Fela Kuti's Legacy Inspires an Afro-Funk Revival
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The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library. Find more at: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/ Available through a partnership with Scroll down to read the article. by Michael Veal I i I ,-j.THE SAYING GOES, DEATH IS A brilliant career move. Thus, the market for the Afrobeat music of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and all of its stylistic relatives and offshoots Afro- has become big business since his death in •[997. In Europe and the United States, Fela's Funk back catalogue - most of which had been unavailable during the last years of his ca- Revival reer - has been reissued, his music is being played in dance clubs, Afrobeat revival bands are forming, and compila ions of Afrobeat- relqted musisic are beinbeiini g rree eased att a seeseemm- mgly monthly rate. Even tthough hh FelFla is onlly one artist within a generation-bound con- satiostellationn of great African musasmusicians,, his neneww- tountd d popufaritf y in thhe UniteUitdd StStatet s seems <GLENDORA REVIEWxAfrican Quarterly on the ArtsxVol3@No3&4> <29> to have momeintprily After all, the U.S. market for "world beat" mar- eclipsed that of iall the ket is itself small, largely comprised of young, others. Franco, Tabu Ley well-educated Euro-Americans in major cities. Rochereau, Hugh The interest in African popular music is a sub- Masekela, Miriam market of this group, and the retro market in Makeba, Manu Dibango, Afro-funk an even smaller sub-group. Youssoy N'Dour, King The typical 20-year commercial cycle Sunny Ade, and others which governs the re-circulation of previously- are equally important in popular styles would seem to indicate that this the history of post-World audience would gravitate towards the African- War II African popular American funk music of the 1960s and 1970s. music, yet tiey largely To an extent this has happened, such as in the remain niche market chic popularity of Shuggie Otis's reissued Infor- names within the current mation Inspiration LP last year. But the reason American market for Af- that there retro-market for funk has not taken rican popular music. hold to a greater degree among young urban The reasons for this are clear. First, professionals is that through sampling, the hip- Afrobeat was a dynamic innovation whose ap- hoppers have controlled the resuscitation of 60s/ peal to Western audiences partially reflects its 70s soul and funk like James Brown and Par- strong roots in the familiar Western styles of jazz liament/Funkadelic. The music thus remains and funk. Second, Fela's passing removed the viscerally grounded in contemporary black cul- most difficult element from the marketing equa- ture and the yuppies must get their funk from tion - the man himself, who was patently dis- an offshore source, in order to enjoy the cul- trustful of all record companies, and whose scab- tural flavor of a black musical style that has rous pronouncements on a wide range of is- been defanged of its political baggage. Although sues were successfully calculated to shock, of- the music of Fela and many of his colleagues fend, and alienate audiences of all persuasions. was created within a climate of pan-African Third, the mythology surrounding Fela is a built- political struggle and cultural revitalization, the in advertisement for his music; since the days of new market in 'African funk' offers a re-routed Bob Marley's international ascension, compa- funk in which the political codes of black nies have known that a controversial black man America have been partially or completely who f u If i I Is the fa m i I ia r tropes of sex, d rugs, a nd erased, and replaced with (for Americans) al- politics, always means guaranteed sales to white ien codes which allow the music to be appreci- Western—especially American—audiences. ated for its mere 'surface qualities.' In some ways, the 'Afro-funk' revival in But what is Afrobeat? Is it a type of highlife? the U.S. parallels the resurgence of roots reg- Of jazz? Of funk? Is it a studio-based or a live gae in England and in fact, the best of the retro- performance medium? Is it by definition a po- Afro compilations discussed here have been re- litical genre? As lone exponent of the genre for leased by British companies. But the situation is most of his career, Fela himself often confronted a bit different in the U.S., where the African cul- these very questions, as his music was received tural presence is not nearly as integrated into by various audiences, in various places, with urban American culture as the Jamaican is into various agendas. Afrobeat as played by Fela urban British culture. Africans in the United States was a political music obviously rooted in the live mostly in enclaves, and their music stays highlife tradition, but stretched far beyond the largely within the community. There has been parameters of that genre. It was jazzy but not no tradition such as the infamous "blue beat" virtuosic; it was funky, but not frivolous. With dances, which provided a forum for Britons and such a multifaceted pedigree, it is no surprise Anglo-Caribbeans to interact musically and that the various contemporary exponents of the socially in the 1960s. Thus, the current interest genre have taken the style in each of the direc- of American record companies in African pop tions suggested within Fela's prototype. What I smacks of a fad, an attempt to maximize short- would like to do in this article is to briefly survey term saturation of a particular niche market. several of these recordings - compilations of <GLEND0RA REVIEWxAfrican Quarteriy on the ArtsxVol3@No3&4> <30> painted woman (ostensibly one of Fela's wives) holding a half-burnt stick of Indian hemp in front of a sheet of rusted corrugated steel. The photo, an obvious attempt to duplicate Adrian Boot's well-known series of photos taken at the Afrika Shrine in 1976, begs the question of "* *•••• •••••••••• ™ •••••• whether Afrobeat can be reduced to a series of •••••••••••• generic gestures, phrases, and images. The same question frames the music on this collec- tion, which runs the gamut from the inspired to FUTURE SOUrUDS PROm THE mOTHERLAfUD the formulaic. «mi Kufci •••••••••••• The collection kicks off with former Afrika at uiark 70 drummer Tony Allen, leading an ensemble <=»WT»ttJ of Paris-based musicians through a programme Twig njteo %• *»•••••• Cessna Evor-a ••»•#•••••* of dub- and techno-influenced Afrobeat. Allen's viuiane ni'Oour ••*«•••••••• and more ••••••••••• drumming style remains unchanged from his days at the Afrika Shrine, but the setting around him has changed substantially. Although he still plays with the traditional rhythm section of gui- tar, bass, and keyboards, the rhythmic basis of the music has been redefined by the atmos- phere of floating digital sounds. The front line DOD smacKs 01 a horn themes of Afrika 70 have been replaced r here by Allen's digitized vocalizing, as he scats aa, an attemp, naximize and sings a lyrical theme drawn from-his 1979 LP No Discr/m/nafion. The atmospheric pro- short-term saturation of a duction of these tracks does not necessarily do the most justice to Allen's polyrhythmic drum- 3 mar oarticular nich ming, since his style is fundamentally based on :er aiu, tlle LI.S Inahzetic rr a model of conversational interaction with the front line horns inspired by jazz drummers like 'worla eat' m aI-ket is its el / Art Blakey. Allen has in fact recently collabo- rated with jazz players such as Jamaican guitar smal /, la.rge{yc X 1n ipi ised ol great Ernest Ranglin, but if he could feature on r youn 9 , vv di--ech1c<ate3d Eu\rc a full-fledged project of big-band Afrobeat, it "% would place his drumming in the most reveal- Am anca ns in i7.U or Cl tie*.3. ing setting, clarify the jazz roots of Afrobeat, and inspire more musicians to interpret Afrobeat The i'n\te.resr in / M.he ari... from the jazz angle. Next up is Afrobeat heir Femi Anikulapo- Kuti, who is attempting to make a Western Fela tributes, Afrobeat revival bands, or works market-friendly version of his father's music by by older contemporaries of Fela. cutting song lengths, lightening the subject Although there are several recordings matter, and updating the production style. The available, the most convenient place to start is title of the included track 'Beng Beng Beng' Shanachie's continuously-mixed Afrobeat No (i.e. 'Bang Bang Bang') tells the listener much Go Die, which surveys the highest-profile of what they need to know about Femi's ap- bands working in the genre of neo-Afrobeat. proach in general. Essentially a contribution to The title makes an assertion that seems unnec- Fela's sub-genre of sex manuals set to music essary, as there have never been as many ex- (such as 'Na Poi'), Femi's depiction of the sex ponents of afrobeat as in the present. The cover act leaves little to the imagination and the cir- art presents what has become an iconic Fela cular, polyrhtyhmic sensuality of Fela's music image—a young, heavily-bejeweled, face- <GLEND0RA REVIEWxAfrican Quarterly on the ArtsxVol3@No3&4> has been similarly reprocessed into a 'four-on- the-floor' house beat which has found favor with the house music crowds in Europe. Femi's SEQUN BUCKNOR live band is one of the most exciting African acts currently touring, but the irony here is that POOR MAN NO GET BROTHER ASSEMBLY & REVOLUTION 1969-1975 the very qualities which attracted Westerners to Fela's music are the qualities which Femi downplays - long-form grooves, and ample time to stretch out and create a 'vibe.' With hyper- bolic reviews hailing him as the 'next Bob Marley,' Femi should be careful not to fall into the frequent trap that has snared many African musicians, of compromising the uniquely local qualities of their music in search of a mass Western audience that has not yet materialized for any African popular musician.