From the Dance Floor to Daydreams: How Afrobeats Found Its Soul – Spotify

The silence came first. In the spring of 2020, as the world locked its doors, the exuberant, continent-spanning pulse of Afrobeats suddenly had nowhere to go. Dance floors emptied. Festivals fell quiet. For a genre built on collective motion and kinetic joy, the stillness felt like a fade to black.

But the beat didn’t stop. It evolved. The tempos began to drift downward, the bass lines softened their punch, and melodies made room for a melancholic hum. In that quiet, a more…