African popular music, like African traditional music, is vast and varied. Most contemporary genres of African popular music build on cross-pollination with western popular music. Many genres of popular music like blues, jazz, salsa, zouk, and rumba derive to varying degrees on musical traditions from Africa, taken to the Americas by African slaves. These rhythms and sounds have subsequently been adapted by newer genres like rock, and rhythm and blues. Likewise, African popular music has adopted elements, particularly the musical instruments and recording studio techniques of western music.

Afropop

Afropop (also spelled Afro-Pop or Afro Pop) is a term sometimes used to refer to contemporary African pop music. The term does not refer to a specific style or sound, but is used as a general term for African popular music.

Influence of Afro-Cuban music

Cuban music has been popular in sub-Saharan Africa since the mid twentieth century. It was Cuban music that more than any other, that provided the initial template for Afropop. To the Africans, clave-based Cuban popular music sounded both familiar and exotic.The Encyclopedia of Africa v. 1. states:

The term popular music belongs to a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of written music, although since the beginning of the recording industry, it is also disseminated through recordings. Traditional music forms such as early blues songs or hymns were passed orally, or to smaller, local audiences. The original application of the term is to music of the 1880s Tin Pan Alley period in the United States. Although popular music sometimes is known as "pop music", the two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music is a generic term for music of all ages that appeals to popular tastes, whereas pop music usually refers to a specific musical genre within popular music. The song structure of popular music commonly involves the verse, chorus or refrain, and bridge as the different sections within a piece. With digital access to music, some popular music forms have become global, while others are have wide appeal within the culture of origin. Through hybridity, or mixture across musical genres, new popular music forms are able to be manufactured to reflect the ideals of a global culture. The examples of the African continent, Indonesia, and the Middle East explain how hybridity can develop into new forms of popular music.

Popular Music (Swedish: Populärmusik från Vittula) is a 2004 Swedish comedy film based on the novel of the same name by Mikael Niemi.

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Popular Music from Vittula (Swedish: Populärmusik från Vittula) is a novel by Mikael Niemi. It was published in Sweden in 2000, the English translation by Laurie Thompson followed in 2003. A film based on the book was released in 2004.