Afrobeat is on its way back via Manhattan

There's a new hit show on Broadway — but it's not about the death of capitalism or romance on the Lower East Side. Instead, Fela! is a musical about the life of Nigerian Afrobeat founder Fela Kuti. The show is co-produced by Jay-Z and Will and Jada Smith. Despite some criticism of its "feel-good" focus, especially by Charles Isherwood in the New York Times, the show has been such a success that will soon be made into a major Hollywood film.

African music is hot again, and it's being performed by a new generation of stars such as Tiken Jah Fakoly and Angélique Kidjo. Western groups are looking to Africa as well. Coldplay's song "Strawberry Swing" includes Afrobeat rhythms, but it's the young New York band Vampire Weekend, whose latest album, Contra, came out early last month, that's putting Afrobeat guitar riffs at the centre of 21st-century pop music.

Why is Afrobeat so hot in New York today? "That back-and-forth influence between America and Africa — the contemporary and traditional — can easily live side by side," Drew Heller of Toubab Krewe, which mixes the music of Mali with American blues, told Newsweek.