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Part 10 - Knitting Factory hits Fela Kuti purple patch
by Chris May
Knitting Factory's comprehensive, multi-format, Fela Kuti reissue program hits a new high with its second salvo, the “Na Poi" batch, released in May 2010. The seven discs span 1974-77, a remarkably prolific and creative time even by the Afrobeat originator's own standards. As with the first “Chop 'n' Quench" batch--reviewed in Part 7 ...
Part 9 - Fela Kuti Live In Berlin 1978
by Chris May
Fela KutiAnthology 2Wrasse Records2010 (1975-80) This terrific three-disc compilation on the British label Wrasse offers a gold standard selection of Fela Kuti's recordings from the latter half of the 1970s. The 11 tracks featured on the two audio discs include eight landmark album tracks, and a 90-minute ...
Part 8 - Knitting Factory rolls out Fela Kuti reissue program (continued)
by Chris May
Part 7 of The Afrobeat Diaries reviewed the first three discs in Knitting Factory's launch batch of Fela Kuti reissues, the six-disc “Chop 'N' Quench" batch. The first three discs span the years 1964-72, and follow Kuti's music as it evolved from the highlife-jazz hybrid of the mid 1960s to the almost fully formed Afrobeat of ...
Part 7 - Knitting Factory rolls out Fela Kuti reissue program
by Chris May
Following the release of its The Best Of The Black President sampler in November 2009, New York's Knitting Factory has cut to the main event in its Fela Kuti reissue program. The label, which is scheduled to release all of Kuti's albums during 2010, put out the first batch of six discs in February. Titled the ...
Part 6 - Brooklyn's Akoya Afrobeat
by Chris May
Akoya AfrobeatP.D.P. President Dey PassAfrobomb Music2008 Among the spin-off benefits which are following the success of the hit Broadway musical Fela!, and the attendant media interest in Afrobeat, is the revitalization of the Brooklyn band Akoya Afrobeat. Formed in 2002, Akoya was off radar for much of ...
Part 5 - Revival & Revolution
by Chris May
Various ArtistsAfrobeat RevivalRough Guide2009 When Fela Kuti died in 1997, it seemed, for a while, as though Afrobeat might have died with him. So colossal was Kuti's role in the music, and so few were the young pretenders to his throne, that the vacuum left by his ...
Part 4 - Fela: Kalakuta Notes
by Chris May
Fela: Kalakuta NotesJohn CollinsSoftcover; large format; 160 pagesISBN: 978 90 6832 748 9KIT Publishers2009 At the center of Fela: Kalakuta Notes is a diary its Ghanaian-based author, John Collins, kept during his stay at Fela Kuti's compound, Kalakuta Republic, in Nigeria over 18 ...
Part 3 - Tunde Williams / Lekan Animashaun: Mr Big Mouth / Low Profile (Not For The Blacks)
by Chris May
The first two entries in the Afrobeat Diaries looked at the extraordinarily courageous albums with which Fela Kuti took on the Nigerian military regime during the mid to late 1970s. Part 3 revisits two outstanding albums made by key Afrika 70 members during the same period--trumpeter Tunde Williams' Mr Big Mouth (Afrodisia, 1977), recorded in 1975, ...
Part 2 - Fela Anikulapo Kuti and the sack of Kalakuta Republic
by Chris May
Part 1 of the Afrobeat Diaries looked at the circumstances surrounding Fela Kuti's 1974 album Alagbon Close (Jofabro), the first of Kuti's discs so explicitly to expose the brutality and injustice then, as now, rampant among the Nigerian police and judiciary. Part 2 first relates the consequences of that brave album, which began ...
Part 1 - Fela Ransome Kuti & Africa 70: Alagbon Close / Why Black Man Dey Suffer
by Chris May
This is the first in a series of articles which will chronicle significant recordings, people and events in the story of Afrobeat, from its inception until the present day. First up, Alagbon Close by Fela Ransome Kuti (as he then was) and Africa 70 (as it then was), the 1974 album which marked ...
