Over five billion streams to date. Multi-platinum records. Hundreds of thousands of tickets sold globally. Most record labels on the planet would proudly hold up these statistics as evidence of 10 years spent building an incredibly successful music company. But these particular accolades are in fact not associated with any music company: they belong to the legendary alumni of ART X Live!, an event which began with the ambition to celebrate the artistry of African talent, and would go on to be so much more, to so many.

Back in 2016, alongside their newly launched fair—one that would go on to define art on the continent over the next decade—ART X Lagos founder Tokini Peterside-Schwebig and her team launched ART X Live!, at times a mini music festival, and what would go on to be undoubtedly one of the most important live music platforms in West Africa. And in the process, ordained an unlikely marriage, in a city whose creative ecosystem was already plagued by unnecessary Chinese walls. 

The symbiotic relationship between art and music wasn’t exactly novel – art fairs such as the Saint Louis Art Fair and the Cherrywood Art Fair in Texas had mined this union for years to great results. Miami’s Art Basel has become an unofficial end-of-year music celebration in North America. One of the world’s most recognised music festivals, Coachella, still stubbornly insists on formally being referred to as the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.  But in Africa, the two art forms were estranged lovers, kept apart by the powers that be, especially when it came to the audiences they both served. Over the next decade, shepherded by well-respected music executive Lanre Masha, ART X Live! would change that, by not only becoming an important evening for the art community, but a vital cog in the continent’s latest musical renaissance.

For myself, the Editor-in-Chief of The NATIVE Magazine, a music-first publication for the young African, I used ART X Live! as what I would like to call a “heat check”. When we were deciding which artists to feature on the cover of the magazine or book to headline our own music festival, ART X Live! served as a real-life litmus test for the magnitude of the star. The ART X Live! alumni today read like a future Hall of Fame of African music: Ghanaian Pop star Amaarae; Alté pioneers Odunsi The Engine, Lady Donli & Cruel Santino; Grammy-nominated singers Lojay and Tay Iwar, and many more. 

Through dynamic and forward-thinking booking, ART X Live! quickly cemented its position in the live music circuit as one of the most coveted slots for any artist on the verge of crossing over into the mainstream. This is particularly noteworthy because it’s not the biggest show—either in capacity or performance fees. Artists are expected to deliver live sets, usually to a crowd of less than one thousand people. But it did act as the perfect heat check because it was a reliable illustration of the true artistry of its acts. 

Watching 2018’s breakout star Teni (fka Teni The Entertainer) deliver a masterclass in live interpolations and crowd control as she performed “Askamaya,” her bubbling hit at the time, was confirmation of a wunderkind who would go on to define an era in Nigerian Pop Music. We put her on the cover of our magazine in the following months, in large part because of what we witnessed that evening at ART X Live! 2018. 

Every revolution needs a platform, and over the last decade, ART X Live! has acted as a canvas and a compass for modern Nigerian music. At once celebrating the present and introducing what would come, it’s incredibly difficult to talk about ART X Live! without acknowledging the pivotal role it played in the emergence and triumph of the Alté movement—a cross-disciplinary, unofficial coalition of creative talent in Nigeria that became the defining influence in Afrobeats from 2016 to 2020 and beyond. 

In addition to the musical talent associated with the movement that graced the ART X Live! stage—the aforementioned trio of Odunsi The Engine, Lady Donli and Cruel Santino, as well as BOJ, The Cavemen and Wavy The Creator—ART X Live! provided one of the first true environments for genuine cross-disciplinary collaboration. By pairing musical talent with some of the country’s most creative minds, such as the late, great polymath Baignor Joiner, photographer Stephen Tayo and curator Faridah Folawiyo, ART X Live! had kept true to its union vows, becoming a looking glass for Lagos’ creative core. 

A decade on, ART X Live! is more than Alté music—recent editions have seen headliners exhibit sounds from Fuji, Amapiano, R&B, Electronic and Street-Pop. A rare oasis for talent, getting to perform to a Lagos audience genuinely there to enjoy the music. And for the audience, a novel experience of witnessing rehearsed performances of future stars with live vocals. 

As Nigerian music continues to evolve, drawing inspiration from South African electronic music, as well as the usual American pillars of R&B and Hip-Hop, ART X Live! in recent years has morphed into a quasi-edutainment show. This writer would argue that this is exactly when ART X Live! is at its best: weaving a nexus between then, now and forever. There was a palpable sense of wonder from both artists and fairgoers during 2024’s headline performance by Fuji maestro Adewale Ayuba. 

As the fair’s patrons were transported to perhaps simpler times watching the great man, the starry-eyed younger audience members had their minds blown as they were introduced to the original songs sampled on their current playlist favourites, Shazam in hand. The Fuji king’s booking was a not-so-subtle nod to our homogenous genres underpinning the global success of newer stars such as Asake and Seyi Vibez, and a reminder to never forget the pioneers. 

He was ably followed by a dancefloor-filling, bassline-heavy set from Aniko, Lagos’ new favourite DJ who is winning over hearts one rave at a time through her Group Therapy series. Where else could you get the ravers and the Fuji lovers in one place, if not at ART X Live!? Acting as a haven for creativity and pushing the envelope across music performance and visual arts, ART X Live! has spent a decade providing its illustrious alumni with an environment to be whoever they want to be, at least for one night only. 

What started as an unlikely marriage between art and music went on to boast an alumni that produced over five billion streams, multi-platinum records, and hundreds of thousands of tickets sold globally. Nine nights and 40 artists later, ART X Live! lights up every year as a seminal evening in Lagos’ music and art calendar, respectively. 

Not bad for an unlikely marriage. Who ever said there was no love in Lagos?