Send "Fela Kuti " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 There's a diner in central Virginia called the Blue Moon that used to play a Fela Kuti compilation what seemed like every Sunday morning for at least a couple of years-- something I mention because it's how I first heard his music and how I remember it best: Over and over again, at a decent volume. His recordings are defiantly samey, but his style is unmistakable: the horn-head/solo structure of American and European jazz applied to funk; 12-minute songs that seem to start somewhere in the middle; lots of congas, lots of honking. Something like the Nigerian James Brown, sure, but also a little like Monet's series of haystacks-- each iteration a little different but disciplined in their similarity, always some minor variation on an ideal.So while two straight discs of Fela is exhausting, it's probably the most suitable way to digest him. I can't say that Black President (which is exactly the same as MCA's out-of-print The Best of Fela Kuti) contains all of Fela's best material-- he has too many records, and they've only been sporadically available on CD. (Knitting Factory, by the way, intends to reissue 45 of them over the next year and a half.) What I can say is that his music is so intense and consistent in mood that lesser tracks in his discography just make themselves obvious-- they don't appear hypnotized by the sprit; they lack energy. In 2006 I tried to listen to 20 Fela albums in a row and came to two conclusions: For the most part, his best songs had already made it on compilations, and that compilations best convey the full brunt of his music. There's also the issue of consumer value: Most of Fela's original albums featured only two tracks, each about 15 minutes, so a $20 compilation just gives you a lot more to chew on than a $12 album. Fela: The Best of the Black President isn't just a good place for someone starting out, it's probably the only Fela album many will need to own. True, some of the songs are edited, but if you need the full 15-minute version of "Gentlemen" instead of the 11-minute one, then the Best of is probably not for you in the first place....full text |
| Popmatters |
| By the time Fela Ransome-Kuti changed his name to Anikulapo—“he who carries death in his pouch”—he had already built a fence around his house in Nigeria and declared it an independent state: The Kalakuta Republic. His records began to sell in the millions throughout Africa and the colonial government of Nigeria played an incessant cat and mouse game with Kuti for the rest of his career: arrests, beatings, and imprisonment were perennial events in the musician’s life. When Kuti sang his classic attack against the military, the frightening, melancholy “Zombie”, at the Festival for Black Arts and Culture in Lagos in 1977, the Nigerian Army attacked the Kalakuta Republic where hundreds of Kuti’s followers were living. The army burnt it to the ground and severely beat the occupants, throwing Kuti’s mother out of a window and killing her. The story is compelling, and 2009 was the year of Kuti with the popularity of the only slightly absurd Broadway musical Fela! and a future biopic already in the works. Thankfully, Fela: The Best of the Black President, a new compilation filled with nearly three hours of Kuti’s best epic Afrobeat songs, focuses on the music. The dramatic biography is not nearly as fascinating as Kuti’s brooding, meditative musical style. With an arsenal of virtuoso musicians, Kuti created what he called Afrobeat music, pulling his influences from LA psychedelia, free jazz, the Black Panther movement, and the traditional African music of his youth. We take for granted today the presence of West African rhythms in pop music, but Kuti brought the synthesis of the traditional and experimental foreground. His dissonant trumpet blares like a machine gun on opener “Lady”. On “Gentleman”, after learning the tenor saxophone after only a matter of months, Kuti mingles a smooth melody line with a propulsive drumbeat that reaches an impossible apogee before Kuti belts, “I no be gentleman at all!” his voice pained and scarred. “I be African man original.” Each of the 13 songs here rests between ten and 20 minutes, allowing Kuti and his band to reach a trance-like state, with syncopated rhythms combining into a delicate cacophony. Kuti plays and sings as if his life depends on it. In many ways, it did. The more records he sold, the more the Nigerian government tried to wipe him out. In 1984, around the time Kuti had released “Army Arrangement”, a slow dirge guided by a lanky guitar arrangement and funereal electric organ, Kuti began a 20-month prison stay for exaggerated currency smuggling charges. His venom is evident in every word: “Whether you like or no like, after you hear this shit you’ll talk. If you like it good. If you no like you hang. If you hang you die.”...full text |
| Rollingstone |
| Fela Kuti's Nigerian Afrobeat remains a potent cultural force, inspiring rockers like TV on the Radio as well as the producers who recently put on the Broadway musical FELA! Coat-tailing the production, this two-CD/one-DVD anthology — leading off a 45-title (!) Fela reissue series — is a solid introduction to a massive body of work. While the song selection (including classics like the brass-balled superfunker "Zombie") is killer, recording info would help. The music speaks for itself, but presidential history deserves better....full text |
Fela Kuti lyrics
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