Youssou N'Dour

Appears on

• Top 6 World Music Artists of All Time

  Currently #2 · score 0

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• Fela Kuti

  Fela Kuti pioneered Afrobeat, a genre fusing traditional Yoruba music and jazz with American funk and highlife influences, and his extended, politically charged compositions, often stretching past 20 minutes per track, directly criticized Nigeria's military governments through pointed, satirical lyrics delivered in pidgin English. His outspoken political activism made him a repeated target of Nigerian government crackdowns, including a notorious 1977 raid on his communal compound, the Kalakuta Republic, during which soldiers reportedly beat Kuti severely and threw his elderly mother from a window, an assault that ultimately contributed to her death. Kuti's massive band Africa 70, and later Egypt 80, incorporated dozens of musicians simultaneously, and his extended live performances at his own Lagos nightclub, the Afrika Shrine, combined dense polyrhythmic musical arrangements with his direct political commentary delivered between and during songs. His combination of genuinely innovative genre-blending musicianship and fearless political confrontation with Nigeria's authoritarian government has made Kuti one of the most significant and influential musicians in the history of African popular music, and Afrobeat's continued global influence traces directly back to his foundational work.

• Miriam Makeba

  Miriam Makeba, widely known as "Mama Africa," became one of the first African musicians to achieve major international recognition, and her outspoken opposition to South Africa's apartheid government led the regime to revoke her citizenship and passport in 1963, forcing her into a 30-year exile from her home country. Her 1967 song "Pata Pata" became an international hit, introducing many Western audiences to South African music, and Makeba's testimony before the United Nations about apartheid's brutality made her one of the most prominent international voices raising awareness of South Africa's racial oppression during the Cold War era. Makeba's marriage to Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael in 1968 led to significant professional backlash in the United States, including canceled bookings and record deals, reflecting the political controversy surrounding both her own activism and her husband's more radical political associations. She finally returned to South Africa in 1990 following Nelson Mandela's release from prison, performing at his inauguration ceremony years later, and Makeba's combination of musical innovation and sustained anti-apartheid activism made her one of the most politically significant musicians of the 20th century.

• Ravi Shankar

  Ravi Shankar is widely credited with introducing Indian classical music, and the sitar specifically, to mainstream Western audiences, and his teaching relationship with George Harrison of the Beatles directly led to the sitar's incorporation into several of the band's mid-1960s recordings. His 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, playing an extended traditional Indian classical raga to an audience largely unfamiliar with the form, received an unusually enthusiastic standing ovation from the rock and counterculture audience, helping establish Indian classical music's serious artistic credibility among Western listeners. Shankar organized the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh alongside George Harrison, one of the first major benefit concerts in popular music history, raising funds and awareness for refugees during the Bangladesh Liberation War and establishing a template for subsequent benefit concerts across popular music. His combination of deep technical mastery of Indian classical musical tradition and his significant role introducing that tradition to Western popular music audiences made Shankar one of the most historically significant cross-cultural musical figures of the 20th century, and his daughter Anoushka Shankar has continued his musical legacy as an accomplished sitarist in her own right.

• Cesária Évora

  Cesária Évora, known as "the Barefoot Diva" for her habit of performing without shoes on stage, popularized morna, a melancholic musical genre from her native Cape Verde, bringing international attention to the small island nation's musical tradition beginning with her breakthrough international success in the early 1990s. Her deep, weathered vocal style and morna's characteristically bittersweet themes of longing and separation, reflecting Cape Verde's long history of emigration and diaspora, gave Évora's music a distinctive emotional register that resonated with international audiences well beyond the specific Portuguese-Creole language her lyrics were sung in. Évora achieved her major international breakthrough relatively late in life, not gaining widespread global recognition until her forties, after decades performing primarily within Cape Verde's own local music scene without broader international attention. Her combination of morna's distinctive emotional depth and her own remarkable late-career international breakthrough made Évora the single most significant musical ambassador for Cape Verdean culture globally, and she remains the artist most responsible for bringing international attention to the small island nation's musical traditions.

• Burna Boy

  Burna Boy has become one of the most internationally successful contemporary Afrobeats artists, blending Nigerian musical traditions with dancehall, hip-hop, and R&B influences, and his 2019 album African Giant received a Grammy nomination, reflecting the genre's growing mainstream international recognition. His stage name and musical identity draw direct inspiration from Fela Kuti's earlier Afrobeat legacy, and Burna Boy has explicitly positioned his own music as a continuation of Kuti's tradition of blending danceable, genre-crossing production with pointed social and political commentary about African identity and post-colonial politics. Burna Boy's 2020 album Twice as Tall won the Grammy Award for Best Global Music Album, and his sustained international touring success, including headlining major arenas and festivals across multiple continents, has made him one of the most commercially significant contemporary African musicians globally. His combination of genuine commercial crossover success and his explicit artistic connection to Fela Kuti's earlier politically conscious Afrobeat tradition has made Burna Boy one of the most significant figures in Afrobeats' continued 21st-century global commercial and cultural expansion.