Lagos, Nigeria – On October 14, 2008, the former US Secretary of State Colin Powell joined Nigerian singer Olu Maintain on stage at the Africa Rising Festival in London to dance to Yahooze, arguably the hottest record out of Nigeria at the time. The dance racked up headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.
“He traded statecraft for stagecraft,” Foreign Policy’s David Kenner wrote.
It was also a seminal moment for the burgeoning but mesmerising genre known as Afrobeats, long before its global domination today. It also highlighted the…