Jazz Articles about Fela Kuti

About Fela Kuti

Multiple Reviews

Fela Kuti plus Femi and Made Kuti: Challenging Debilitating Corruption with Dramatic Music

by Scott Gudell
March 21, 2021

It's impossible to neatly sum up Fela Kuti's chaotic life, but a record company bio for a disc of the Afrobeat icon tried: “Fela's life as musician, political activist, rebel, and notorious free spirit has made him a larger-than-life icon of world music: the ultimate political artist who has survived beatings, imprisonment, government assaults and more." Describing Fela's live shows, the bio continued, “audiences were mesmerized by the army of musicians, singers and dancers gyrating onstage." It might sound like ...

Profile

Fela Kuti: King Grenade

by Mick Raubenheimer
December 28, 2020

His Dark Majestic. Fela Kuti was born royalty, despite coming from a middle class family. One of those gifted spirits whose very presence teems with potency, Olufela Olusegun Oludan Ransome-Kuti (Fela to his friends and fans) was majestic, arresting the attention or desire of all who encountered him. He was also a rousing rebel, founding his own state in defiance of the militant Nigerian government. Embodied. Born into a middle class, but auspicious family ...

Album Review

Fela Ransome Kuti & His Highlife Rakers: Fela's First

Read "Fela's First" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
August 14, 2020

Lost recordings released for the first time! First, the back story.... In 1958, aged 19, Fela Kuti left the highlife scene in Lagos, Nigeria, where he was on the first steps of a career as a trumpeter, and travelled to London. His mother hoped he would enrol in medical school, as his late father had wished. But Kuti was set on furthering his music studies. Arriving in London, he applied to Trinity College of Music but failed the ...

Book Review

Glastonbury 50

by Ian Patterson
April 5, 2020

Glastonbury 50 Michael Eavis & Emily Eavis 304 Pages ISBN: 978-1-4091-8393-8 Trapeze 2019 Published in time for Christmas 2019, Glastonbury 50 was intended as part of the build up to the legendary festival's 50th anniversary in 2020. That was before COVID-19 changed everything. Glastonbury 2020 was cancelled, with the official 50th anniversary celebrations postponed until 2021. For those pining for Glastonbury in this enforced fallow year, this book should provide more than a ...

Album Review

Fela Kuti: Live in Detroit 1986

by AAJ Italy Staff
May 28, 2012

Nonostante un paio di figli che portano in giro il nome di famiglia e una certa moda afrobeat [sempre sia lodata!] che si sostenta ottimamente con vecchie glorie e nuovi virgulti, la partita finisce senza storia quando sul piatto si mette l'aureo peso specifico di Fela Kuti. A distanza di un ventennio dal suo ultimo disco in studio, Underground System, ecco che la Strut - insieme con la Knitting Factory - pubblica il concerto con gli Egypt 80 al Fox ...

303

Afrobeat Diaries

Part 24 - Ghariokwu Lemi: Fela Kuti And Me

by Chris May
July 9, 2011

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 a follow-up to an earlier one given by Lemi to Afrobeat Diaries, The Art Of Afrobeat. Starting with 1974's Alagbon Close, ...

190

Afrobeat Diaries

Part 21 - Final Fela Kuti Masterpieces Reissued

by Chris May
March 12, 2011

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 State (1980) and Original Sufferhead (1981). It finishes with three late masterpieces--Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense (1986), Beasts Of No Nation (1989) and Underground ...