The Unsurprising Appeal of Afrobeats Choir Renditions

On an evening Uber ride with a colleague, after clocking out from his internship at a law firm in Abuja, Austin Nwamara imagined how a song would sound if a village Catholic choir sang it. Right then, a song came up on the radio, and Nwamara sang along, belting out in choral style. His colleague and the Uber driver laughed while advising him to make something more of it. So began the journey to what many know today as the Kabusa Oriental Choir.

Three weeks later, in March 2019, Nwamara had recorded a song with a group of people he met at a studio and released the first Kabusa Oriental Choir video on Instagram. He was shocked by the reception and the virality they gained.

“I didn't take it seriously; I just went to a studio, recorded it, and then recruited a group of people. We shot the video and posted it,” he tells OkayAfrica, “Then to my greatest surprise, it went viral. I remember being in the office when my phone was just blowing up. That had never happened to me before.”

But with virality comes the need to sustain the success, turning it from a one-off moment to a lasting career. This was top of mind for Nwamara, who had now made the choir official and was leading it as a director. While working on singing gigs across Abuja, Owerri, Port Harcourt, and Lagos, he had to decide on the longevity of the choir and what could tide them over.

Nwamara quit his job in January 2020 and began brainstorming with his team on original song ideas that could leave a mark beyond the Afrobeats cover they had been doing. Valentine's Day became the golden opportunity for them to make a song they believe many people would relate to, which is how their popular song “Valentine is Coming” came to be.

Although Kabusa Oriental Choir expected some form of virality with their Valentine song, it blew up beyond their expectation in 2020. By the next year, the first version of the song resurfaced, but with people requesting another version. The choir got to work, releasing a new verse. 

This became a tradition; every year has a new version, but the song’s intention, chorus, and question “Valentine is coming, where is your boyfriend?” remain the same. This year’s version, the sixth verse, currently has over 6 million views on TikTok, with over 28,000 streams on Spotify.

The choir's music style has made them much loved by their fans, garnering about 1.8 million monthly listeners on Spotify and over 48 million listens to their version of Omah Lay’s “Soso.” They have also set the tone, creating a lasting niche for themselves with tongue-in-cheek lyrics in their original singles, “Detty December”, “Cannabi”, and others. 

With 73 choristers, the choir has performed in various festivals and concerts in different parts of the world, including France, Switzerland, Germany, and more. Yet, they remain more widely known for “Valentine is Coming.” Nwamara believes this is a reflection of the current cultural pulse regarding love. 

“We are in the era of ‘cruise.’ I don't know if we were pushed into it due to hardships, because there was a time we were deep and sober,” he says, “But right now we are a generation of unserious people, and that has eaten into the art we create and consume.”

According to Tochukwu Igboko, label manager for WeTalkSound, songs like “Valentine is Coming” or those about being anti-love or spotlighting “player lifestyles” are increasingly gaining popularity because they are edgier and more relatable to the new generation of listeners. However, he insists that love songs for real lovers still exist, even though a lot of them are by underground artists.

“Popular Afrobeats songs, even the ones that [are] about love, are definitely not encouraging togetherness,” Igboko says, “But there [are] still a lot of love songs, especially by new age Nigerian artists like Yarden. They are just not getting as much attention. It's a new generation thing that has an impact on listeners and how they consume music.”

Love songs have been a major part of Afrobeats and have contributed largely to how the world discovers and engages with it. 2Baba’s “African Queen” is one of the most recognized Afrobeats songs in the world, ranking No. 1 on Billboard's top 50 Afrobeats songs. Seyi Sodimu's “Love Me Jeje” was so much of a hit after its release in 1997, and Tems’ sample of it 27 years later snagged the Nigerian musician her second Grammy in 2025. 

Meanwhile, songs like Rema's Calm Down and CKay's “Love Nwantiti” have since become global hits, with over 2 billion and 1 billion streams, respectively. 

Ultimately, despite the cynical and wry approach to some Afrobeats love songs today, tunes of affection are still an essential part of Afrobeats and the signifier of the cultural approach to love.