Genre
Afrobeat chord progressions
West African genre with complex polyrhythms
What makes it sound like this
Harmonic fingerprints.
- Repetitive progressions
- Modal harmony
- Call and response
- Polyrhythmic
Where it lives
Common keys.
The tonal centres afrobeat keeps coming back to — usually because they sit well on the instruments the style was built on. Each key page carries its full diatonic chord set, and links its relative minor for the darker corners of the genre.
Progressions not seeded yet
We have Afrobeat's harmonic traits and common keys, but not a verified set of characteristic progressions — so this page doesn't invent any. In the meantime, the full progression library covers the patterns underneath most of what afrobeat borrows from, and each of the keys above opens its complete diatonic chord set.