Hello, Rik Mayall, who has died suddenly aged 56, was a phenomenal and outrageous performer, a leading light of the "alternative" comedy circuit that emerged from the Comedy Store in the 1980s, and a not inconsiderable comic actor, playing in Beckett and Simon Gray on the West End stage and in Gogol at the National Theatre. Part of his success lay in the timing. His crude persona Rick in the breakthrough television series The Young Ones (1982-84), was a gimlet-eyed, nose-picking lunatic who nonetheless carried a terrible plausibility as a prissy radical student of the day.
Long gone were the serious political protests and scabrous, intelligent revues of the 60s student generation; here, student life was parodied as grotty and anarchic, with Mayall surrounded by Ade Edmondson as Vyvyan, a crypto-Nazi, Nigel Planer as Neil, a cartoon, out-of-date hippie in a haze and Christopher Ryan as Mike, a miniature smoothie; a bunch of total prats, in fact. Mayall even lived this role off-stage, telling an interviewer (half-seriously, no doubt) that he threw his satchel in the Severn on the day he heard he had got a place at Manchester University and resolved never to read a book again.
Television, and its audiences, was just ready for this sort of onslaught and Mayall and Edmondson – the two met at Manchester and remained longterm writing and performing partners – scored a major popular success, too, with Filthy Rich and Catflap (1987), written by Elton, alongside Planer; and again in Bottom (1991-95), which ran for three series but also became a fixture of the touring circuit in the live show version. Mayall had another television hit as the cheating, monstrous Tory MP Alan B'stard in The New Statesman (1987-92), written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, an irresistibly grotesque performance (for which he won a Bafta award), later transforming B'Stard into a New Labour convert in another touring stage show, The Blair B'Stard Project. After a brief appearance in the first series of Blackadder in 1983 as Mad Gerald, he returned as the boisterous adventurer Lord Flashheart, full of sexual innuendo and flirting with Queenie, in Blackadder II (1986); then, with the same name, as a first world war flying ace in Blackadder Goes Forth (1989).
In 1998, he sustained a fractured skull after crashing a quad bike into a concrete wall on his farm in East Allington, south Devon. He was "technically dead" for five days, but made a good recovery, allegedly saying to the first doctor he saw as he came round: "So, you're the bastard who keeps sticking needles into me." A career in film wasn't on the cards for him but Mayall bounced back from this into Bottom and, in 2005, published a spoof, Alan Partridge-style autobiography, Bigger than Hitler, Better than Christ, and also made a surprisingly "soft" TV series, All About George, written by Cold Feet author Mike Bullen, charting his struggle to keep up with the rigours of family life; being nice in this show was a professional first.
Mayall married the make-up artist Barbara Robbin in 1985, and is survived by her and their three children, Rosie, Sidney and Bonnie.
It's almost impossible to overstate the impact and importance of Fela Anikulapo (Ransome) Kuti (or just Fela as he's more commonly known) to the global musical village: producer, arranger, musician, political radical, outlaw. He was all that, as well as showman par excellence, inventor of Afro-beat, an unredeemable sexist, and a moody megalomaniac. His death on August 3, 1997 deeply affected musicians and fans internationally, as a musical and sociopolitical voice on a par with Bob Marley was silenced. A press release from the United Democratic Front of Nigeria on the occasion of Fela's death noted: "Those who knew you well were insistent that you could never compromise with the evil you had fought all your life. Even though made weak by time and fate, you remained strong in will and never abandoned your goal of a free, democratic, socialist Africa." This is as succinct a summation of Fela's political agenda as one is likely to find. ...N'joy
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, north of Lagos in 1938, Fela's family was firmly middle class as well as politically active. His father was a pastor (and talented pianist), his mother active in the anti-colonial, anti-military, Nigerian home rule movement. So at an early age, Fela experienced politics and music in a seamless combination. His parents, however, were less interested in his becoming a musician and more interested in his becoming a doctor, so they packed him off to London in 1958 for what they assumed would be a medical education; instead, Fela registered at Trinity College's school of music. Tired of studying European composers, Fela formed his first band, Koola Lobitos, in 1961, and quickly became a fixture on the London club scene. He returned to Nigeria in 1963 and started another version of Koola Lobitos that was more influenced by the James Brown-style singing of Geraldo Pina from Sierra Leone. Combining this with elements of traditional high life and jazz, Fela dubbed this intensely rhythmic hybrid "Afro-beat," partly as critique of African performers whom he felt had turned their backs on their African musical roots in order to emulate current American pop music trends.
In 1969, Fela brought Koola Lobitos to Los Angeles to tour and record. They toured America for about eight months using Los Angeles as a home base. It was while in L.A. that Fela hooked up with a friend, Sandra Isidore, who introduced him to the writings and politics of Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver (and by extension the Black Panthers), and other proponents of Black nationalism and Afrocentrism. Impressed at what he read, Fela was politically revivified and decided that some changes were in order: first, the name of the band, as Koola Lobitos became Nigeria 70; second, the music would become more politically explicit and critical of the oppression of the powerless worldwide. After a disagreement with an unscrupulous promoter who turned them in to the Immigration and Naturalization Services, Fela and band were charged with working without work permits. Realizing that time was short before they were sent back to Nigeria, they were able to scrape together some money to record some new songs in L.A. What came to be known as the '69 Los Angeles Sessions were remarkable, an indication of a maturing sound and of the raucous, propulsive music that was to mark Fela's career. Afrobeat's combination of blaring horn sections, antiphonal vocals, Fela's quasi-rapping pidgin English, and percolating guitars, all wrapped up in a smoldering groove (in the early days driven by the band's brilliant drummer Tony Allen) that could last nearly an hour, was an intoxicating sound. Once hooked, it was impossible to get enough.
The documentary "Fela Kuti Music is the Weapon" wit the Afrobeat legend, political revolutionary, musician, composer and performer, mixes footage of Fela Anikulapo Kuti performing at his Shrine nightclub, interviews with the controversial musician, glimpses of life at his not-so-palatial Kalakuta Republic compound, and scenes of Lagos street life. Some voice-over narration gives basic information on Kuti's musical career and Nigerian politics, but for the most part, the images are left to speak for themselves. Well shot in color, it's an important historical document capturing Kuti in stage and home environments that were most crucial to his life and work.
Upon returning to Nigeria, Fela founded a communal compound-cum-recording studio and rehearsal space he called the Kalakuta Republic, and a nightclub, the Shrine. It was during this time that he dropped his given middle name of "Ransome" which he said was a slave name, and took the name "Anikulapo" (meaning "he who carries death in his pouch") . Playing constantly and recording at a ferocious pace, Fela and band (who were now called Africa 70) became huge stars in West Africa. His biggest fan base, however, was Nigeria's poor. Because his music addressed issues important to the Nigerian underclass (specifically a military government that profited from political exploitation and disenfranchisement), Fela was more than a simply a pop star; like Bob Marley in Jamaica, he was the voice of Nigeria's have-nots, a cultural rebel. This was something Nigeria's military junta tried to nip in the bud, and from almost the moment he came back to Nigeria up until his death, Fela was hounded, jailed, harassed, and nearly killed by a government determined to silence him. In one of the most egregious acts of violence committed against him, 1,000 Nigerian soldiers attacked his Kalakuta compound in 1977 (the second government-sanctioned attack). Fela suffered a fractured skull as well as other broken bones; his 82-year old mother was thrown from an upstairs window, inflicting injuries that would later prove fatal. The soldiers set fire to the compound and prevented fire fighters from reaching the area. Fela's recording studio, all his master tapes and musical instruments were destroyed.
After the Kalakuta tragedy, Fela briefly lived in exile in Ghana, returning to Nigeria in 1978. In 1979 he formed his own political party, MOP (Movement of the People), and at the start of the new decade renamed his band Egypt 80. From 1980-1983, Nigeria was under civilian rule, and it was a relatively peaceful period for Fela, who recorded and toured non-stop. Military rule returned in 1983, and in 1984 Fela was sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of currency smuggling. With help from Amnesty International, he was freed in 1985.
As the '80s ended, Fela recorded blistering attacks against Nigeria's corrupt military government, as well as broadsides aimed at Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (most abrasively on the album Beasts of No Nation). Never what you would call progressive when it came to relationships with women or patriarchy in general (the fact was that he was sexist in the extreme, which is ironic when you consider that his mother was one of Nigeria's early feminists), he was coming around to the struggles faced by African women, but only just barely. Stylistically speaking, Fela's music didn't change much during this time, and much of what he recorded, while good, was not as blistering as some of the amazing music he made in the '70s. Still, when a Fela record appeared, it was always worth a listen.
His album output slowed in the 1990s, and eventually he stopped releasing albums altogether. The battle against military corruption in Nigeria had taken it's toll. Rumors were also spreading that he was suffering from an illness, on August 3, 1997 his brother Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, a prominent AIDS activist and former Minister of Health, stunned the nation by announcing Fela had died from an AIDS releated disease, more than a million people attended his funeral at the site of the old Shrine compound.
He never broke big in the U.S. market, and it's hard to imagine him having the same kind of posthumous profile that Marley does, but Fela's 50-something releases offer up plenty of remarkable music, and a musical legacy that lives on in the person of his talented son Femi. Around the turn of the millennium, Universal began remastering and reissuing a goodly portion of Fela's many recordings, finally making some of his most important work widely available to American listeners.
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
The four (lengthy, as usual) songs occupying this album had been originally recorded in Nigeria as 45 rpm releases. Aphrodisiac consists of re-recordings of these, done in London in the early 1970s. (Confusingly, one part of the liner notes gives the years 1972-1973 as the recording dates, while another section says they were cut in 1971.) While it's true that Fela Kuti's albums from this period are pretty similar to each other, in their favor they're not boring. These four workouts, all sung in Nigerian, are propulsive mixtures of funk and African music, avoiding the homogeneity of much funk and African records of later vintage, done with nonstop high energy. The interplay between horns, electric keyboards, drums, and Fela's exuberant vocals gives this a jazz character, without sacrificing the earthiness that makes it danceable as well. "Jeun Ko Ku (Chop'n Quench)" became Fela's first big hit in Nigeria, selling 200,000 copies in its first six months in its initial version.
Fela Kuti - Afrodisiac (flac 277mb)
01 Alu Jon Jonki Jon 12:41
02 Chop And Quench 7:14
03 Eko Ile 6:41
04 Je'Nwi Temi (Don't Gag Me) 13:15
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Zombie was the most popular and impacting record that Fela Anikulopo Kuti and Africa 70 would record -- it ignited the nation to follow Fela's lead and antagonize the military zombies that had the population by the throat. Fela is direct and humorous in his attack as he barks out commands to the soldiers like: "Attention! Double up! Fall In! Fall out! Fall down! Get ready!" Meanwhile, his choir responds with "Zombie!" in between each statement. Since the groove was so absolutely contagious, it took the nation by storm: People in the street would put on a blank stare and walk with hands affront proclaiming "Zombie!" whenever they would see soldiers. If "Zombie" caught the attention of the populous it also cought the attention of the authority figures -- this would cause devastating personal and professional effects as the Nigerian government came down on him with absolute brute force not long after the release of this record. Also included are "Monkey Banana," a laid-back groove that showcases drummer Tony Allen's mastery of the Afro-beat, and "Everything Scatter," a standard mid-tempo romp.
Fela Kuti - Zombie (flac 352mb)
01 Zombie 12:26
02 Mister Follow Follow 12:57
03 Observation Is No Crime 13:25
04 Mistake 14:46
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Pioneering musician, activist, and bandleader Fela Kuti is the first word in Afro-beat, making such strides in the genre over the course of his career that his contributions are foundational and nothing less than legendary. Released in 1977, Opposite People finds Fela and his band Afrika 70 riding a fever-pitched groove for the customary two side-long extended jams that made up most of Fela's classic output. The title track builds for 11 or more minutes before Kuti comes in with a sociopolitical lecture in sung-scatted form, and second cut "Equalisation of Trouser and Pant" is a slinkier affair, with hints of greasy rock guitar and wandering electronic keyboard tones.
Sorrow Tears and Blood (1977) accurately depicts the trail left in the wake of the February 18, 1977, raid by 1,000 armed Nigerian army men on Fela Kuti and his Kalakuta republic. In keeping with the format upheld on a majority of Kuti's long-players, this disc contains a pair of extended works, featuring one title per LP side. In contrast to the hard-edged and aggressive Afro-funk that Kuti and his Africa 70 became synonymous with, both the A-side title track and B-side, "Colonial Mentality," are seemingly staid, in light -- or perhaps because -- of the cruel state-sponsored attacks that he and his extended family suffered. "Sorrow Tears and Blood" is neither a full-blown, up-tempo funk drone nor a somber dirge. The even-handed, mid-tempo groove trots along at a steady pace and features some comparatively sedate sax work from Kuti. Even the instrumental introduction -- which has been known to clock in at over five minutes -- is reduced to well under three. His lyrics are starkly direct -- "Everybody run, run, run/Everybody scatter, scatter/Some people lost some bread/Some people just die" -- yet the emotive center is gone. Perhaps this is the result of fear, shellshock, or a combination of the two. Kuti's words, however, remain as indicting as ever: "Them leave sorrow, tears, and blood/Them regular trademark." "Colonial Mentality" returns to a more seething and slinky musicality. The dark and brooding bassline undulates beneath a brass-intensive Africa 70. Rarely has Kuti's musical arrangements so perfectly imaged James Brown's J.B.'s or Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra. The message is delivered as a fable, demonstrating that it is the individuals who live in a stifling "Colonial Mentality" who are the slaves. His preface, stating that the colonial man had released them yet they refuse to release themselves, sets out to prove that slavery is a continual and concurrent state of mind for Africans.
Fela Kuti - Opposite People + Sorrow Tears and Blood (flac 372mb)
Opposite People (Originally Released 1977)
1 Opposite People 16:39
2 Equalisation Of Trouser And Pant 16:43
Sorrow Tears And Blood (Originally Released 1977)
3 Sorrow Tears And Blood 10:16
4 Colonial Mentality 13:42
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Long gone were the serious political protests and scabrous, intelligent revues of the 60s student generation; here, student life was parodied as grotty and anarchic, with Mayall surrounded by Ade Edmondson as Vyvyan, a crypto-Nazi, Nigel Planer as Neil, a cartoon, out-of-date hippie in a haze and Christopher Ryan as Mike, a miniature smoothie; a bunch of total prats, in fact. Mayall even lived this role off-stage, telling an interviewer (half-seriously, no doubt) that he threw his satchel in the Severn on the day he heard he had got a place at Manchester University and resolved never to read a book again.
Television, and its audiences, was just ready for this sort of onslaught and Mayall and Edmondson – the two met at Manchester and remained longterm writing and performing partners – scored a major popular success, too, with Filthy Rich and Catflap (1987), written by Elton, alongside Planer; and again in Bottom (1991-95), which ran for three series but also became a fixture of the touring circuit in the live show version. Mayall had another television hit as the cheating, monstrous Tory MP Alan B'stard in The New Statesman (1987-92), written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, an irresistibly grotesque performance (for which he won a Bafta award), later transforming B'Stard into a New Labour convert in another touring stage show, The Blair B'Stard Project. After a brief appearance in the first series of Blackadder in 1983 as Mad Gerald, he returned as the boisterous adventurer Lord Flashheart, full of sexual innuendo and flirting with Queenie, in Blackadder II (1986); then, with the same name, as a first world war flying ace in Blackadder Goes Forth (1989).
In 1998, he sustained a fractured skull after crashing a quad bike into a concrete wall on his farm in East Allington, south Devon. He was "technically dead" for five days, but made a good recovery, allegedly saying to the first doctor he saw as he came round: "So, you're the bastard who keeps sticking needles into me." A career in film wasn't on the cards for him but Mayall bounced back from this into Bottom and, in 2005, published a spoof, Alan Partridge-style autobiography, Bigger than Hitler, Better than Christ, and also made a surprisingly "soft" TV series, All About George, written by Cold Feet author Mike Bullen, charting his struggle to keep up with the rigours of family life; being nice in this show was a professional first.
Mayall married the make-up artist Barbara Robbin in 1985, and is survived by her and their three children, Rosie, Sidney and Bonnie.
It's almost impossible to overstate the impact and importance of Fela Anikulapo (Ransome) Kuti (or just Fela as he's more commonly known) to the global musical village: producer, arranger, musician, political radical, outlaw. He was all that, as well as showman par excellence, inventor of Afro-beat, an unredeemable sexist, and a moody megalomaniac. His death on August 3, 1997 deeply affected musicians and fans internationally, as a musical and sociopolitical voice on a par with Bob Marley was silenced. A press release from the United Democratic Front of Nigeria on the occasion of Fela's death noted: "Those who knew you well were insistent that you could never compromise with the evil you had fought all your life. Even though made weak by time and fate, you remained strong in will and never abandoned your goal of a free, democratic, socialist Africa." This is as succinct a summation of Fela's political agenda as one is likely to find. ...N'joy
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, north of Lagos in 1938, Fela's family was firmly middle class as well as politically active. His father was a pastor (and talented pianist), his mother active in the anti-colonial, anti-military, Nigerian home rule movement. So at an early age, Fela experienced politics and music in a seamless combination. His parents, however, were less interested in his becoming a musician and more interested in his becoming a doctor, so they packed him off to London in 1958 for what they assumed would be a medical education; instead, Fela registered at Trinity College's school of music. Tired of studying European composers, Fela formed his first band, Koola Lobitos, in 1961, and quickly became a fixture on the London club scene. He returned to Nigeria in 1963 and started another version of Koola Lobitos that was more influenced by the James Brown-style singing of Geraldo Pina from Sierra Leone. Combining this with elements of traditional high life and jazz, Fela dubbed this intensely rhythmic hybrid "Afro-beat," partly as critique of African performers whom he felt had turned their backs on their African musical roots in order to emulate current American pop music trends.
In 1969, Fela brought Koola Lobitos to Los Angeles to tour and record. They toured America for about eight months using Los Angeles as a home base. It was while in L.A. that Fela hooked up with a friend, Sandra Isidore, who introduced him to the writings and politics of Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver (and by extension the Black Panthers), and other proponents of Black nationalism and Afrocentrism. Impressed at what he read, Fela was politically revivified and decided that some changes were in order: first, the name of the band, as Koola Lobitos became Nigeria 70; second, the music would become more politically explicit and critical of the oppression of the powerless worldwide. After a disagreement with an unscrupulous promoter who turned them in to the Immigration and Naturalization Services, Fela and band were charged with working without work permits. Realizing that time was short before they were sent back to Nigeria, they were able to scrape together some money to record some new songs in L.A. What came to be known as the '69 Los Angeles Sessions were remarkable, an indication of a maturing sound and of the raucous, propulsive music that was to mark Fela's career. Afrobeat's combination of blaring horn sections, antiphonal vocals, Fela's quasi-rapping pidgin English, and percolating guitars, all wrapped up in a smoldering groove (in the early days driven by the band's brilliant drummer Tony Allen) that could last nearly an hour, was an intoxicating sound. Once hooked, it was impossible to get enough.
The documentary "Fela Kuti Music is the Weapon" wit the Afrobeat legend, political revolutionary, musician, composer and performer, mixes footage of Fela Anikulapo Kuti performing at his Shrine nightclub, interviews with the controversial musician, glimpses of life at his not-so-palatial Kalakuta Republic compound, and scenes of Lagos street life. Some voice-over narration gives basic information on Kuti's musical career and Nigerian politics, but for the most part, the images are left to speak for themselves. Well shot in color, it's an important historical document capturing Kuti in stage and home environments that were most crucial to his life and work.
Upon returning to Nigeria, Fela founded a communal compound-cum-recording studio and rehearsal space he called the Kalakuta Republic, and a nightclub, the Shrine. It was during this time that he dropped his given middle name of "Ransome" which he said was a slave name, and took the name "Anikulapo" (meaning "he who carries death in his pouch") . Playing constantly and recording at a ferocious pace, Fela and band (who were now called Africa 70) became huge stars in West Africa. His biggest fan base, however, was Nigeria's poor. Because his music addressed issues important to the Nigerian underclass (specifically a military government that profited from political exploitation and disenfranchisement), Fela was more than a simply a pop star; like Bob Marley in Jamaica, he was the voice of Nigeria's have-nots, a cultural rebel. This was something Nigeria's military junta tried to nip in the bud, and from almost the moment he came back to Nigeria up until his death, Fela was hounded, jailed, harassed, and nearly killed by a government determined to silence him. In one of the most egregious acts of violence committed against him, 1,000 Nigerian soldiers attacked his Kalakuta compound in 1977 (the second government-sanctioned attack). Fela suffered a fractured skull as well as other broken bones; his 82-year old mother was thrown from an upstairs window, inflicting injuries that would later prove fatal. The soldiers set fire to the compound and prevented fire fighters from reaching the area. Fela's recording studio, all his master tapes and musical instruments were destroyed.
After the Kalakuta tragedy, Fela briefly lived in exile in Ghana, returning to Nigeria in 1978. In 1979 he formed his own political party, MOP (Movement of the People), and at the start of the new decade renamed his band Egypt 80. From 1980-1983, Nigeria was under civilian rule, and it was a relatively peaceful period for Fela, who recorded and toured non-stop. Military rule returned in 1983, and in 1984 Fela was sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of currency smuggling. With help from Amnesty International, he was freed in 1985.
As the '80s ended, Fela recorded blistering attacks against Nigeria's corrupt military government, as well as broadsides aimed at Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (most abrasively on the album Beasts of No Nation). Never what you would call progressive when it came to relationships with women or patriarchy in general (the fact was that he was sexist in the extreme, which is ironic when you consider that his mother was one of Nigeria's early feminists), he was coming around to the struggles faced by African women, but only just barely. Stylistically speaking, Fela's music didn't change much during this time, and much of what he recorded, while good, was not as blistering as some of the amazing music he made in the '70s. Still, when a Fela record appeared, it was always worth a listen.
His album output slowed in the 1990s, and eventually he stopped releasing albums altogether. The battle against military corruption in Nigeria had taken it's toll. Rumors were also spreading that he was suffering from an illness, on August 3, 1997 his brother Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, a prominent AIDS activist and former Minister of Health, stunned the nation by announcing Fela had died from an AIDS releated disease, more than a million people attended his funeral at the site of the old Shrine compound.
He never broke big in the U.S. market, and it's hard to imagine him having the same kind of posthumous profile that Marley does, but Fela's 50-something releases offer up plenty of remarkable music, and a musical legacy that lives on in the person of his talented son Femi. Around the turn of the millennium, Universal began remastering and reissuing a goodly portion of Fela's many recordings, finally making some of his most important work widely available to American listeners.
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
The four (lengthy, as usual) songs occupying this album had been originally recorded in Nigeria as 45 rpm releases. Aphrodisiac consists of re-recordings of these, done in London in the early 1970s. (Confusingly, one part of the liner notes gives the years 1972-1973 as the recording dates, while another section says they were cut in 1971.) While it's true that Fela Kuti's albums from this period are pretty similar to each other, in their favor they're not boring. These four workouts, all sung in Nigerian, are propulsive mixtures of funk and African music, avoiding the homogeneity of much funk and African records of later vintage, done with nonstop high energy. The interplay between horns, electric keyboards, drums, and Fela's exuberant vocals gives this a jazz character, without sacrificing the earthiness that makes it danceable as well. "Jeun Ko Ku (Chop'n Quench)" became Fela's first big hit in Nigeria, selling 200,000 copies in its first six months in its initial version.
Fela Kuti - Afrodisiac (flac 277mb)
01 Alu Jon Jonki Jon 12:41
02 Chop And Quench 7:14
03 Eko Ile 6:41
04 Je'Nwi Temi (Don't Gag Me) 13:15
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Zombie was the most popular and impacting record that Fela Anikulopo Kuti and Africa 70 would record -- it ignited the nation to follow Fela's lead and antagonize the military zombies that had the population by the throat. Fela is direct and humorous in his attack as he barks out commands to the soldiers like: "Attention! Double up! Fall In! Fall out! Fall down! Get ready!" Meanwhile, his choir responds with "Zombie!" in between each statement. Since the groove was so absolutely contagious, it took the nation by storm: People in the street would put on a blank stare and walk with hands affront proclaiming "Zombie!" whenever they would see soldiers. If "Zombie" caught the attention of the populous it also cought the attention of the authority figures -- this would cause devastating personal and professional effects as the Nigerian government came down on him with absolute brute force not long after the release of this record. Also included are "Monkey Banana," a laid-back groove that showcases drummer Tony Allen's mastery of the Afro-beat, and "Everything Scatter," a standard mid-tempo romp.
Fela Kuti - Zombie (flac 352mb)
01 Zombie 12:26
02 Mister Follow Follow 12:57
03 Observation Is No Crime 13:25
04 Mistake 14:46
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Pioneering musician, activist, and bandleader Fela Kuti is the first word in Afro-beat, making such strides in the genre over the course of his career that his contributions are foundational and nothing less than legendary. Released in 1977, Opposite People finds Fela and his band Afrika 70 riding a fever-pitched groove for the customary two side-long extended jams that made up most of Fela's classic output. The title track builds for 11 or more minutes before Kuti comes in with a sociopolitical lecture in sung-scatted form, and second cut "Equalisation of Trouser and Pant" is a slinkier affair, with hints of greasy rock guitar and wandering electronic keyboard tones.
Sorrow Tears and Blood (1977) accurately depicts the trail left in the wake of the February 18, 1977, raid by 1,000 armed Nigerian army men on Fela Kuti and his Kalakuta republic. In keeping with the format upheld on a majority of Kuti's long-players, this disc contains a pair of extended works, featuring one title per LP side. In contrast to the hard-edged and aggressive Afro-funk that Kuti and his Africa 70 became synonymous with, both the A-side title track and B-side, "Colonial Mentality," are seemingly staid, in light -- or perhaps because -- of the cruel state-sponsored attacks that he and his extended family suffered. "Sorrow Tears and Blood" is neither a full-blown, up-tempo funk drone nor a somber dirge. The even-handed, mid-tempo groove trots along at a steady pace and features some comparatively sedate sax work from Kuti. Even the instrumental introduction -- which has been known to clock in at over five minutes -- is reduced to well under three. His lyrics are starkly direct -- "Everybody run, run, run/Everybody scatter, scatter/Some people lost some bread/Some people just die" -- yet the emotive center is gone. Perhaps this is the result of fear, shellshock, or a combination of the two. Kuti's words, however, remain as indicting as ever: "Them leave sorrow, tears, and blood/Them regular trademark." "Colonial Mentality" returns to a more seething and slinky musicality. The dark and brooding bassline undulates beneath a brass-intensive Africa 70. Rarely has Kuti's musical arrangements so perfectly imaged James Brown's J.B.'s or Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra. The message is delivered as a fable, demonstrating that it is the individuals who live in a stifling "Colonial Mentality" who are the slaves. His preface, stating that the colonial man had released them yet they refuse to release themselves, sets out to prove that slavery is a continual and concurrent state of mind for Africans.
Fela Kuti - Opposite People + Sorrow Tears and Blood (flac 372mb)
Opposite People (Originally Released 1977)
1 Opposite People 16:39
2 Equalisation Of Trouser And Pant 16:43
Sorrow Tears And Blood (Originally Released 1977)
3 Sorrow Tears And Blood 10:16
4 Colonial Mentality 13:42
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Is it possible to re-post Fela Kuti - Zombie in flac please. Thanks in advance. Apanta
ReplyDeleteThanks you so much for Fela Kuti - Zombie, you have a great test in music THANKS again. APANTA
ReplyDelete