South African singer and songwriter, Tyla Laura Seethal, raised dust at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards (MTV VMAs), after winning the Best Afrobeats Artiste category for her hit single, Water.

The singer, during her acceptance speech at the awards ceremony, which held on Wednesday, September 11, at New York’s UBS Arena, publicly and verbally pointedly offered the organisers of the award a crash course on muddling up all music from Africa as Afrobeats, as she told the world that she does not represent the genre wherein she won the ‘Best Artiste’ and instead smartly identify with her home country’s music genre, Amapiano.

“I know there’s a tendency to group all African artistes as Afrobeats. Even though Afrobeats has run things and opened doors for us, African music is so diverse. I come from South Africa and I represent Amapiano and my culture,” Tyla said before shouting out to Rema, Tems, Ayra Starr, Burna Boy, Wikzid, Davido, and other Afrobeats acts with whom she was nominated.

As a music genre, Amapiano is a hybrid of deep house, jazz, soul and lounge music characterised by synths and percussive basslines. It is taken from the Zulu word for ‘pianos’, a blend of kwaito and house music that emerged in South Africa in the mid-2010s. Its sample packs often incorporate sounds sourced from gqom music.

Meanwhile, Tyla’s speech attracted some criticism from Nigerian observers who questioned her decision to largely reproach the Afrobeats after winning in a category of the genre with a song that’s clearly Afrobeats in its composition.

Industry observers say that Tyla’s recent statement on Afrobeats is a tacit disassociation from the genre and movement in what has been a disturbing trend in Nigerian music. The genre is said to have derived its name from Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s Afrobeat which, according to the documentary, Afrobeats: The Back Story, was coined in the 1970s. While Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat developed in the 1960s and 1970s.