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Hilarious quips and ‘100,000-volt’ energy: the hypemen (and women) redefining Afrobeats music

For the 2015 freshmen cohort of the history degree programme at the University of Lagos, their classmate’s first-semester presentation was so captivating that they began calling him Toby Shang, after the 16th-century Chinese dynasty he had focused on. His crowd engagement that day had been harnessed from his high school days as a ginger-man (energiser) in a three-man band and as a private tutor. By his final year at university, his viral catchphrases and infectious energy had resulted in a hit song, Shedibalabala. Today, he is one of the self-acclaimed “evangelists and pioneers” in the Afrobeats sub-genre some are now calling Afrohype or lamba. “Even my mother calls me Shang now,” the 32-year-old, born Tobi Michael Adeyeye, said in an interview near the university’s lagoon waterfront, where he once emceed gatherings. Since then he has hosted his own rave, released two EPs and run four editions of his School of Hype – a one-day masterclass with online mentoring that has launched several rising stars. Hypemen neither sing nor rap entirely, but perform high-octane ad-libbed vocals “and onomatopoeic sounds” over fresh beats or popular instrumentals such as Dorime, a made-in-Nigeria version of 1996’s Ameno by the French group Era, a song that has become a continental nightclub classic. In response, nightclub patrons donate or spray money – the Nigerian custom of throwing or placing money on someone to celebrate them. Hype is now omnipresent at wedding after-parties, raves and corporate parties. On Instagram, one teenage sensation is now known for recording 30-second hypes for birthday celebrants at the request of friends or relatives. “Hypemen have the gift of the gab and fine mic control,” said the London-based doctor and cultural critic Dami Ajayi, who encountered one at a party in Tirana last month. “He used the spaces between lyrics for hilarious quips, many of which were frontally risque and misogynistic,” he said. Despite being a male-dominated sub-genre, a few women have made their mark, such as the Yaoundé-based bikutsi artist Lady Ponce, known as the “100,000-volt lady” because of her energy. Other notable female figures in the scene include Deborah ‘Hype Queen Baddy’ Francis – an alumnus of Shang’s school who died in September – and the radio presenter Melody “M.I.A” Adigo, both from Lagos. *** The art of hyping as it is known in west and central Africa has its roots in praise-singing and call-and-response music styles ingrained for centuries in Black populations on both sides of the Atlantic. In west Africa, this tradition took the form of oral historians known as griots. In the US, it was sustained by negro spirituals, sacred folk songs created by enslaved African Americans. These styles laid the foundation for the atalaku (meaning “look here, look at me” in the Kikongo language of the DR Congo) tradition that came alive in 1980s Kinshasa, followed by today’s hype scene. Exponents of this style include the American gospel singer Kirk Franklin as well as the Congolese rumba bandleader Koffi Olomide and the Congolese singer Awilo Longomba. The success of Olomide and Longomba at the turn of the 21st century set off a craze in Côte d’Ivoire, where coupé-décalé music embraced the atalaku trend alongside farotement, the act of showing off by throwing cash at performers or guests at parties. A line encouraging audiences to gallop like a horse in the Ivorian star DJ Arafat’s 2003 viral homage to a late friend – “Tout le monde galope, kirikata kirikata” – influenced later hits from Nigerian Afrobeats musicians Flavour N’abania and Skales. Côte d’Ivoire’s national television network, RTI, ran an atalaku talent hunt for several years. Lili Djely, an Ivorian woman of Malian origin, won the 2006 edition with a mix of Ivorian nouchi and French, defeating men to take the crown. In recent years, an MC/hypeman of the year category was introduced at the Ghana DJ awards as hype flourished there too. Thanks to the success of Afrobeats, Afrohype is now widely recognised as a full-time career. As artists became more expensive to book after Covid-19, promoters turned to hypemen – previously criticised for simply doing voiceovers. Some are now reportedly paid as much as 5-8m naira (£2,844–4,550) for a 30-minute or one-hour performance. Some observers, however, say hype is a nuisance, amping up noise levels at events or encouraging fraudulent lifestyles, and that many performers do not customise language and tempo to fit the event. Nevertheless, hypemen are now a permanent fixture on the entertainment scene. For Shang, they are helping fun-seekers and club-goers get back on the dancefloor. “People are facing a lot of challenges … they need somebody to tell them money is coming in the new week,” he said. “Also, everybody wants to press their phones or show Birkin bags in clubs. Nobody wants to dance because dancing is seen as for small kids. You need a hypeman to bring out that childlike part in every person. A 60-year-old woman can start dancing like a young girl if the hype is good enough.”

An extraordinary life: descendant welcomes biography of woman ‘gifted’ to Queen Victoria

When she was seven years old, Bayo Randle’s great-great-grandmother Sarah Forbes Bonetta was presented to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle as a “diplomatic gift” from an African king. Victoria would go on to pay for Bonetta’s education, approve her marriage to one of west Africa’s wealthiest men, and become godmother to her eldest daughter. But while Victoria took a genuine interest in Bonetta’s welfare, making the orphan a royal protege and meeting with her over the years, their relationship was part of a bigger agenda. Now, as a biography is published – Becoming Sarah Forbes Bonetta: A Yorùbá Woman in Queen Victoria’s Court – Randle has spoken of his family history. “I don’t think a human being, who has agency, could be ‘gifted’ from one to another, but had she not been gifted to Queen Victoria, would I be here today?” said Randle, a British-Nigerian barrister from London. The new book, by a Canadian academic, Prof Henry Lovejoy, charts how Bonetta was brought to England by Frederick Forbes, of the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron, which was set up to enforce the abolition of the transatlantic trade. Born in 1843 in Òkè-Òdàn, south-west Nigeria, Bonetta was originally called Àìná. Her family was killed in 1848 when her town was attacked by King Ghezo of Dahomey’s forces. Bonetta, then five, is believed to have been captured by the agodjié – the all-female regiment depicted in the Hollywood movie The Woman King – and held at King Ghezo’s court. In 1850, Forbes went to Dahomey – which is now Benin – to petition Ghezo to sign an anti-slavery treaty. The mission failed but Forbes asked Ghezo if he could take Bonetta to England. Bonetta would go on to live a life of renown, becoming one of the most artistically represented and widely reported African women of her time. But she was never truly free. Lovejoy’s book describes how, before Forbes arrived in England with her – giving her his own name and that of his ship, the Bonetta – he petitioned for her to be “the property of the crown”. This meant Bonetta was “effectively indentured to Queen Victoria until age 19” under the post-abolition legal structures, Lovejoy said. Bonetta was then married off to James Pinson Labulo Davies, a merchant and philanthropist, of whom she would write: “I don’t feel a particle of love for him.” Lovejoy’s research for the website liberatedafricans.org, developed with Kartikay Chadha, documents how, after abolition, more than 700,000 Africans “liberated” from enslavers were forced into indentures of up to 14 years “to pay for the cost of their own freedom” by governments including Britain’s. Lovejoy claims Bonetta was at the elite end of this bonded labour system, “educated to be a missionary who would Christianise Africa”. In her lifetime her image was exploited as imperial iconography, promoting the idea that British colonialism of Africa was a “civilising mission”. Lovejoy, of the University of Colorado Boulder, said: “Sarah’s imagery was used to project the idea of the queen’s benevolence – at a time when ‘liberated’ Africans are being forced into indentures.” Nonetheless, when Bonetta attended the 1858 wedding of Queen Victoria’s daughter, the Princess Royal, American abolitionists saw it as proof that Victoria, then the most powerful woman on Earth, believed in equality. For Randle, a plaster bust of Bonetta sculpted in 1851 by Benedetto Pistrucci, the Royal Mint’s chief engraver, symbolises the story’s “duality”. Randle saw it last year after Lovejoy had tracked it down to a private family collection in his research. “Who gets to see what their great ancestor looked like as a child, the cultural markings on her face? That is amazing. But at the same time it was a bust prepared for phrenological purposes, within a racist framework, where [Bonetta] was shown as an ‘excellent specimen’,” Randle said. Randle first learned his family history from his father, Adekunle Randle, a retired lawyer. The family still has the engraved goblet and plate that Queen Victoria gave to Bonetta’s daughter, Victoria, who, with the queen’s help, was educated at Cheltenham ladies’ college. Lovejoy’s book challenges the myths that Bonetta was a Yoruba princess, that she herself was Queen Victoria’s goddaughter, and that she spent most of her life in England. Randle, 37, who maintains his family’s ancestral ties with Òkè-Òdàn, welcomes research into Bonetta, who was a gifted linguist, musician, travel writer, educator and leading woman in 19th-century Lagos, until her death from tuberculosis in Madeira in 1880, aged 37. “Whether [Lovejoy’s] book is comfortable for me is beside the point,” Randle said. “It’s for the advancement of knowledge and how we learn from the past. Where the real discomfort lies is in what [Bonetta] was the symbol of, what she was used for. “But it would be a mistake to paint her story as entirely tragic,” he added. “My great-great-grandmother was very capable, courageous and dignified through adversity – through the trauma of losing her family, being displaced, and changing like a chameleon to fit into a culture so alien from what she’d known, she thrived. She is an early example of Black Britain.”

‘There’s a lot of racism, a lot of hatred’: Far right gains predicted as Israel heads to the polls

Four decades ago, when the extremist rabbi Meir Kahane won a single seat in Israel’s Knesset, other legislators passed a law to prevent him running again, left the chamber when he rose to speak and worked together to block discussion of his ethnonationalist proposals. These ranged from mass expulsions of Palestinians to apartheid provisions such as segregated beaches and the criminalisation of sex between Jews and gentiles. This month, Kahane’s political heirs may claim more Knesset seats in national elections than the remains of the once mighty Labor party, home of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Golda Meir. At an election rally this week, Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, mixed calls for ethnic cleansing and jokes about starving Palestinian prisoners with a proud anecdote about his conviction in 1998 over bumper stickers that read “Rabbi Kahane was right”. A poll for the Israel Hayom newspaper, published on Friday, forecast his Jewish Strength party would win nine seats in the 27 October election. The Democrats, successor to the Labor party led by former general Yair Golan, were predicted to claim eight seats. Ben-Gvir’s rise is one of the more extreme manifestations of a broad shift to the right among Jewish citizens of Israel. It is particularly pronounced among the young and will shape the country’s next government, regardless of who becomes prime minister after closely fought elections. More than 500,000 Israelis have reached voting age since the last election in 2022, and three-quarters of first-time Jewish voters define themselves as right or centre-right, a recent poll for Channel 12 television found (it did not survey Palestinian citizens of Israel). The generation voting for the first time came of age after the Oslo process collapsed, when the prospect of negotiating a political resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict seemed to be fading. They were teenagers during the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians. Militants took 251 living hostages and dead bodies to Gaza, leading to a two-year hostage crisis. “There’s a lot of people, especially young people, who think that there is no solving the conflict, that we’ll always be at war. There’s a lot of racism, a lot of hatred, but most of all, there’s fear,” said Erez Uzan, vice-chair of the Young Democrats. Bucking global trends, young Israelis are more rightwing than older generations and are likely to vote in a new Knesset with more rightwing members than the current chamber, said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst and public opinion researcher. Consistently rightwing ultra-Orthodox and nationalist religious communities make up a growing proportion of Israel’s Jewish population but still account for only around a quarter of the electorate, so demographics alone do not explain the growing age gap on political issues. “All Israelis, and particularly younger people, have been living in a political environment where not only is the government rightwing but the general terms of debate are really populist and ultra-nationalist. That’s all they know. They’re socialised into it,” Scheindlin said. “There’s been a real downplaying of anything to do with democracy, universal values or human rights. Those are seen as weak, if they’re discussed at all, possibly as bad as betrayal. And very few politicians talk about peace, concessions, negotiations, Palestinian self-determination, or even Palestinian wellbeing.” A consistent majority of Israeli polls show prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current coalition bloc with the ultra-Orthodox and the far right will fall well below the threshold of 61 seats needed to form a government. The opposition has a clear path to power through an alliance with parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, known as Arab parties inside the country. But the political shift right means most of the Jewish-led parties have ruled out such a coalition, although similar promises have been broken after past elections. Particularly when it comes to Palestine, most offer little challenge to Netanyahu’s claim that security can only be pursued through military domination and annexation of territory from Gaza to Syria and Lebanon. The peace deals that secured Israel’s borders with Jordan and Egypt, once seen as no less an existential threat than Iran is today, do not feature in political debate as an alternative path. Their campaigns focus on other issues, from promises to tackle corruption and bring accountability for the 7 October attacks to improving schools and stopping ultra-Orthodox draft dodging. The man leading the field to replace Netanyahu, Gadi Eisenkot, is a former head of the Israeli military who formulated the notorious Dahiya doctrine of using “disproportionate force” to cause damage and destruction. Naftali Bennett is a former prime minister and former chair of the settler council, who supports annexing much of the West Bank. Avigdor Lieberman wants to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and replace it with an Israeli-Jordanian confederation (though apparently he did not consult the Jordanians about this plan). No Jewish-led party backed a future Palestinian state and only the Democrats opposed settlement expansion, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported, after seeking all parties’ positions on the future of the occupied West Bank. Eisenkot’s Yashar party pledged to strengthen and expand settlements, which are legal under Israeli law. All settlements are illegal under international law. The Democrats, the only remaining political home for Israel’s Zionist left, are led by Golan, a former general and deputy head of Israel’s military who personally rushed to border communities under the Hamas attack on the morning of 7 October to rescue civilians. Golan rejects a two-state solution and is campaigning on a policy platform that would be solidly centrist in much of Europe. Yet even so, Israel’s political shift to the right is so pronounced that the party’s campaigners have been repeatedly attacked – physically and verbally – as a radical fringe. Last week, rightwing thugs assaulted Democrats volunteers manning a stand at Jerusalem’s historic Mahane Yehuda market, kicking, hitting and spitting at the group and stealing a phone while police stood by and watched. The scale of abuse prompted the party to train campaigners in non-violent direct action, “so they know how to handle themselves in a situation where they can keep safe and de-escalate,” said Uzan of the Young Democrats. The far right is on the rise globally, but Israeli politics that “revolve round constant conflict” heighten the appeal of ethnonationalist messages, Uzan said. “We grow up in fear, seeing war all around us – and that leads to a certain perspective. In the last 20 years, our leadership in the centre-left camp has avoided talking about security issues,” Uzan said, adding they had ceded that ground to the right. Now he and fellow campaigners are trying to tackle that failure at a grassroots level, including speaking to young people about the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan that were unpopular when signed but have brought lasting stability. The process is slow but effective, he says, pointing to an active young membership several thousand strong, well above parties who attract more young voters. Comedian turned activist Lior Schleien has been trying to have similar conversations with groups of young Israelis about the deadly futility of pursuing “total victory” in endless wars. He posts footage of some of the most shocking exchanges, featuring smiling teens advocating on camera for the mass killing or expulsion of Palestinians. “Lots of Arabs live here. They were born here, they are citizens like you and me. What will you do with them?” Schleien asks one group. “Kill them … give me a knife and I’ll murder them,” says one young man. Ben-Gvir is particularly adept on social media, where posts like a recent AI video laying out plans for ethnic cleansing have helped build more engagement with young voters than any Israeli politician except Netanyahu. But he is not an outlier for extremism among allies of the prime minister. Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich is a messianic settler who recently called to “wipe out Gaza”, and has vowed to “bury” a future Palestinian state. For this election, Smotrich has joined forces with Moshe Feiglin, a fundamentalist who has long called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians and the construction of a biblical Jewish temple where the al-Aqsa mosque compound now stands. The rise of the far right and religious fundamentalism, combined with Netanyahu’s assault on institutions protecting Israel’s partial democracy (Palestinians living under Israeli military rule in the occupied West Bank do not have the rights of citizens), mean many Israelis on the centre and left see this vote as existential. David Harel, the president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, says the country’s current path leads towards a bleak future as a corrupt, impoverished pariah state, dominated by messianic fundamentalists maintaining a “violent, cruel occupation”. “We are already in ‘stoppage time’. If we lose this time, there will be no second chance. The country we love so dearly will breathe its last. Plain and simple!” he told a rally in the northern city of Haifa. “That is why I have come here today, to ask and to implore. And if necessary, I will get down on my knees and beg. Please, please, please! Just go out and vote!”

Is sisterhood the secret to a long life? The Sardinian village that could hold key to women’s longevity

When Giovanna Marras opens the door to her home in Bolotana, a mountain village in central Sardinia, her eyes are bright with curiosity as she sizes up her visitors. Her sister, Mariangela, peeks out too, soon ushering her guests inside and handing out dishes of ice-cream. The sisters are full of life, talking animatedly. Giovanna is 101 and Mariangela is 99. Sitting in their living room, Giovanna swiftly recaps her life story: she excelled at school before moving to Cagliari, the capital of the Italian island, at 18 to train as a seamstress. The sisters went on to run a successful tailoring business in Bolotana before travelling the world after retirement. Neither married. “Someone did come to the house and ask my parents for my hand in marriage,” Giovanna said. “I told them to tell him to go away – I mean, a woman should at least know her future husband.” Mariangela is equally as feisty in her response. “I didn’t want to get married … I walk my own path, I don’t need support.” The details of their lives are now being examined as part of a broader pattern of exceptional longevity in Bolotana, where women are driving a trend that could put the village, population 2,266, in the running to be the world’s sixth “blue zone” – geographic areas with unusually high concentrations of centenarians. Sardinia was home to the first such zone, identified more than 25 years ago. A study by professors at the University of Sassari and the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the US, published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Aging last week, found that 13.8% of women in Bolotana who reach the age of 70 will live to 100 – placing it second in the world for female longevity after Hong Kong. Giovanna is the third eldest of six female centenarians in Bolotana, after Tonia Giglio and Maddalena Falchi, both 102. By the end of this year, two other women are expected to reach the milestone, and in 2027 two more, including Mariangela. The last male centenarian, Giovanni Madau, died in July, a few months short of his 102nd birthday. Tore Pedde, the president of Orminas, a cultural association, played a crucial role in uncovering Bolotana as a potential longevity hotspot after painstakingly searching its demographic archives, even tracking down centenarians born in the village who had long since moved overseas. Records of people born in Bolotana between 1900 and 1925 showed that 38 had lived beyond 100, putting their longevity rate at 57% higher than the Italian national average. “Up until the early 1900s, Bolotana followed a trend whereby men significantly outnumbered women among the elderly,” Pedde said. “From the early 20th century onwards, however, the trend shifted and women began to outnumber men. Later, the number of female centenarians started to far exceed the male ones, and this trend continues today.” While it has already been well established that women live longer for biological reasons, scientists behind the study are tracing family trees in search of genetic clues to Bolotana’s female longevity. They are also exploring the roles of diet, physical activity and social connections. A striking characteristic of Bolotana’s female centenarians is their independence. The Marras sisters still cook for themselves, eating a varied but clean diet without forsaking meat, cheese or wine. Mariangela does the shopping, which entails a walk down a hilly street and back. The women have grit and are remarkably lucid. Filomena Scarpa, a former language teacher who turned 100 in January, began learning German in her 90s and was a voracious reader before a problem with her left eye started to hinder her. “It saddens me not to be able to read with the same level of consistency,” she said. She goes to a personal trainer twice a week. “Because I can’t sit around all day.” Scarpa, who has two sons, is a childhood friend of Falchi, who now lives with her daughter about an hour away in Oristana. The pair speak often. Falchi is notorious in Bolotana for smoking like a trooper. “I told her to quit because it’s not good for her health,” Scarpa said. “But she said: ‘It hasn’t got me so far, so I shall carry on.’” Bolotana is situated in Sardinia’s Marghine mountains, about 70 miles (110km) from the island’s original blue zone – a cluster of villages nestled on the slopes of the central and eastern provinces. “What’s special here is that for the first time we’ve identified an area where women live to a great age, whereas the original blue zone was predominantly male,” said Giovanni Mario Pes, who led the study and is a co-creator of the blue zone concept. “We therefore need to explain why longevity specifically affects women here.” Unlike the original villages, Bolotana is relatively close to cities, including Sassari and Alghero on the west coast. Still, its streets are steep, providing residents with unavoidable exercise. The environment is unspoiled and most people still eat fruit and vegetables grown in their gardens. One thing Pes noted among its female residents was a “strong sense of sisterhood”. “This felt quite unusual and is something I’d like to explore scientifically,” he added. Francesco Manconi, the mayor of Bolotana, believes the sociality is key. “There is an abundance of natural affection, whether from family members, neighbours or friends, towards our elderly,” he said, adding that the village placed “a great importance” on ensuring they could stay in their own homes. Betti Uda, who runs a tourism business, said the village’s elderly women were determined and still tried to live purposefully. “If they want to do something, they will – nothing holds them back.”