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Results for "Fela Kuti"

Album

Perambulator

Label: Partisan / Knitting Factory
Released: 2020
Track listing: Perambulator; Frustration.

Article: Profile

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, ...

Article: Interview

Tamar Osborn: From Kalakuta To Collocutor: New Directions In Jazz

by Chris May
October 12, 2020

She has been likened to Gil Evans, Fela Kuti, Pharoah Sanders, Bismillah Khan and Mulatu Astatke, and the traditions represented by those musicians are all to be heard in the music of baritone saxophonist and composer Tamar Osborn. Osborn's aesthetic, however, is her own, and her band, Collocutor, is among the most distinctive on the British ...

Article: 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 ...

Article: Album Review

Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids: Shaman!

by Chris May
July 24, 2020

California-based tenor saxophonist and composer Idris Ackamoor, who has one foot in magical realism and the other in the politicised school of spiritual-jazz, relaunched his 1970s band the Pyramids in 2015. A year later, the group released the acclaimed We Be All Africans, which was followed in 2018 by the equally noteworthy An Angel Fell (both ...

Article: Album Review

Bloto: Erozje

by Chris May
June 14, 2020

Look closely and the sleeve art resembles a painting by Ghariokwu Lemi for one of Fela Kuti's 1970s albums with Afrika 70. In the foreground, policemen beat citizens to the ground. In the background, another policeman leads someone off to a paddy wagon. Only the policemen's mobile phones locate the scenario in more recent times. Could ...

Article: Album Review

Tony Allen & Hugh Masekela: Rejoice

by Chris May
June 12, 2020

"Unfinished" is the kindest word to describe this album, recorded in 2010 and left on the shelf until its release was prompted after Hugh Masekela passed in 2018. It should have stayed on the shelf. The album consists of eight tracks of noodling by Masekela, accompanied by autopilot timekeeping from Tony Allen, who ...

Article: Album Review

Etuk Ubong: Africa Today

Read "Africa Today" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 5, 2020

Lagos-based Etuk Ubong is part of a long line of fiery, Afrobeat-rooted, hard bop-influenced trumpeters which stretches back to Tunde Williams, who was in the 1960s a founder member of Fela Kuti's seminal band, Africa 70. Kuti's legacy figures large in Ubong's music, which he styles “earth music" and which is characterised by urgent tempos, powerful ...

Article: Building a Jazz Library

New Jazz From London: Top 20 Paradigm Shifting Albums

by Chris May
June 1, 2020

After a lifetime trying to get on an equal footing with its American parent, British jazz has finally come of age. Since around 2015, a community of young, London-based musicians has forged a style which, while anchored in the American tradition, reflects the Caribbean and African cultural heritages of many of its vanguard players. The scene ...

Article: Radio & Podcasts

A tribute to Tony Allen plus some new releases

by Bob Osborne
May 28, 2020

This week a tribute to the great Nigeria drummer, percussionist and songwriter Tony Allen. One of the main collaborators, and musical director, of Fela Kuti's band Africa '70 from 1968 to 1979, he was a central figure in Afrobeat music. In later years he embraced a variety of musical styles, developed “Afrofunk" and worked with a ...