Tiwa Savage

Appears on

• Top 6 Afrobeats Artists of All Time

  Currently #3 · score 0

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• Wizkid

  Wizkid became one of the defining architects of Afrobeats' global rise, blending Nigerian pop and dancehall influences into a smooth, melodic style that helped move the genre from a regional West African sound into worldwide mainstream recognition. His 2016 feature on Drake's "One Dance," which became one of the best-selling singles of all time, marked a pivotal moment in Afrobeats' international breakthrough, introducing the genre's rhythmic sensibility to a massive global pop audience. His sustained catalog of hits across the following decade, combined with major international collaborations and sold-out arena tours across Europe and North America, established him as one of the few Afrobeats artists able to headline major venues outside Africa consistently. His combination of the genre-defining "One Dance" breakthrough and his sustained decade-plus run of global hits has made Wizkid one of the two or three most significant architects of Afrobeats' international rise.

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• Davido

  Davido built one of Afrobeats' most consistent and commercially dominant catalogs since his 2011 breakthrough single "Dami Duro," combining energetic production with a broad pan-African fan base that has made him one of the genre's most reliable hitmakers for over a decade. His 2023 album "Timeless" produced multiple global hits and demonstrated his continued commercial relevance well into his second decade of recording, at a point in the Afrobeats boom when a wave of younger artists had begun crowding the genre's spotlight. His role in popularizing collaborative pan-African hits, frequently featuring artists from across Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa on a single track, helped establish the collaborative cross-border culture that came to define mainstream Afrobeats production. His combination of sustained decade-plus commercial dominance and his role advancing pan-African collaborative culture within the genre has made Davido one of Afrobeats' most consistently significant hitmakers.

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• Rema

  Rema emerged as one of Afrobeats' most significant younger-generation stars following his 2019 breakthrough, blending Afrobeats with trap and alternative influences into a style he termed "Afrorave" that distinguished his sound from the genre's earlier generation. His 2022 single "Calm Down" became a genuinely global phenomenon, spending well over a year on international charts and eventually becoming one of the best-performing Afrobeats songs of all time on global streaming platforms following a remix with Selena Gomez. His success demonstrated Afrobeats' continued evolution and international staying power beyond its initial 2016-2018 breakthrough wave, proving the genre could still produce genuinely unprecedented global hits years into its mainstream rise. His combination of a genre-redefining sound and the record-setting global run of "Calm Down" has made Rema one of the most significant Afrobeats artists of the genre's second international wave.

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• Tems

  Tems became one of Afrobeats' most critically respected vocalists following her breakthrough feature on Wizkid's 2020 single "Essence," a smooth, understated performance that helped the song become one of the first Nigerian tracks to chart on the US Billboard Hot 100. Her subsequent feature on Future and Drake's "Wait for U," which won a Grammy Award, made her one of the few Afrobeats-associated artists to win the award for a credited feature, further cementing her international critical standing. Her distinctive, restrained vocal style, drawing on R&B and soul influences alongside her Afrobeats roots, distinguished her from the genre's more uptempo mainstream sound and helped broaden the stylistic range associated with the movement internationally. Her combination of the genre-breaking "Essence" feature and her Grammy-winning international collaborations has made Tems one of Afrobeats' most critically significant contemporary vocalists.

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• Diamond Platnumz

  Diamond Platnumz became East Africa's most commercially significant Afrobeats-associated star, building a catalog of hits from Tanzania that helped expand the genre's mainstream footprint beyond its West African, primarily Nigerian and Ghanaian, origins. His record label WCB Wasafi grew into one of East Africa's most influential music companies, and his role developing and signing subsequent Tanzanian and East African artists extended his influence well beyond his own recording career. His collaborations with major West African stars helped bridge East and West African popular music scenes, demonstrating Afrobeats' broader continental reach at a time when the genre's international narrative remained heavily centered on Nigeria. His combination of unmatched East African commercial dominance and his role expanding Afrobeats' pan-continental reach has made Diamond Platnumz one of the genre's most significant non-Nigerian figures.

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More in Music

• Naftule's Dream

  Naftule's Dream grew out of the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, a Boston-area group that had already been playing traditional klezmer for 14 years before Newton, Massachusetts-born clarinetist Glenn Dickson and accordionist-songwriter Michael McLaughlin spun off a more adventurous, improvisation-focused outlet from within it. The band released two records on their own, "Search for the Golden Dreydl" in 1997 and "Smash, Clap" in 1998, before going on to record three further albums for composer John Zorn's Tzadik label under its Radical Jewish Culture series, a significant marker of downtown-avant-garde credibility. The Boston Globe praised the group for fusing "klezmer music, Phish-like improvisation, and radical Yiddish poetry," a description that captured how directly the band pushed past traditional acoustic klezmer instrumentation and arrangement. Their combination of their roots in a 14-year-old traditional klezmer orchestra and their three albums on John Zorn's boundary-pushing Tzadik label has made Naftule's Dream one of the most musically adventurous bands in the klezmer revival movement.

• Brave Old World

  Brave Old World formed in 1989 with members drawn from California, Chicago, New York, and Berlin, an unusually international lineup for a klezmer band, originally featuring clarinetist Joel Rubin, drummer Ben Bazyler, multi-instrumentalist Stu Brotman (a former member of 1960s rock band Kaleidoscope and a sideman for Canned Heat), keyboardist Alan Bern, and violinist Michael Alpert. Rubin was later replaced by Kurt Bjorling, musical director of the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble since 1984, bringing another deeply credentialed klezmer specialist into the lineup. The Washington Post called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup," noting that "every player is a virtuoso," and the band won first prize at the 1992 International Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel, a significant early validation from within the genre's own community. Their combination of their genuinely international, virtuoso-level lineup and their 1992 Safed festival win has made Brave Old World one of the most artistically respected bands in the klezmer revival.

• Kapelye

  Kapelye was assembled in 1979 when ethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik organized a group of musicians to perform at a klezmer lecture at Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island; the November 18, 1979 debut went well enough that the musicians agreed on the spot to keep performing together as a full-time band. The group took its name from the Yiddish word for "a band" and began actively researching and collecting turn-of-the-century klezmer recordings, drawing several members, including fiddler and vocalist Michael Alpert, from the overlapping Balkan music community. Their 1981 debut album, "Future & Past," mixed traditional Yiddish folk ballads with labor and political anthems and songs pulled directly from Yiddish theater, and the band followed it with "Levine & His Flying Machine" in 1985 and "Chicken" in 1987, before "Old-Time Jewish American Radio" became their most successful release. Their combination of Sapoznik's foundational archival research and their genre-launching 1981 debut album has made Kapelye one of the most historically significant bands in klezmer's modern revival movement.

• Andy Statman

  Andy Statman, born in New York City in 1950, started on banjo and guitar at 12 before switching to mandolin, which he studied briefly under lifelong friend David Grisman, and by 1970 he was playing in the experimental bluegrass group Country Cooking, followed by stints with David Bromberg's band. In 1975, Statman sought out klezmer clarinet legend Dave Tarras and became his protégé; Tarras wrote melodies specifically for him and eventually bequeathed Statman four of his own clarinets, deliberately passing the older master's living klezmer lineage directly to him. His late-1970s album "Jewish Klezmer Music" became a touchstone recording for that decade's klezmer revival, released alongside his mandolin-focused "Flatbush Waltz," and the National Endowment for the Arts later named him a National Heritage Fellow, the nation's highest honor in the traditional arts. His combination of his direct mentorship under Dave Tarras and his rare parallel mastery of klezmer clarinet and bluegrass mandolin has made Statman one of the most historically important figures in klezmer's modern revival.

• Giora Feidman

  Giora Feidman was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires to a family of klezmer musicians spanning his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, and by 18 he was already leading clarinetist of the orchestra at Argentina's Teatro Colón before joining the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1957 on the recommendation of conductor Paul Kletzki. He played with the Israel Philharmonic until 1974, then launched a solo career and was crowned "the King of Klezmer" in New York already in the 1970s, well before klezmer's broader American revival movement took hold in subsequent decades. In the early 1990s, Steven Spielberg invited Feidman to record alongside violinist Itzhak Perlman on the score for "Schindler's List," and Feidman's solo clarinet became a defining voice on that soundtrack, which went on to win the Academy Award. His combination of a multi-generational klezmer family lineage and his solo clarinet performance on the Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" score has made Feidman one of the most significant ambassadors for klezmer music worldwide.