Followers of Afrobeat pioneer keep his music alive
NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a small, trendy New York bar, a 10-piece band is jamming furiously, entertaining an audience with the rhythms of 1970's inner-city Lagos, Nigeria, created by the father of Afrobeat, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
The band, Akoya Afrobeat, is playing one of its own songs, "U.S.A. (Unilateral System of Attack)," an anti-war tune, but it stays true to the spirit of their inspiration, the Nigerian musician and political maverick who died 10 years ago.
Afrobeat is essentially big-band jazz riding on heavy African bass and drums laced with funk guitars creating music easy to dance to -- and usually heavily political.
Fela, as he is popularly known, died of AIDS-related complications on August 2 in 1997 aged 58, but Afrobeat has taken on a new life as a protest music in the underground scene of many U.S. cities.
As a musician, Fela lived an unconventional life, once marrying 27 women in one day, regularly photographed smoking 'natural herbs' in his underwear, and declaring his home and local commune an independent nation within Nigeria.
But he was also the voice of the masses and a harsh critic of Nigeria's military regimes who had him thrown in jail several times as he warned all Africans about the evils they faced if they did not challenge corrupt governments.
His eldest son, Femi Kuti, 45, who has become an international Afrobeat star, says many people are only now beginning to understand the importance of Fela's work.
"He told us what was going on because he was wise but everybody wanted to run away from the problems so their children's children are now facing the problems," he told Reuters from a hotel in Des Moines, Iowa, on a U.S. tour.
AFROBEAT MOVES TO ENVIRONMENT, IRAQ
In songs like "Beasts of No Nation," "Unknown Soldier" and "Sorrow, Tears and Blood," Fela sang of the brutality and injustices of governments but also the complicity of Western governments and nongovernmental organizations supporting them.
"When I was growing up in Soweto, South Africa, Fela's music was banned by the Apartheid government," says Duke Mseleku who plays tenor sax with Akoya Afrobeat. Mseleku found his first Fela record, "Zombie," in a Johannesburg record store alongside other illegal imports like Bob Marley records.
It is this legacy that feeds modern Afrobeat played by bands from Boston to San Francisco. It has evolved to become a soundtrack to social justice causes relevant to Americans today like the concerns about the environment and the war in Iraq.
"Music with a message can still fly under the radar in a way that a newspaper or even a Web site can't," says Martin Perna, founder of New York-based Antibalas, one of the better known Afrobeat bands out of the United States.
"America's a great country but it's as flawed as it is great. So we sing about government corruption ... gender politics and climate change."
Most of the U.S. bands like Antibalas, Akoya, Boston's The Superpowers and Chicago Afrobeat Project, are a diverse mix of races and nationalities including Americans, Japanese, South Americans, and Africans - but few with Nigerian members.
Yet they all try and capture the Fela sound as faithfully as they can while molding their own original sound.
Fela's younger son, Seun, 24, band leader of his father's old band Egypt 80, said his father, a music perfectionist, would have had mixed feelings about some of the new bands.
"I think it's a triumph for the music, because it shows that the message is spreading," said Seun. "It's just a pity Fela wasn't around to see this. Knowing him he would have been a big critic as well."
