Burna Boy Bringing Africa to the Globe

A fortunate byproduct of being one of the fastest rising music genres, is the ability for its practitioners to not only command top dollar for their live sets but have some influence on where they carry their, often, stadium filling tour stops. This is what is happening currently with one of afrobeats – and the world’s – biggest acts, Burna Boy, taking his show through the Caribbean in December.

Most foreign music acts in their pomp hardly make it a point of duty to mark the islands that make up the West Indies as places to increase their brand or connect with locals especially after touching the stage in settings such as Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, Canada, England, Australia and the United States of America; however, this is what Burna Boy and his team has decided to do in the final month of 2022. Three island nations will see Burna Boy the week before Christmas: Trinidad and Tobago, Hasely Crawford Stadium on the 16th of December; Antigua and Barbuda, Sir Vivian Richards Stadium on the 17th of December and Jamaica, National Stadium on the 18th of December. Main promoter, of these shows, Osita ‘Duke’ Ugeh sees these events as another way to highlight the connections between the sounds of afrobeats and the reggae/dancehall/calypso/soca melodies that reverberate from the Caribbean basin.

With local based acts getting opportunities to perform, live, in front of crowds that they themselves – as solo features – would not be able to draw. Burna Boy, himself draws a lot from dancehall and Jamaican patois in his songs, in addition to utilizing Jamaican acts such as Popcaan, Serani and Blak Ryno. He even cites Jamaican superstar Bob Marley as one of his initial inspirations to get into music. So it would be easy to presume that Burna’s performance in Kingston would be one that he will be looking forward to as to leave a powerful impression in the land that birthed the music and influence that has made Burna Boy the global superstar he currently is. The Jamaican leg of this concert will feature the aforementioned Popcaan and young starlet Lila Ike as accompanying acts on the 18th with gates slated to open no later than 3pm. 

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Amilcar Lewis

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