Is “Afro Indie” a catchall designation or truly a developing and definable category of music? While “indie” is often difficult to characterize, it seems to be taking shape within the African music context as artists and the industry embrace the idea of a broadening of what constitutes African music. The conversation on the Afro indie label is still nascent. In 2018, Vice Portugal ran a story on a group of Black artists making their mark in the white-dominated indie scene in Brazil. In 2020, Pitchfork ran a widely distributed story on being black in the American indie music scene. Both articles spoke to the Afro indie label’s power to hold Black musicians who fall outside stereotypes of what kinds of music Black people make, as well as how the label offers a defined container for music business professionals to invest in.
