often associated with the
rough, anti-pop movement that emerged during the late 1980s. Alternative
musicians were characterized by their unconventional and raw approach to music,
as well as their dark and distinct anti-establishment aesthetic. Since then,
the term has expanded to mean any sub-genre of an established sound whether in
rock, hip-hop, pop, etc.
Since music streaming platforms like Soundcloud have democratized the process of making and sharing music, it has become much easier for norm-breaking musicians to garner a following for themselves. One such genre that partially owes its popularity to the internet is Nigerian “Alté” (shortened from “alternative”) music.
Although the artists belonging to this subgroup differ greatly in style, it generally fuses a variety of genres including, R&B, rap, indie, and dancehall. Alté refutes the notion that African music can be boiled down to a single monolithic genre title, as it so often is by outsiders. Its artists are concerned with both African culture and nostalgia, often drawing on a vintage lo-fi VHS style aesthetic for their music videos.
Several artists are attributed with its inception including
DRB Lasgidi members Teezee and BOJ, and members of the group, LOS (Loud on
Sound). However, artists like Santi, Odunsi, and Lady Donli have become
synonymous with the genre.”…
-snip-
This article continues with profiles of “popular Nigerian Alté artists who are
breaking the mold and creating their own distinct sounds”. The profiled artists
are Santi, Odunsi The Engine, Lady Donli, Wavy the Creator, and (Ghanaian) Ama
Rae.
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Excerpt #4
From https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/alte-music-changing-nigeria "Musicians Are Transforming The Conservative Culture In Nigeria"
Tems, Lady Donli, Wavy The Creator, and Amaarae describe how
Nigeria’s alté scene represents a cultural renaissance.
written by Shirley Ahura, 19 Nov. 2020
“Beneath the harmattan skies of Lagos floats a bold new
sound. Is it Afropop? Is it Amapiano? No, it’s alté, Nigeria’s pioneering
alternative music scene, one of its latest and greatest cultural exports. What
started off as a non-conformist subculture, a rebellion in a conservative
country, has become a fully-fledged iconoclastic movement capturing the sounds
and styles of a young generation – one that not only thinks outside of the box,
but seeks to get rid of parameters altogether.
In a male-dominated landscape, four women are flying in the
face of industry norms, societal expectations, and Western preconceptions to
expand the ever-changing landscape of contemporary African music. Cementing
their positions in a suite of trailblazers, visionaries and innovators, Tems,
Lady Donli, Wavy The Creator and Amaarae are at the forefront of a movement
that’s breaking the mould. British Vogue meets them below."...
-snip-
This article continues with profiles of the artists who names are given above.
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