While historical credit will go to Brooklyn's Antibalas as the first American blazers of Afrobeat, the Chocolate City's Chopteeth will be known as the ones who took it to the nth degree. With pedigree chops and a legitimate bandleader well-versed in the Dark Continent's history of groove, Afrofunk Big Band (Grisgris Discs) is the bomb. And I don't use phrases like that.
Bassist Robert Fox was a Washington, D.C. labor organizer who, after losing a friend, got a wild-hair to start an Afrofunk band. His first connection was Michael Shereikis, an ethnomusicologist from Illinois who had traveled to some of Africa's most remote and war-torn areas and absorbed the rhythms playing on the stages of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. Shereikis is so authentic he has even fooled transplanted Africans at Chopteeth shows.
The Chopteeth horns are, in a word, nasty, and with good reason: veteran sax-man Mark Gilbert has worked with the monsters of Motown (Gladys Knight and the Pips, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Cab Calloway) and trumpeter Craig Considine has blasted for Busta Rhymes. But the secret weapon is Ghana-born percussionist Atta Addo (Hugh Masakela, Angelique Kidjo, and Toots & The Maytals) who lends authenticity to Chopteeth's engine.
The dozen-or-so-piece band is as adept at creating its own thing as it is at recreating that devastating Kuti groove. Their blend of sounds whirl together perfectly on the ultra-catchy single, “Struggle." But, where there's protest, there must also be party, and so “Upendo" kicks in with a lyric sung in Swahili. Malian griot Cheick Hamala Diabate joins the fray on “Wili Nineh," a song that hails the band members. The album's closer is also one of the more interesting songs I've heard in a while. I'm not hip enough to know if the kids are starting to fuse hip-hop with Afro-funk, but the raucous “Condition Is Permanent" does just that. D.C. MC Head-Roc helps create this fusion that should turn some heads in a stale industry in desperate need of fresh ideas.
Afrofunk Big Band is informing a lot of housebound dance parties for me this winter - gathering full of adults and children alike - and it should take on all sorts of lovely new shapes with the nice weather looming after the lion. For anyone digging Antibalas and others who've taken time to digest the Fela canon, this is an easy recommendation - there's no way you could be disappointed.
