African songs in films, TV shows and video games have been reaching huge audiences for years, often without viewers knowing whose voice or drum they were hearing. Marvel flew its composer to Senegal. Beyoncé built a whole album around African stars. And millions of gamers first heard Fela Kuti while driving a stolen car through a fake New York.
Here are ten times African songs and musicians ended up in films, TV and video games, and the stories behind them.
1. Mulatu Astatke in Broken Flowers (2005)
Director Jim Jarmusch built the soundtrack of his Bill Murray comedy-drama around instrumentals by Ethiopian jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke, mixed with garage rock, soul and reggae. Mulatu’s music works as the film’s main score.
Read how Mulatu mixed Ethiopian scales with jazz and our guide to the Éthiopiques series.
2. Ayub Ogada’s “Kothbiro” in Hollywood
The Kenyan nyatiti player’s gentle song “Kothbiro”, sung in Luo, found its way onto Hollywood soundtracks and introduced a global audience to the eight-string Luo lyre. Read the Ayub Ogada story.
3. Fela Kuti in Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)
Rockstar Games put two of Fela’s protest songs, “Zombie” and “Sorrow Tears and Blood”, on the in-game radio of Grand Theft Auto IV. “Zombie” was the 1977 song that mocked Nigerian soldiers and led to the army raid on his Kalakuta Republic.
A song that once got a commune burnt down ended up soundtracking car chases for millions of players. Read the story of “Zombie”.
4. Baaba Maal and the Black Panther score (2018)
When Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson started on Marvel’s Black Panther, he spent a month in Senegal, touring for a week with singer Baaba Maal and then recording local musicians to build the base of the score. He then spent a week at the International Library of African Music in Grahamstown, South Africa.
The talking drum carries messages in the score, and the challenge scenes feature sabar drumming by Magatte Sow. The score won both the Academy Award and the Grammy for Best Original Score. Here is Baaba Maal’s part in it.
5. South African artists on Black Panther: The Album (2018)
Kendrick Lamar’s companion album to the film brought in South African artists Babes Wodumo, Sjava, Yugen Blakrok and Saudi. Sjava said he joined because it would “help inspire the nation [and] the whole continent”. Saudi said he chose “to stand for and fully represent my ethnicity and my origin”.
6. Beyoncé’s The Lion King: The Gift (2019)
Beyoncé’s companion album to Disney’s 2019 remake of The Lion King was built around African artists. Wizkid, Burna Boy, Mr Eazi, Tiwa Savage, Tekno, Yemi Alade, Busiswa, Moonchild Sanelly and Cameroon’s Salatiel all appear as lead artists. A TV special, Making the Gift, was filmed in Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and the United States.
Ghanaian producer GuiltyBeatz said at the time it would “open the gateway” for African sounds in America, and Yemi Alade called it “another awakening”. The album was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album at the Grammys.
7. “Brown Skin Girl” with Wizkid (2019)
The standout song from The Gift was “Brown Skin Girl”, with Beyoncé, her daughter Blue Ivy Carter, Saint Jhn and Wizkid. Its video, which celebrated dark-skinned women and featured hairstyles such as the Nigerian Orisha Bunmi, won Best Music Video at the 2021 Grammy Awards.
That made Wizkid a Grammy winner, and Blue Ivy earned a Guinness World Record as the youngest individually credited Grammy winner. Nigerian producer P2J, who worked on it, said it was “one of the first songs in my career that I thought was going to be very special”.
8. Rema on FIFA 21 (2020)
EA Sports’ football games have long been a launch pad for new music, and in September 2020 Rema‘s songs were included on the official FIFA 21 soundtrack., two years before “Calm Down” made him a global name.
Football and Rema stayed linked. On 12 June 2026 he performed “Goals” with Lisa of Blackpink and Anitta at the opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup.
9. Tems’ “No Woman, No Cry” in Wakanda Forever (2022)
Marvel chose Tems‘ cover of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” for the teaser trailer of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. When the cover was released in August 2022 on the film’s prologue EP, it debuted at number one on Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales chart.
10. “Lift Me Up”, co-written by Tems (2022)
Tems was not done with Wakanda. She co-wrote “Lift Me Up”, Rihanna’s comeback ballad for the film, with Rihanna, director Ryan Coogler and Ludwig Göransson. It was nominated for Best Original Song at both the Golden Globes and the 95th Academy Awards, where Rihanna performed it live.
That put a Nigerian songwriter’s name on the Oscars shortlist. Read how Tems became Afrobeats’ most wanted voice.
Why African songs in films keep getting bigger
Twenty years ago, African music in Hollywood mostly meant a borrowed melody or a bit of background drumming. The list above shows the change: from Mulatu’s instrumentals in an indie film to Tems co-writing an Oscar-nominated song. Studios now hire African artists by name, credit them properly and use them to sell films to audiences on the continent and beyond.
