About Afro-Nyota: Afro Nyota “African stars,” coined by ensemble members of Fall 2019, maintains a sense of communality and community as its core value. We draw our repertory from different genres and types of music across the African continent, i.e., Highlife, Juju, Taarab, Kwela, Afrobeat, Afro-Pop, Soukous, et cetera. The ensemble uses the word “contemporary” to distinguish, capture, and portray its essence and objectives: to perform popular African music(s) that represent the vastness, complexities, and diversities of day-to-day sonic soundscapes of contemporary African nations; to replicate and provide African communal experiences to ensemble members, participants and audiences.