We love you. Specifically YOU. YOU, sitting there at your computer.

We love you SO MUCH. We should talk about moving in together.

Line Out Music & Nightlife

Slog

News & Arts

@SEAshows
Twitter feed of Seattle shows on sale now

« Tonight in Music: Joker, The Books,… | Amanda Blank Tonight at the Showbox »

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Love One More Word About Feli Kuti

Posted by Charles Mudede on Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 9:08 AM

The most interesting thing in the NYT review about the Broadway musical Feli!?

Not this...

True, this kinetic portrait of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, a Nigerian revolutionary of song, has taken on some starry producers — including Shawn Carter (Jay-Z) and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith — and shed 15 or 20 minutes since it was staged Off Broadway last year.

...or this:

For there has never been anything on Broadway like this production, which traces the life of Fela Kuti (1938-97) through the prism of the Shrine, the Lagos nightclub where Fela (pronounced FAY-lah) reigned not only as a performer of his incendiary songs (which make up most of the score) but also as the self-proclaimed president of his own autonomous republic.

This is the most interesting piece of information:

Nyansh is Afrobeat’s foundation, over which are layered elements explained in a number called “B.I.D. (Breaking It Down),” which traces the musical education of Fela from his youth in Lagos (where highlife jazz dominated) to his student days in London (where he listened to John Coltrane and Frank Sinatra). Somewhere along the way, the sounds of Chano Pozo and James Brown entered his aural landscape...

It has never occurred to me until now, but Feli Kuti does sound a lot like Frank Sinatra. Listen to "Army Arrangement" or "Sorrow, Tears, and Blood" with the idea that the ghost of Frank Sintatra is in the background, and you will see that ghost. Feli was an African Sintatra.