Veteran music industry powerhouse, Abi Babalola, shared her extraordinary story of building the Afrobeats touring ecosystem from the ground up during the Martell Swift Conversations, hosted by Sheniece Charway, which was featured on the OkayAfrica social media channel. With over 15 years in the business, Babalola has been a foundational force, witnessing the early days of producer Don Jazzy and tagging along with her uncle, the artist JJC. Her journey began with an electrifying Nigerian independence concert at the Hackney Empire, where the crowd's reaction solidified her desire to "do this".
Babalola was present at the forefront of the movement when the music was still referred to as Afro Pop, long before the term "Afrobeats" emerged after 2011. A landmark moment she helped create was the Afro Beats Festival, organized with Cocoa Phoenix and Smade. This event, featuring headliners Psquare and a young, energetic Wizkid, was the first proper Afrobeats festival held at the Hammer Apollo. The marketing effort required intense grassroots hustling: the team distributed physical flyers on the street, created mixtapes with DJs that included embedded adverts, and sold physical tickets through food shops for a commission. Despite the lack of digital tools like Instagram or Facebook ads, the event sold out and was oversubscribed, proving to industry venues that they could "open their doors to this thing".
Her work with Wizkid continued, as she managed his first UK tour in 2012, which also sold out. She employed an unconventional, American-borrowed strategy of taking him to secondary schools to cultivate a dedicated fan base. Those students, now in their mid-twenties, form the "hardcore" foundation of Wizkid FC because they "grew up with him". Beyond touring, Babalola was a prolific music video producer, creating hundreds of videos, including D’Banj’s "Skelewu" (which she produced while heavily pregnant). She describes this work, often alongside her husband Tunde Phoenix and her younger brother Moussa, as a "family affair," rooted in a collective belief in Afrobeats' potential to produce quality music videos and concerts.
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Babalola’s biggest professional achievement to date is overseeing both Burna Boy stadium tours, where 60,000 people attended the stadium each time. She admitted the second stadium show was "so scary" because the scale is dramatically different; moving from a 20,000-capacity arena like the O2 to a 60,000-capacity stadium requires a "liver of steel". Stadium tours are a "completely different ball game". Key planning aspects included liaising with local authorities and the police regarding safety, managing noise disturbance for local residents, arranging parking, and independently hiring massive power sources—bringing in generators "as big as your house". Despite the monumental logistics, these shows were executed by a small, bespoke team at Cocoa Bar.
A major disparity in Afrobeat's touring compared to pop tours is team size. While a pop artist has large teams with specific job descriptions, an Afrobeat's tour often relies on one or two people who "wear several hats". Babalola often finds herself as that single person thinking about ticketing, marketing, stage design, crew logistics, hiring, firing, payroll, and artist welfare, often dealing with the reality that the budget is "just not available" for larger teams.
She also serves as the creative architect for stage productions, notably for the Ashake Longa Boy tour. Babalola drew the entire stage framework by hand, using "rubbish" stickmen drawings, to translate Ashake’s desire for "ghetto" aesthetics rooted in his childhood on Lagos Island. This involved incorporating elements like mama put signs (a type of cafe), a barbershop, drums, and sign boards personally named after his roads. To maintain authenticity across global tours, they had to ship the entire set from the UK to Washington and back, which was a "logistic nightmare".
Babalola confronts persistent stigma, noting that the minute venues hear "African artist," they often classify the event as "high-risk," imposing restrictions like limiting backstage capacity and requiring more security. Furthermore, she revealed the stressful reality of tour management, which involves difficult decisions made on the fly, such as cutting a support artist’s set at MSG in New York to avoid a $25,000 fine for every 15 minutes they ran late. She managed to negotiate a 10-minute grace period by being compliant and having a strong relationship with venue management.
As a woman in this field, she maintains a "refuse to be bullied" policy, especially when dealing with people who underestimate her as a black female. She is currently focused on growing her female-led company, Hera Touring, to build its brand and positioning. She stresses the need for patience, the ability to multitask, and, above all, common sense in her role. Ultimately, Babalola wants her legacy to be "Auntie Abby," the person who "delivered" and made an impact that her daughters can be proud of. She believes Afrobeats can never die because the music is rooted in African culture, which "will never die".
