Afrobeat

The Afrobeat hype man: how a shout-and-call craft turned African stages into a business

Afrohype — the art of shouting, ad-libbing and energising crowds over Afrobeat — has grown from a Lagos campus routine into a paid profession. Pioneers such as Toby Shang now run schools for hype men and women, while the craft's roots trace through griot praise singing, Congolese atalaku and Ivorian coupé-décalé.