Afrobeat Diaries

EMEFE Good Future EMEFE Music 2012 For a glorious week and a half in November, London seemed like the epicenter of Afrobeat. Antibalas played Islington Town Hall. Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra played Hackney's New Empowering Church. Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 played Kentish Town Forum. If only every month could be like that. ...

Criolo Nó Na Orelha Sterns Music 2012 There may be an awful lot of coffee in Brazil, but there's not an awful lot of Afrobeat. So here's some qualitative easing: the opening track on singer/rapper Criolo's Nó Na Orelha ("knot in the ear"). “Bogotá" has the rhythms, a turbulent horn arrangement, chopping rhythm ...

Ben Zabo Ben Zabo Glitterhouse Records 2012 The extraordinary success of the musical Fela!, and the resurgence of interest in all things Fela Kuti, has made “Afrobeat" a popular buzzword among label publicists. The invocation is often fanciful; albums claiming to be Afrobeat releases regularly land at Afrobeat Diaries which have little, if ...

In an illuminating interview, artist and sleeve designer Ghariokwu Lemi talks to Afrobeat Diaries about his work and friendship with Fela Kuti. The interview attests to the indelible link between Lemi's designs and Kuti's music, and to a working relationship which, Lemi reveals, broke down only once, over 1977's Sorrow Tears And Blood. The interview is ...

Ghariokwu Lemi--"born, bred and buttered" in Lagos, Nigeria, where he continues to live--is an artist and graphic designer who created 26 of Fela Kuti's album covers, including many of his most powerful ones. Since his Kuti debut, for 1974's Alagbon Close, Lemi's art has been an integral part of Afrobeat's Pan African message, working hand in ...

Seun Anikulapo Kuti & Egypt 80 From Africa With Fury: Rise Because Music 2011

It is, almost, too good to be true. With his second album, the aptly titled From Africa With Fury: Rise, co-produced with Brian Eno, Seun Kuti delivers on the promise of his debut, Many Things (Tot Ou Tard, 2008), ...

Fela Power Show: Batch 4 is the concluding, eight-disc chapter in Knitting Factory Records' 26-disc reissue program of Fela Anikulapo Kuti albums and early singles. It starts on the 1979/80 cusp of the dissolution of Afrika 70 and the formation of Egypt 80, when Kuti made the landmark Vagabonds In Power (1979), Coffin For Head Of ...

Fela Anikulapo Kuti Fela Vinyl Box Set 1 Knitting Factory Records 2011

With the release of the eight-CD and download collection Fela Power Show: Batch 4, two of the strands in Knitting Factory Records' high-end Fela Kuti reissue project have come to a conclusion. All of Kuti's albums are now available on CD ...

Chopteeth Afrofunk Big Band Live Grigri Discs 2011

Washington, DC-based Chopteeth isn't exactly an Afrobeat band, not all of the time anyway. Fela Kuti pieces figure in its set list, but so do “belle epoque" tunes from Guinea's Le Simandou De Beyla, Senegal's Orchestra Baobab, Congo's Tabu Ley Rochereau and other African stars ...

Seun Kuti's From Africa With Fury: Rise, the follow-up to the ferocious Many Things (Tot Au Tard, 2008), is under starter's orders--and Afrobeat Diaries' sneak preview attests that it's a monster, a stone delight of epic proportions.

Produced by Brian Eno with John Reynolds and Kuti, with additional input from dub wizard Godwin Logie, the new ...

Dele Sosimi Identity Helico Records 2007

Keyboard player and singer Dele Sosimi, a member of Fela Kuti's Egypt 80 from 1979-86 and Femi Kuti's Positive Force from 1986-94, returned to London, where he was born in 1963, in 1995. A decade and a half later, he leads three bands in the city: the ...

Dele Sosimi Turbulent Times Eko Star 2002

Whatever you may think of musicals, and most people either love them or hate them, the New York and London productions of Fela! are to be welcomed. Both have been distinguished as much by their house bands as by their leading actors and dancers, and, as ...

Femi Kuti Africa For Africa Wrasse Records 2010

Two decades and more down the line with his band, Positive Force, singer and multi-instrumentalist Femi Kuti gets better and better. His take on rhythm may not be the same as that of his father--and why should it be?--but in other respects Femi is keeping ...

Various Artists Fela! Original Broadway Cast Recording Knitting Factory Records 2010

One of the several extraordinary things about the Broadway musical Fela! is not so much that approaching 400,000 people have seen the production since it opened at the Eugene O'Neill Theater in November 2009, but that the many friends and family of ...