Dancehall musician Samini from Ghana has claimed that Amapiano, a prominent music genre in South Africa, is just a repackaged and renamed version of Ghana’s famous Azonto.
In a recent interview on Property Fm, Samini explained why he thinks the genre draws inspiration from Ghanaian roots. He highlighted that Amapiano heavily borrows from the compositional features of Azonto, which was extremely popular in many different nations during its peak.
Although Samini conceded that Amapiano began as a house music subgenre in South Africa in the middle of the 2010s, she maintained that the parallels between the two genres are too great to be overlooked.
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The Sweet Mistake crooner said: “Today if you do Azonto and you add one or two things to it, somebody will say it’s Amapiano, but Amapiano is something which is already South African.”
Despite the parallels, Samini emphasised the distinctiveness of Ghanaian music, asserting, “Amapiano is always going to be South African, so after everybody tried with Azonto, at the end, it’s Ghana that you will connect it to. So Amapiano will be connected to South Africa, but going forward, Ghana music remains Ghana music.”
