by Michael Veal 
I I
i 
,-j.THE SAYING GOES, DEATH IS A 
brilliant career move. Thus, the market for 
the Afrobeat music of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti 
and all of its stylistic relatives and offshoots 
has become big business since his death in 
•[997. In Europe and the United States, Fela's 
back catalogue - most of which had been 
unavailable during the last years of his career 
- has been reissued, his music is being 
played in dance clubs, Afrobeat revival bands 
are forming, and compila ions of Afrobeatrelqted 
musi sicc ar aree 
bein beii ingg r ree ease easedd att a see seemmmgly 
monthly rate. Even thoug th hh Fel F la l is only 
one artist within a generation-bound constellatio 
s a t i o nn of grea great Africa African m u s a s musicians,, s his ne newttoun 
d f d popufarit i y in h the U i t Unitedd S t State t s seems 
<GLENDORA REVIEWxAfrican Quarterly on the ArtsxVol3@No3&4> 
<29> 
Afro- 
Funk 
Revival
to have momeintprily 
eclipsed that of iall the 
others. Franco, Tabu Ley 
Rochereau, Hugh 
Masekela, Miriam 
Makeba, Manu Dibango, 
Youssoy N'Dour, King 
Sunny Ade, and others 
are equally important in 
the history of post-World 
War II African popular 
music, yet tiey largely 
remain niche market 
names within the current 
American market for African 
popular music. 
The reasons for this are clear. First, 
Afrobeat was a dynamic innovation whose appeal 
to Western audiences partially reflects its 
strong roots in the familiar Western styles of jazz 
and funk. Second, Fela's passing removed the 
most difficult element from the marketing equation 
- the man himself, who was patently distrustful 
of all record companies, and whose scabrous 
pronouncements on a wide range of issues 
were successfully calculated to shock, offend, 
and alienate audiences of all persuasions. 
Third, the mythology surrounding Fela is a builtin 
advertisement for his music; since the days of 
Bob Marley's international ascension, companies 
have known that a controversial black man 
who f u If i I Is the fa m i I ia r tropes of sex, d rugs, a nd 
politics, always means guaranteed sales to white 
Western—especially American—audiences. 
In some ways, the 'Afro-funk' revival in 
the U.S. parallels the resurgence of roots reggae 
in England and in fact, the best of the retro- 
Afro compilations discussed here have been released 
by British companies. But the situation is 
a bit different in the U.S., where the African cultural 
presence is not nearly as integrated into 
urban American culture as the Jamaican is into 
urban British culture. Africans in the United States 
live mostly in enclaves, and their music stays 
largely within the community. There has been 
no tradition such as the infamous "blue beat" 
dances, which provided a forum for Britons and 
Anglo-Caribbeans to interact musically and 
socially in the 1960s. Thus, the current interest 
of American record companies in African pop 
smacks of a fad, an attempt to maximize shortterm 
saturation of a particular niche market. 
<GLEND0RA REVIEWxAfrican Quarteriy on the ArtsxVol3@No3&4> 
<30> 
After all, the U.S. market for "world beat" market 
is itself small, largely comprised of young, 
well-educated Euro-Americans in major cities. 
The interest in African popular music is a submarket 
of this group, and the retro market in 
Afro-funk an even smaller sub-group. 
The typical 20-year commercial cycle 
which governs the re-circulation of previouslypopular 
styles would seem to indicate that this 
audience would gravitate towards the African- 
American funk music of the 1960s and 1970s. 
To an extent this has happened, such as in the 
chic popularity of Shuggie Otis's reissued Information 
Inspiration LP last year. But the reason 
that there retro-market for funk has not taken 
hold to a greater degree among young urban 
professionals is that through sampling, the hiphoppers 
have controlled the resuscitation of 60s/ 
70s soul and funk like James Brown and Parliament/
Funkadelic. The music thus remains 
viscerally grounded in contemporary black culture 
and the yuppies must get their funk from 
an offshore source, in order to enjoy the cultural 
flavor of a black musical style that has 
been defanged of its political baggage. Although 
the music of Fela and many of his colleagues 
was created within a climate of pan-African 
political struggle and cultural revitalization, the 
new market in 'African funk' offers a re-routed 
funk in which the political codes of black 
America have been partially or completely 
erased, and replaced with (for Americans) alien 
codes which allow the music to be appreciated 
for its mere 'surface qualities.' 
But what is Afrobeat? Is it a type of highlife? 
Of jazz? Of funk? Is it a studio-based or a live 
performance medium? Is it by definition a political 
genre? As lone exponent of the genre for 
most of his career, Fela himself often confronted 
these very questions, as his music was received 
by various audiences, in various places, with 
various agendas. Afrobeat as played by Fela 
was a political music obviously rooted in the 
highlife tradition, but stretched far beyond the 
parameters of that genre. It was jazzy but not 
virtuosic; it was funky, but not frivolous. With 
such a multifaceted pedigree, it is no surprise 
that the various contemporary exponents of the 
genre have taken the style in each of the directions 
suggested within Fela's prototype. What I 
would like to do in this article is to briefly survey 
several of these recordings - compilations of
™ 
painted woman (ostensibly one of Fela's wives) 
holding a half-burnt stick of Indian hemp in 
front of a sheet of rusted corrugated steel. The 
photo, an obvious attempt to duplicate Adrian 
Boot's well-known series of photos taken at the 
Afrika Shrine in 1976, begs the question of 
whether Afrobeat can be reduced to a series of 
generic gestures, phrases, and images. The 
same question frames the music on this collection, 
which runs the gamut from the inspired to 
the formulaic. 
"* * • • • • •••••••••• 
•••••• 
«mi Kufci 
•••••••••••• 
FUTURE SOUrUDS PROm 
THE mOTHERLAfUD 
• • • • • • • • • • • • The collection kicks off with former Afrika 
70 drummer Tony Allen, leading an ensemble at uiark 
<=»WT»ttJ 
Twig njteo %• * » • • • • • • 
C e s s n a Evor-a • • » • # • • • • • * 
viuiane ni'Oour • • * « • • • • • • • • 
and m o r e • • • • • • • • • • • 
of Paris-based musicians through a programme 
of dub- and techno-influenced Afrobeat. Allen's 
drumming style remains unchanged from his 
days at the Afrika Shrine, but the setting around 
him has changed substantially. Although he still 
plays with the traditional rhythm section of guitar, 
bass, and keyboards, the rhythmic basis of 
the music has been redefined by the atmos- 
DOD smacKs 01 a 
naximize 
phere of floating digital sounds. The front line 
horn themes of Afrika 70 have been replaced 
here by Allen's digitized vocalizing, as he scats 
and sings a lyrical theme drawn from-his 1979 
LP No Discr/m/nafion. The atmospheric production 
of these tracks does not necessarily do 
the most justice to Allen's polyrhythmic drumming, 
since his style is fundamentally based on 
a model of conversational interaction with the 
front line horns inspired by jazz drummers like 
Art Blakey. Allen has in fact recently collabo- eat' 
la.rge{ 
r, v 
"% 
raa, an attemp, 
short-term saturation of a 
:er ai 
/ 
3d 
3 . n i7.U 
rated with jazz players such as Jamaican guitar 
great Ernest Ranglin, but if he could feature on 
a full-fledged project of big-band Afrobeat, it 
would place his drumming in the most revealing 
setting, clarify the jazz roots of Afrobeat, 
and inspire more musicians to interpret Afrobeat 
from the jazz angle. 
Next up is Afrobeat heir Femi Anikulapo- 
Kuti, who is attempting to make a Western 
market-friendly version of his father's music by 
cutting song lengths, lightening the subject 
matter, and updating the production style. The 
title of the included track 'Beng Beng Beng' 
(i.e. 'Bang Bang Bang') tells the listener much 
of what they need to know about Femi's approach 
in general. Essentially a contribution to 
Fela's sub-genre of sex manuals set to music 
(such as 'Na Poi'), Femi's depiction of the sex 
act leaves little to the imagination and the circular, 
polyrhtyhmic sensuality of Fela's music 
1 v di--ech ate 
nca ns i 
'n\te.resr in / M.he ari... 
yc X 1 ipi is 
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or Cl tie*. 
a 'worl 
smal /, 
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u, 
Fela tributes, Afrobeat revival bands, or works 
by older contemporaries of Fela. 
Although there are several recordings 
available, the most convenient place to start is 
Shanachie's continuously-mixed Afrobeat No 
Go Die, which surveys the highest-profile 
bands working in the genre of neo-Afrobeat. 
The title makes an assertion that seems unnecessary, 
as there have never been as many exponents 
of afrobeat as in the present. The cover 
art presents what has become an iconic Fela 
image—a young, heavily-bejeweled, face- 
<GLEND0RA REVIEWxAfrican Quarterly on the ArtsxVol3@No3&4>
SEQUN BUCKNOR 
POOR MAN NO GET BROTHER 
ASSEMBLY & REVOLUTION 1969-1975 
has been similarly reprocessed into a 'four-onthe-
floor' house beat which has found favor 
with the house music crowds in Europe. Femi's 
live band is one of the most exciting African 
acts currently touring, but the irony here is that 
the very qualities which attracted Westerners to 
Fela's music are the qualities which Femi 
downplays - long-form grooves, and ample time 
to stretch out and create a 'vibe.' With hyperbolic 
reviews hailing him as the 'next Bob 
Marley,' Femi should be careful not to fall into 
the frequent trap that has snared many African 
musicians, of compromising the uniquely local 
qualities of their music in search of a mass 
Western audience that has not yet materialized 
for any African popular musician. 
The New York-based band Antibalas works 
in an early 70s Fela style. The band's strong 
point is their rhythm section, whereas the horn 
arrangements tend towards the diffuse, lacking 
the fire and focus of Fela's writing. Their 'Dirt 
and Blood' track here is typical of the band's 
semi-instrumental workouts, although other 
tracks on their Liberation Afrobeat LP (from which 
this track is taken) feature the pidgin vocals of 
expatriate Nigerian Duke Amayo. Antibalas 
have recently released a second CD (Talkatif), 
a more concise set which finds them perfecting 
theirtake on Fela's early sound. Curiously, most 
of the tracks are again instrumentals, suggesting 
that like many other neo-Afrobeat artists, 
Antibalas have yet to decide exactly what and 
how to sing on top of Fela's assumedly-politically 
grooves. But like Femi, they put on a thoroughly-
enjoyable live show. 
The rest of the collection is rounded out 
by artists who take various approaches to the 
form. Antibalas' New York City compatriots the 
Daktaris weigh in with a garage-band version 
of Fela and Sandra Isadore's 'Upside Down,' 
and former Egypt 80 member Dele Sosimi takes 
the music into progressive jazz territory with his 
piano-led instrumental 'Gbedu 1.' Femi Kuti's 
home-front competitor Lagbaja offers 'Side by 
Side,' in which he uses Yoruba language and 
the lead talking drum to reposition Afrobeat 
closer to Yoruba neo-traditional genres, while 
the production style links it with contemporary 
African-American pop. 
Tribute songs to Fela are offered by guitarist 
Kiala, and South African trumpet legend 
Hugh Masekela. The former is filtered through
the aesthetics of the Afro-Parisian studio scene, 
while Masekela's poignant track manages to 
evoke both Fela's Afrika 70 sound (such as 
"Trouble Sleep," on which Masekela undoubtedly 
played during his period at the Shrine in 
1973/A) and the more reflective sound of Egypt 
80. Groove Collective's instrumental "Crisis" 
is the surprise standout on the collection, certainly 
the most rhythmically-advanced track 
here. Working off of a cyclical timeline pattern 
typical of Afro-Latin music, the simple horn 
theme tugs against the rhythm in a way that 
recalls both Afrobeat and Cuban music, while 
the ensemble interplay is at once subtle and 
intricate. In style and mood, the track resonates 
with Herbie Hancock's Headhunters sessions, 
as well as Tony Allen's classic N.E.RA. Sessions. 
The collection closes with none otherthan 
Egypt 80 bandleader/baritone saxophonist Baba 
Ani (Lekan Animashaun), playing his "Serere" 
("Act Right"), which Shrine fans will remember 
as Egypt 80's set opener for well over a decade. 
Those same fans await the release of Baba 
Ani's "Low Profile (Justforthe Blacks)" recorded 
at the same time as "Serere" and still unavailable. 
"Serere" captures the Egypt 80 band during 
the late 1 980s, and features a guest appearance 
by Fela on electric piano. 
AfrnhPAt 
• V I I ^ F B J P V I H is currently enjoying 
its Western vogue, but few people are actually 
aware of the roots of the music. How did this 
music develop in the first place? Where did it 
come from? Did Fela accomplish the creation 
of Afrobeat singlehandedly? The truth is that 
when Fela synthesized the style in 1970, he 
pulled ahead of a pack of African musicians 
who were also working their way through similar 
fusions of highlife, jazz, rock, and rhythm & 
blues. The best-known of these musicians include 
second-generation highlife groups and 
'copyright' groups such as Jerry Hansen's Ramblers 
and Stan Plange's Uhuru Dance Band 
from Ghana, Geraldo Pino's Heartbeats and 
O.J. Ekemode's Modem Aces from Nigeria, and 
Ignace DeSouza's Black Santiagos from Togo. 
There have been a trickle of releases over the 
last few years documenting this activity, beginning 
with Original Music's Money No Be Sand 
tsxVo!3@No3&4>
in 1 995, and culminating in a flurry of current 
releases such as Kona's Afro-Rock, Ocho's The 
Shrine: Afrobeat, Afrodisiac's Boon/ay.', Strut's 
Nigeria 70, and two volumes each of Strut's 
Club Africa, and Harmless'sAfr/ca Funk. 
The most consistent of these is Strut's Nigeria 
70 compilation, which offers a variety of 
top-drawer odds and ends from the Nigerian 
pop music scene of the late 1960s through early 
1980s, spanning the years when rock, rhythm 
& blues, soul, funk, and disco were the most 
influential foreign styles in West Africa. Besides 
being a fascinating (if partial) showcase of the 
Nigerian music scene of that time, the CD is 
illuminating since it samples music from all regions 
of Nigeria. This allows the listener to hear 
the interaction of a fairly common pop music 
model with various regional Nigerian styles, 
resulting in some fascinating fusions. 
In all honesty, the best of this collection 
could have probably been compiled onto a single 
CD. The inclusion of two Fela tracks, for 
example, is curious since his entire back catalogue 
is now available and easily-accessible. 
On the other hand, their inclusion is understandable 
since Fela's spirit hovers over the 
entire collection, right down to its name ('Nigeria 
70' being the name of his band during 
1970/1). What this compilation makes clear is 
that the distinction between funk, Afro-funk, and 
<GLEND0RA REVIEWxA.ncan Quarry on .he AfcxVWtN,** 
Afrobeat is fundamentally based in the arrangement 
of the rhythm, with obvious relevance for 
the drum set and other percussion instruments. 
Afro-funk drummers tended to emphasize the 
downbeat in a way that made the music more 
one-dimensional, and which rendered the African 
percussion essentially ornamental. Tracks 
such as Shina Williams' 'Agboju Logun', Tunde 
Oyelani's 'Ifa', and the Lijadu Sisters' 'Orere 
Elejigbo' seem essentially like African takes on 
African-American genres, with local flavour 
provided by language, inflection, and theme. 
Afrobeat, on the other hand, stands as 
an African reinterpreiation of funk, a filtering 
• • • of some of the former's structure through a more 
polyrhythmic sensibility. In particular, the drumming 
on the Nigeria 70 compilation makes 
clear that the older generation of African drum 
set players (such as Allen and Moses Akanbi) 
were schooled in the jazz-inflected rhythms of 
highlife, had mastered independent coordination, 
and were thus able to play with a openended 
feeling that kept the music bouyant and 
polyrhythmic. On some of these performances 
such as, in fact, the drum set is on more-orless 
equal footing with the auxiliary percussion. 
Into this category would fall tracks such as The 
Funkees' 'Dancing Time', Afro Cult Foundation's 
'The Quest', and Sahara All-Stars Band's 
'Enjoy Yourself, eight minutes of a surprisingly 
effective Fela knockoff, complete with a hedonistic 
"enjoy today, for tomorrow we may die" 
theme.
Of course, the best tracks resist categorization. 
Orlando Julius' 'Alo Mi Alo' follows a 
very similar format to Fela's work with Koola 
Lobitos, but is more laid-back, taking more time 
to simmer and boil than Fela allowed in his 
own music of the time (see below). Ofo & the 
Black Company's 'Alia Wakbarr' and BLO's 
'Chant to Mother Earth' both seem African takes 
on American psychedelia, though radically 
recontextualized. The former track drops the listener 
in on what seems like a possession ritual 
in progress (check the hyperventilating vocals 
which introduce the track), while the second 
track takes a droning, devotional-sounding 
chant and a warbling lead guitar reminiscent 
of Jorma Kaukonen, and places it over a traditional 
African 12/8 meter. Segun Bucknor's 'La 
La La La' is probably the compilation's most 
popular track, another standout blend of Afn- 
<34>
can music and American funk-rock (see below). 
King Sunny Ade successfully incorporated 
elements of Afrobeat into his juju to good fortune 
in the 1980s, and developed a reputation 
during the same period for the technical innovations 
he introduced into the style. Here, his 
classic song 'Ja Funmi' follows that pattern of 
innovation, given a new instrumental arrangement, 
and filtered through a Jamaican dub mix 
under the auspices of Jamaica's Island Records, 
to whom Ade was contracted at the time. Nearly 
two decades before Tony Allen stripped down 
his band and began purveying his own brand 
of dub-Afrobeat, Ade was already successfully 
experimenting in this vein. Scattered throughout 
the collection are several songs separated 
into two parts, a similarity with James Brown 
which recall a historical moment in black music 
when the 12" single had not yet been invented, 
and artists had to fight a culturallyand 
politically-inflected battle to break out of 
the standard 3-minute format. The compilation 
is rounded out by contributions from Peter 
King, Victor Uwiafo, William Onyeabor, Bongos 
Ikwue, Shina Williams, Gaspar Lawal, 
Monomono, Bala Miller, and Joni Haastrup. 
JVC' Victor in Japan will certainly drop a 
gem on the market for Fela collectibles in summer 
2002 with their 3-CD, 40-song collection 
of Fela's work with his Koola Lobitos highlife 
band: Fela Ransome-Kuti and his Koola 
Lobitos: Highlife Jazz and Afro-Soul: 1963 - 
7969. Although he began with the conventional 
approach of older highlife musicians such as 
E.T. Mensah, Bobby Benson, and Victor Olaiya 
(on tracks such as 'Bonfo' and 'Fere'), Fela 
set out from the very beginning to transform 
the style. In his hands, highlife developed into 
a uniquely energetic style, despite his relative 
lack of commercial success. Typical highlife 
chord progressions are enlivened here with syncopated 
rhythm & blues bass lines, while the 
percussive horn charts recall Motown, James 
Brown and Stax/Volt as much as they do Victor 
Olaiya, Roy Chicago and Cardinal Rex Lawson. 
These tracks also demonstrate what might 
have detracted from Fela's success with Lagos 
audiences - essentially, the busy sound of the 
<GLENDORA REVIEWxAfrican Quarterly on the ArtsxVol3@No3&4> 
<35> 
music. While the collection clearly demonstrates 
Fela's early mastery of arranging, he 
rarely lets the music breathe here - the songs 
are overflowing with catchy horn riffs which are 
often wasted as they clash rhythmically with 
Fela's lead vocals, or with horn solos that lack 
the space to fully develop. Although much of 
this is probably a reflection of the time restrictions 
of the 45 rpm format, the result is often a 
fairly cluttered sound. These arrangements show 
that although the dominant elements of Fela's 
language were in place in the 1960s, his conception 
matured in the Afrobeat years when he 
began to let his dynamic horn writing stand on 
its own, he developed the horn arrangements 
to their conclusion, he opened up a freer space 
for instrumental solos, and then began to sing. 
That aside, the collection is full of wonderful 
and surprising music. We hear Fela working 
through a fairly traditional highlife model 
on tracks such as 'Bonfo' and 'Fere', which 
stick close to the traditional sound of danceband 
highlife. There are strongly Cuban-inflected 
tracks such as Ajo' (a.k.a. 'lya Mi O Se 
O'), 'Oritshe', and 'Abiara', and the transplanted 
soul stylings of 'Wa Dele', 'Omuti Ti 
Se', and 'Laise'. Fela's unique approach to 
highlife is heard to strong effect on tracks like 
'Eke', 'Araba's Delight', and the uncharacteristically 
laid-back 'Lagos Baby'. We also get to
Femi Kuti(left): 
The Globe at His Feet. 
Lagbaja (centre): 
Hypertextual 
Explorations. 
Dede Mabiaku (right): 
Ritual Continuum 
hear some music that is essentially Afrobeat in 
style, despite the fact that Fela hadn't actually 
coined the term at this point. It's hard to imagine 
how certain tracks here - like the smoking 
'Omo Ejo' and 'Obinrin Le' - would fail to impress 
audiences. With their funky bass riffs, 
clashing horn rhythms, and stretched-out, 
dance floor-friendly song forms, they would 
have been right at home among Fela's Nigeria 
70 releases from the 1970-1972 period. 
The collection includes a couple of Fela's 
humorous attempts to ape soul music trends, 
such as 'My Baby Don't Love Me', presented 
here in both live and studio incarnations. We 
get several songs that were later re-recorded 
during Koola Lobitos' U.S. trip, such as 
'Ololufe', 'Mi O Mo', and 'Ako'. Also included 
is a six-track, live EP of a Koola Lobitos session 
from Fela's famed Afro-Spot club in 1969, 
which shows the Lobitos in full swing. Alto saxophonist 
Isaac Olasugba is given ample solo 
space throughout, clearly as important to Fela's 
highlife music as Igo Chico and Tunde Williams 
would be to Afrobeat. 
The biggest surprise of this collection is 
the opportunity to hear the future 'Chief Priest 
of Shrine' blowing his way through traditional 
jazz changes on the trumpet. Fela didn't begin 
to play saxophone until 1973, and while he 
was occasionally capable of inspired playing 
<GLENDORA REVIEWxAfrican Quarterly on the ArtsxVol3@No3&4> 
on the instrument, he never studied it with the 
same amount of discipline that he studied the 
trumpet during his student years in England, 
and thus never gained the same amount of 
technical control. This collection offers a clearer 
impression of Fela's jazz roots, as well as the 
jazz roots of Afrobeat. Most interesting in this 
regard is the inclusion of two tracks recorded 
with the original Fela Ransome-Kuti Quartet 
during Fela's years at the Nigerian Broadcasting 
Company, when he hoped to make a career 
of playing straight-ahead jazz in Nigeria. 
Throughout, Fela's playing comes across as 
fairly conventional and 'inside' - he quotes 
"When the Saints Go Marching In" on 'Omuti 
Ti Se', for example, and generally builds his 
phrases around continuous streams of eighth 
notes. Overall, he plays in a style reminiscent 
of players such as Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny 
Dorham, with occasional hints of younger players 
such as Lee Morgan and Clifford Brown. 
At some points, his phrasing is fairly stiff and 
regular, implying that he had not yet digested 
the new approaches to phrasing developed by 
Brown, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, and 
other younger players. But these recordings 
clearly demonstrate that Fela could have pursued 
a career as a African jazz trumpeter in a 
manner similar to Hugh Masekela, had he 
wished to continue in that direction.
L I v l v l l t f l U interested in Fela's 
highlife music will also surely enjoy Strut's new 
Orlando Julius compilation, Super Afro-Soul. 
Out-of-print since the 1960s, Julius' music is 
another strong example of the fusion of soul 
and highlife. Since his relocation to the U.S. in 
the mid-1970s, Julius (now known by his surname, 
Ekemode) has generated controversy by 
claiming that Fela actually patterned his 
Afrobeat after the sound of the Soul Aces. A 
causal link between Ekemode's 1960s work and 
Fela's 1970s Afrobeat seems unlikely to my 
ears, since Fela's 1 970s work sounds very different 
from Ekemode's 1960s work, and particularly 
since a good portion of Ekemode's 
1980s work (found on albums such as 
Shanachie's Dance Afro-Bear) seems directly 
derivative of Fela's Afrobeat, as well as Sunny 
Ade's modernized form of juju (Ade's talking 
drummers are featured on the LP). 
However, what this compilation does reveal 
in no uncertain terms is a number of striking 
and curious similarities between Ekemode's 
work with the Soul Aces and Fela's highlife work 
with Koola Lobitos. The conception of the music 
is fairly identical in terms of both form and 
structure, and Ekemode and Fela also have a 
very similar way of singing over the rhythm & 
blues horn riffs. Most significantly, the way these 
rhythm & blues elements are integrated onto 
the highlife format is the same. This last element 
is important, because it is ostensibly the 
r&b influence that would have governed the 
terrain of innovation and competition between 
the two bands (and others). 
Further similarities lie in the trumpet improvising 
of the Soul Aces' Eddy Fayehun, 
which sounds very similarto Fela's trumpet style 
with Koola Lobitos, and the alto saxophone style 
of Ekemode and the Lobitos' Isaac Olasugba, 
which is also strikingly similar. The most explicit 
link is the Soul Aces' instrumental 'Solo Hit', 
which uses the same I-VI-II-V chord progression 
and horn theme as the Lobitos' 'Eke'. It 
should also be mentioned that the two bands 
shared some personnel; both bassist Franco 
Aboddy and trumpeter Eddy Ifayehun were later 
members of Fela's bands (Ifayehun appears on 
<GLENDORA REVIEWxAfrican Quarterly on the ArtsxVol3@No3&4> 
<37> 
Fela's records as 'Otenioro-Olu Ifayehun'), and 
drummer Akanbi Moses later brought the crucial 
element of Afrobeat drumming into Sunny 
Ade's African Beats in the 1980s. 
Ekemode's highlife tracks here are strong 
and convincing, while his handling of the famous 
"boogaloo" beat popular in the 1960s 
strikes me as more convincing than Fela's. This 
is especially true on tracks like 'Ise Owo', which 
covers the terrain of the Bar-Kays famous 'Soul 
Finger' very profitably, and seems a more organic 
fusion than Fela's 'My Baby Don't Love 
Me', which is similarly based on a boogaloo 
beat. On a side note, I should also mention 
that although the Soul Aces' handling of the 
Temptations' 'My Girl' is not particularly noteworthy 
on its own terms, it bears strong comparison 
with (Ghana's) Ramblers International's 
cover of Eddie Floyd's 'Knock on Wood'. 
Both bands use the same format of playing the 
song straight, before switching to a highlife arrangement 
for the song's tag/fade. Clearly then, 
bands across West Africa were devising similar 
solutions to the fusion of soul and highlife. In 
the specific case of Fela and Ekemode, I can't 
claim to know the truth of this clear cross-influence. 
But it is certainly intriguing, and in any 
case it goes some way towards clarifying 
Ekemode's contribution to Nigerian music 
which, on the basis of these recordings, is certainly 
significant and deserves further attention. 
The' wild card of the Afro-funk revival is 
undoubtedly Segun Bucknor's Poor Man No 
Get Brother compilation on Strut (2002). An 
alleged early compatriot and competitor of Fela 
(in fact, Bucknor's older brother Wole had 
played with the first edition of Fela's Koola 
Lobitos in London), Bucknor's set was recorded 
between 1 969 and 1975, and blazes a very 
similar trail to early 70s Afrika 70 workouts like 
He Miss Road. Bucknor's music with his Assembly 
band is similarly built from dominant 
7th chord vamps, and jazzy drum set patterns. 
Like Fela, Bucknor is concerned with social issues, 
and these songs address topics like the 
Biafran War, social inequality, and the roots of 
African culture. But as Bucknor freely admits, 
he wasn't seeking a Fela-esque career of con-
frontation and tribulation. Where Fela breathes fire, Bucknor's 
social commentary is cloaked in a shroud of bluesy smoke 
that also includes songs of lost love, loneliness, and heartbreak. 
Bucknor's aggressive singing suggests the influence of 
Stax/Volt, while the instrumental sound suggests the more 
groove-oriented side of Blue Note, and the single B-sides that 
James Brown was using to let his band stretch out. The overall 
ambience is most similar to Charles Wright's work with the 
1 O3rd Street Rhythm Band in Los Angeles; the music has a 
communal, backroom feeling in which grooving together is 
emphasized over the dramatic and declamatory stance of the 
heroic dissident. So the irony is that while the hard urban funk 
of 'La La La La La' seems perfectly suited fora revolutionary 
lyric of social justice, it actually supports a theme of personal 
heartbreak. 
To my ears, one of the album's true highlights is the 
instrumental 'Smoke', eight minutes of jazzy, mid-tempo Afrofunk. 
The track seems to sum up everything cutting-edge about 
the Lagos music scene in the 1970s - the loose-limbed fusion 
of African pride and a transplanted black hippie ethos which 
reigned among younger, comsopolitan Lagos audiences before 
rampant crime, military curfews, and discotheques killed 
off much of the live music scene. Why it took over two decades 
for this work to be reissued is a mystery to me, but Strut 
deserves praise and credit for getting this great music back 
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Music IS THE WEAPDN DF THE FUTURE 
The 
a mere tip of the proverbial iceberg, but it is enough to allow 
a glimpse of the the circumstances which gave birth to the 
sound of Fela and his contemporaries. That world has long 
since given way to a new cultural and political order, but there 
is clearly still inspiration to be gained from a dramatic period 
in black music history when popular music was written in the 
broad and optimistic strokes of nationalism, cultural nationalism, 
pan-Africanism, and other mythic tropes of black unity 
and progress, and when the black body was charged with a 
particular sonic and sexual significance as it moved through 
cultural and political time and space. Whether the so-called 
Afro-funk revival turns out to be a short-term fad or an enduring 
field of interest, it has at least enabled the wider world 
access to an urgent body of work that deserves greater attention. 
And the international circulation of this music may yet 
signal the dawn of a newly-charged period of cross-cultural 
borrowing between artists of Africa and the diaspora.GR 
into circulation (their next project is rumored to be a reissue of 
Afrika 70 trumpeter Tunde Williams' Mr. Big Mouth LP from 
1977). 
1 music contained on these releases is undoubtedly