National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

African pop—sometimes abbreviated to "Afropop"—is a catch-all term for all the many varieties of popular music that grew up all over sub-Saharan Africa in the later half of the 20th century—and especially in the wake the independence era that began with Ghana's separation from the British Empire in 1957. African pop is an elastic term that encompasses everything from the gentle palmwine, highlife and South African jazz sounds of the 1950s and '60s, to the buoyant guitar pop of the '70s and '80s to the homegrown African hip hop of today.

But some African pop styles stand out above all others for their impact and enduring popularity. In the '50s Africa experienced an international rumba craze, and bands from Senegal to the Congo were adapting the Afro-Cuban style to local tastes. In the '70s, a hot, guitar-based sound called soukous—itself an evolution of Congolese rumba—sprang out of the Congo (called Zaire for most of that decade) and took the continent by storm. In the later '70s and 1980s, Jamaican reggae hit Africa like a tidal wave, propelled by the music's message of pan-African uplift and Bob Marley's historic 1980 concert in Harare, Zimbabwe. And in recent decades, rap MCs have sprouted up all over Africa, with particularly fertile hip-hop scenes in Senegal, Tanzania and South Africa.

Africa also has its perennial musical powerhouses. Countries like South Africa, Mali, Senegal, Cape Verde, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, that host vibrant and always-evolving music scenes —where the music never stands still and some of the hottest sounds are reserved for locals only. Then, of course, there's the Congo—the true colossus of African pop music, where a long-running civil war has forced many of the country's greatest artists to live abroad. These talented expatriates have turned Europe, particularly France and Belgium into a hotbed of African musical production, effectively re-colonizing the former colonial powers with the infectious, irresistible sounds of African pop. —Tom Pryor