If any of these moments feel incredibly familiar you're not alone.
Growing up I watched a lot of tv and back then, black culture was synonymous with African Americans.
But there's been a shift
in recent years africans have become a major force in the music we listen to, fashion,
film, our everyday language, 'Pandemic!' [laughs]
and even our memes
coming a long way from images like this.
So how did black culture embrace its African roots?
the US has always been a cultural superpower and in the same way,
African American culture was always just as widespread.
I'm not the only one who felt this way.
I watched One-on-One, I watched Moesha, I watched Girlfriends, I watched all of that stuff
because that's why i was...
You're looking for yourself, right? So yeah, I was always like gravitating towards anything
that I could get and most of the time it was African-American representation.
The representation of black cultures around the world has increased and africans are more visible than ever before.
There are a few reasons for this and the movement of people through immigration and the diaspora
plays a big part.
When media moves from a specific geographical location to another it's because of the diaspora
of that original geographical location living there.
They are most of the time the pioneering consumers of media within these contexts.
Don't jealous me
Between 2000 and 2016, the black african immigrant population in the United States
more than doubled from 574,000 to 1.6 million
and in England and Wales it's a similar story.
Children of immigrants, first generation, second generation, these are people who
have kept part of their culture with them.
You can see this in Nollywood, Nigeria's film industry, which has been incredibly popular abroad
They were hungry to engage with, you know, Nollywood content and it wasn't just the nigerian diaspora
it was in the West Indies, it was across the world.
It's like this fine storm of different influences.
But there's no telling this story without the power of the internet.
34% of africans are online.
That's 165 million more users than in the United States.
If we're just going by numbers, it's natural that africans would be influential in digital culture.
The internet democratised, you know, a lot of things and people were speaking
for themselves in real time.
All of a sudden there were no gatekeepers to decide what we're going to cover,
what lens we're going to view, you know, these things by and people were beginning to fight back
at the silly narratives that we were getting from the west.
The most annoying one is oh do you speak african?
We don't all speak the same language.
Like, we can be from the same country and not even understand each other.
Nothing has challenged these narratives like social media which has become a global conversation.
Social media has sort of increased visibility of african art or media
so we think about Youtube, Instagram and TikTok and the ways that they have sort of globalised media in Africa.
Jerusalema is a great example of this.
It was like super, super big online but this song is not playing on the radio the way it should.
A few months after that the song just took off internationally.
Again, it speaks to the the notion of the internet really just shrinking the world.
Dancers in Angola created a challenge that flew across the internet,
sending the song to number one in 10 countries.
It's one of the many afro-pop songs that have swept the music industry.
While their predecessors rarely broke out of the niche world music genre,
african musicians are picking up awards, playing in stadiums internationally
and finding mainstream appreciation.
The message from Burna, I believe, would be that every black person should please remember
that you were africans before you became anything else. [applause]
Non-african musicians looking for fresh ideas have realised that collaborations with african artists
bring them a whole new flavour and audience.
People are just looking for for new sounds to incorporate into their own music
because you know the older genres become they run the risk of of going extinct
if they don't evolve or incorporate what's happening in the world.
Africa is having more than a moment
but considering it's a whole continent with 54 countries, more than 2000 languages and over 3000 ethnic groups
it's hard to represent it in its totality.
Are we seeing a broad range of african voices or a limited view from a few countries?
The dominance of english globally means that whenever we talk about
media or media representations that get globalised from the continent
it's usually Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa that we hear about.
And it's not even just the language but also these countries position in global geopolitics
sort of puts them in a place to sort of dominate african narratives
And it's ironic that the english Africa is the place that dominates the narratives
given that francophone Africa has the most number of countries, right?
For this reason, culture from french, portuguese and spanish-speaking africans is largely ignored
in the english-speaking world.
It's also important to note that the fact that Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa gets representation
does not mean that the complexities of these countries are represented.
English is not even the most widely spoken language in these countries
as there are people who don't speak english as a first language or english at all.
So if you're looking for one culture or perspective, you won't find it.
Yes the US has lost its hold on the idea of what black culture is
but there isn't one way to be black and we need to allow space for a multitude of black cultures
to express their own stories.
There's so many different cultures and that's why black culture is so wonderful.
At the roots we have some the same kind of base notes and I think that's why,
that's where collectivity comes from but that being said we are so diverse
and I think that's what really makes black culture so beautiful.