Since Fela Anikulapo-Kuti is now on Broadway, via the musical Fela!, it is worth reflecting on the state of Afrobeat some twelve years after the great man's passing from this earthly realm to that of the ancestors. For those who don't know, Fela pretty much invented the musical genre of Afroeat (fellow Nigerian O.J. "Orlando Julius" Ekemode had a hand in it as did Fela's drummer Tony Allen), a hypnotic blend of funk, jazz and African elements topped by incendiary social and political commentary, most often dliveredin pidgin English. During Fela's lifetime, other artists (Sunny Ade, Sonny Okosun etc) incorporated elements of Afrobeat in their music and some attempted their own version of it, but in most cases the results seemed like lesser versions of Fela.
After Fela's passing, there was an Afrobeat void, filled, at first, mainly by Tony Allen and Fela's oldest son Femi, who had played in his father's band for many years before starting his own band a few years prior to his father's death. But soon, in Ngieria, Europe and American, various musicians stepped forward with their own versions of Afrobeat, incorporating fresh elements of jazz, Latin music, electronica, soul and more. In Nigeria, you had folks such as Duro Ikujenyo; n the UK there was Dele Sosimi and in the U.S. there was Brooklyn-based collective Antibalas. Indeed, when Dele Sosimi came to New York, Antibalas backed him with such effortless precision that it was the most satisfying live Afrobeat I'd seen since seeing Fela in Nigeria in the Seventies. So it is fitting--indeed crucial to the play's success--that Antibalas provides the music for the just-opened theatrical production which brings Fela to Broadway. Ironically it is a New York City Afrobeat band providing authenticity to a Broadway
about Fela--he who carries death in a pouch--Anikulapo-Kuti.
Comments