For a while I've been trying to tell people around me that African music is based on creativity than most Western world music. Yes, Michael Jackson is probably the most successful musician to ever live. But he won the world over with dance more than his music.
Most western music and even before digitization of music is based on a very lazy concept. The beat is ALWAYS 1,2,1,2,1,2. There is always a verse 1 then the chorus or loop, and wash, rinse, and repeat.
African music on the other hand is too rich to be contained or presented in a lazy way. Yes we have main songs and choruses too, but what makes our music different is the fact that we believe in several types of rhythms, beats, and percussion in the same song. I remember the "Changement de frequnce" days which most western songs cannot boast of. This is one more reason why we could dance to songs like Sous Sol which is almost 15 min long as opposed to Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal which is only about 4 min (short version).
The truth is just about all variety of African music (Highlife, Juju, Makossa, Ndombolo, Sabar, Rai...etc) will always rank higher than hip hop, rock, soul, jazz, or even reggae.
Your thoughts?