COKE Studio, commonly known by individuals as the music show on television that encourages collaboration of various musicians across the African Continent, has become a household name here in Ghana.

The show encourages non-competitive music alliances and celebrates the diversity of African music talents with top Ghanaian producer Killbeatz making a strong impact in the Coke Studio this year.

2017 presented the 5th edition of Coke Studio and again, upcoming artistes had the opportunity to work with some of the best local and international music and production talents.

Artistes from different genres, generations and regions across different countries in Africa came together to create modern and authentic African sounds through musical fusions.

What was different about the 5th edition of Coke Studio was that unlike previous editions that had a total of 11 countries participating, this year had 16 countries.

This was as a result of the Coke Studio merger between Coke Studio Africa and Coke Studio South Africa. The Coke Studio 5 is broadcast in more than 30 countries across Africa.

This implied that the Coke Studio Artistes and production now included artistes from South Africa, Rwanda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Togo, Madagascar, Mauritius, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Mozambique, DRC, Ethiopia, and Cameroon.

The last edition featured Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Mozambique, DRC, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Cote d’ Ivoire, and Togo whilst South Africa had its own production independently.

One can only imagine the magic that was created through music collaborations by the various artistes and viewed across different countries across the African continent.

This season featured seven talented Nigerian artistes: Olamide, Patoranking, Yemi Alade, Falz, Chidinma, and Runtown, while Dremo participated as an upcoming artiste that performed pan-african collaborations on the show.

Few decades ago, the music scene was dominated by foreign sounds, but this trend has shifted. Nowadays, there is a hunger for local tunes.

African artistes are putting out music productions that portray their culture in various genres that are taking over the media airways and receiving acceptance by music lovers, not just in Africa, but all over the world.

If the music industry is ever going to have a boom, then local content in music is definitely going to be that catalyst.

Another potent attribute that Coke Studio brings to the table in terms of influencing African music is collaboration.

The show presented collaborations between various music artistes that allowed for a blend of creativity across various genres. Artistes showcased their talents by creating cover versions of other artistes’ songs and also go on to collaborate and create original songs.

Fans really loved listening to some cover versions and without Coke Studio Africa 2017, for instance, music lovers would never have listened to South Africa Nasty C’s version of Runtown’s “Mad over You” or the original song done by both of them titled, “Said.”

There were other collaborations that really struck a chord: Olamide and South Africa AKA’S, “Kolole”; Falz the Bahd Guy and Ugandan Ragga Musician, Bebe Cool’s, “Heart Skip”; and Tanzania’s Alikiba and Patoranking’s, “Katika” are some of the original songs made at this year’s Coke Studio.

For cover versions, Chidinma’s version of Kenya’s Sauti Sol’s “Live and Die in Africa” and Yemi Alade’s version of Congolese French Rapper, Youssoupha’s, “Les disques de mon pere,” were simply beautiful.

Without the Coke Studio experience, the world would have not been able to listen to the awesome music creations that were done by the talented artistes.

The music sector in Nigeria has grown in leaps. Over the past decades artistes have grown from international obscurity to global recognition. Coke Studio is creating the platform for upcoming artistes to be able to project their musical talents to the world.

Artistes like Dremo, from Nige- ria, was able to collaborate with South Africa’s Mafikizolo and Kenya’s Nyashinski to do a remix of his song titled “Ojere”.

By that singular act, the rising “O.B.O” signed-ojere crooner got exposed to the opportunity to create a remix of one of his popular songs with music giants from Kenya and South Africa.

Again with Kenya and South Africa also known as top music hubs, it’s certainly a break for any rising music artiste seeking to penetrate other African markets.

This year’s edition also showcased talented music producers. Nigeria’s Masterkraft and Gospelonthebeatz showed their prolific music producing skills working with different artistes and creating great songs after songs. They were not the only music producers at this year’s edition. Other music producers were DJ Maphorisa (South Africa), Nahreel (Tanzania), Sketchy Bongo (South Africa), Gemini Major (Malawi/south Africa), Killbeatz

(Ghana) and Shado Chris (Ivory Coast).

Masterkraft produced music from three sets of pairs namely Alikiba (Tanzania) and Patoranking (Nigeria); Sauti Sol (Kenya) and Chidinma (Nigeria); Mi Casa (South Africa) and Anselmo Ralph (Angola). DJ Maphorisa produced musical collaborations with Khaligraph (Kenya) and Bruce Melodie (Rwanda) and Yemi Alade (Nigeria) and Youssoupha (Congo).

Tanzania’s Nahreel produced musical collaborations from Mr Bow (Mozambique) and Jah Prayzah (Zimbabwe) paired with Uganda’s Ykee Benda, Laura Beg (Mauritius) and Sami Dan (Ethiopia), as well as Nandy (Tanzania) and Betty G (Ethiopia). Gospelondabeatz did productions with three pairing artistes: Falz (Nigeria) and Bebe

Cool (Uganda), Kiff No Beat (Ivory Coast) and Wawa Salegy (Madagascar), as well as Joey B (Ghana) and Amanda Black (South Africa).

Without exhausting the breakdown of each of the music producer’s deliverable, this shows the versatility of each of the Coke Studio Africa producers, as they were able to create sounds that resonated as globally acceptable music standards.