Brightest Young Things

If I could build a time machine, before altering history or going into the future to get next week’s Powerball number, I would go see Fela Kuti at the Shrine. Fortunately, history has a way of repeating itself.

Forty years ago Fela Anikulapo Kuti blended Jazz, Funk and West African High Life to create Afrobeat, singing songs, backed by a mass of talented musicians, dancers and singers, about colonialism, greed, corruption, pan-Africanism, skin bleaching - about Africa’s issues and it’s heroes. Fela was unrelenting, as was his music; when the Nigerian government, under Obasanjo, raided his Kalakuta Republic compound with 1,000 armed military officers in response to his song "Zombie" and threw his mother from the 2^nd floor, killing her, he sang about that too.

Ten years ago Seun Kuti was 15, his father Fela had just died of AIDS, and he found himself heir to one of the most celebrated bands in Africa – Fela’s Egypt 80. Seun took the responsibility in stride, continuing to develop his music and learn from the master musicians his father had assembled and molded into an unrivaled music machine. It seems to have paid off with Seun releasing his first album Many Things, which finds him signing about oil, malaria, corruption and government negligence, and with a nationwide tour landing him in the District this Monday, July 7^th at the 9:30 Club.

I highly suggest you join me there, it’s no time machine, but it’s the closest you’ll ever come to experiencing the miracle that was born when the Nigerian great-grandson of a repatriated former slave was forever changed by his encounter with the black power movement in late 60s Los Angeles and dedicated his life to bringing about social change and empowerment through music; the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.