Femi Kuti

Femi Kuti spoke to Billboard and confessed a sort of boredom with the music genre pioneered by his late father, Fela Anipolapo Kuti and is ‘trying everything possible with technology’, he said. IN 2014, He hopes to have found a new direction for his music – he would be mixing it with rap and also predicts, “I might go classical very soon.”

Also hopes “in four years to develop another kind of sound with the trumpet”. Femi argues that change has always been an essential part of his musical makeup. However, Political and socially conscious focus of his music would not change and doesn’t intend to sing love stories or about broken heart.

Femi acknowledges the impact of the FELA! broadway musical with more ears open to Afrobeat now. “a lot of producers of hip-hop are great fans of Afrobeat, so we never know what will develop, musically.”, he added.

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EX Wife: Fela Kuti Didn’t Die Of HIV/AIDS.

November 1, 2010 3 Comments

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Kevwe is late Fela Kuti’s ex wife . Who got married to the legend in the funniest of ways. Here’s how she met Fela: On the day she met Fela, she took food to her uncle who runs a studio. “when I got to the studio, he locked me in the dark room and walked away, leaving me in company with Fela, who was visiting him at the time. I had sex with Fela that day,” She confessed. After wards she moved in with Fela’s first wife and Femi Kuti’s mother, Remi in 1972.

Kevwe was one of the 27 women Fela married in one day at a solemization overseen by 12 herbalists when court said they were underaged.

She also said: “He introduced me to smoking. Whenever I refused to smoke, he would get angry and disgrace me in public.”

Then she drops the bomb when asked of her reaction with the reports that Fela died of complications rising from HIV/AIDS. She says he didn’t “If he died of AIDS, how come it did not affect me? Fela had slept with me more than anyone else in that house. I should be the first person to be infected with HIV/AIDS.”

She says she is healthy, HIV negative and presently a nurse.

This month’s edition of Soundcity Blast is with a cover story on singer Nneka – The interview is said to be in depth.The Cover girl Nneka would be performing at the Glastonbury festival tomorrow, the 25th of June. Also performing at the festival taking place at Worthy Farm Pilton in Somerset are Gorillaz, Dizzee Rascal, Vampire Weekend, Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson, Corinne Bailey Rae, Femi Kuti to mention a few.

Blast – Nneka

The 45 stage Festival is said to be currently sold out. ALso available to buyers of Soundcity Blast is a mixtape CD from rap artiste Teeto titled ‘Da Freshness’ courtesy Freshboy Entertainment.
Listen to ‘you’re not my girl’ off the mixtape feat. Beazy

Teeto – Da Freshness

The mixtape features hit bound singles like ‘I’m Ill’ ,’You are not my girl Ft Beazy’, ‘Finest ft Vector’,'I Got This’ ft Ghetto P.  Sound city Blast would be available for purchase on Monday the 28th

Listen to ‘you’re not my girl’ off the mixtape feat. Beazy

Femi Kuti at the 2010 World Cup. Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images

The opening ceremony tagged ‘welcome to our home in Africa’ features 1581 performers including Nigeria’s very own Femi Kuti who wowed the 80,000 plus crowd with his hit song ‘bang bang bang. He was then followed by R.Kelly who sang the signs of victory alongside Soweto gospel choir. Top African acts who performed were Algerian pop star Khaled, the legendary band Osibisa of Ghana and South African Hip hop Pantsula (HHP), Tkzee Timothy Moloi and Thandiswa.

Femi Kuti and South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela

By Sonde Jimmy

Seun Vs Father Fela

There’s nothing as refreshing as a live performance after weeks of inundating your soul with deejay fare. And so it was with excitement that I made my way into Terrakulture two Saturdays ago, to see Seun Anikulapo Kuti perform. I was surprised – pleasantly though – to see that it was a modest crowd; my pleasure an upshot of that snobbish, self-congratulatory attitude native to fans of ‘niche’ music.

(At least a third of the audience was white, which is to be expected; Afrobeat is arguably Nigeria’s most successful cultural export – to the West). After spending the previous night in overcrowded nightclubs dancing to songs that encouraged me to ‘ginger the swagger’ (or perhaps that should be ‘swagger the ginger’), it was a relief to listen to something different, and to do it with so much dancing space around me. Fate had no choice As I stood there and danced and watched Seun, I couldn’t help thinking how much he dwelt in the shadow of his legendary father. Let’s even attempt to forget the striking physical resemblance for a second, and focus instead on the art. For one, he inherited his father’s Egypt 80 band, led by Baba Ani, Fela’s longtime sidekick. At the time of Fela’s death, Seun was only fourteen, and one of the more recent members of the Egypt 80 band. All he knew, and played, was Fela’s music. His mother was also a band member, one of Fela’s dancers, further evidence of how much his life was circumscribed by the Fela sound. If we therefore assumed that Fate was compelled to make a choice regarding which of the sons would be the direct inheritor of the Afrobeat legacy, we would quickly realize that Fate actually didn’t have a choice. There was only one ‘direct’ successor – Seun. The other son had long wandered off, a talented prodigal. Seun dutifully took over his father’s band, and carried on from where Fela left off. For years he satisfied audiences with his father’s songs. It wasn’t until a decade after Fela’s death that he released his debut album. By the time Fela died, Seun’s elder brother, Femi, had already been playing his own music – not Fela’s – for a decade. Femi broke off from his father’s band in 1988 to launch his own band, Positive Force, an action didn’t go down well with Fela. For years the father refused to speak to his first son. Eventually though, he came to accept Femi’s music, and appeared to resign himself to the fact that his son had to make his own way in the world. By the time of his death in 1997, Femi had released three albums. However much Femi’s sound was influenced by his father, it was distinctly Femi’s, a departure from the raw anger of Fela’s compositions.

A terrible burden You can’t watch Seun perform and not see Fela’s mischievous spirit hovering low over the band. That Saturday night, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that perhaps a good number of those present that day were actually there to see Fela perform; that it was Fela who played in their heads and pranced about on stage. I wondered how it must be for Seun, bearing the burden of Fela, unable to cast it aside, yet eager to be his own man and create his own sound. For while Fela was a creation of the Age of highlife and funk (and Black renaissance philosophy), Seun (apart from the Afrobeat inevitably in his DNA) is of the Age of hip-hop and rap and Facebook. Seun must have realized the sad truth that it is much easier for a hip-hop act to attempt to stray into Afrobeat (as D’Banj did early on in his career) than for Fela’s torchbearer to attempt the reverse journey. The burden of maintaining the sound the world came to love Fela for would prove too much a hindrance. It must be a terrible burden. For those who want Seun to be Fela, he will not quite measure up to the mark. For those who don’t want him to be his father, he will seem too much so. Yabis time Seun, mic in hand, did not fail to treat us to a session of ‘yabis’ – a creation of his father, in which he would break from music to pontificate on politics and current affairs and sundry matters, and rail against dictators and Big Men (For many fans, the yabis was as important as the music). “Seun should stop trying to do yabis and play his music instead,” a friend complained that Saturday. “He is not Fela…” Listening to Seun’s yabis that Saturday night I realized that it was less yabis than yabis-aspiring standup comedy, perhaps evidence of his realization that today’s Nigerians would rather pay to laugh at their country’s ironies than to rage at them.

Seun Kuti

Once, during a show at the Bar Beach in Lagos, it is said that Fela ordered that the 7-Up flag fluttering in the wind be pulled down, because it was a symbol of capitalist oppression. It seems unlikely that his son would ever do that – not when one of his band members proudly donned an Arsenal jersey. The theme of Seun’s yabis that Saturday night was satellite television (which one imagines his father, were he alive, would have boasted he never watched). Interestingly, he also took a dig at standup comedy, boasting that his jokes were not of the Night-of-a-Thousand-Laughs sort. Fela on Playback? No doubt, anyone who came to see Fela would have been a tad disappointed. Which would have been their fault, not Seun’s, since Seun is not Fela, was never meant to be Fela, and will only be shortchanging himself, and us, if he ever imagined he was. But then again the onstage ‘Fela On Broadway’ banner which provided a backdrop for his three dancers might have only succeeded in inspiring unfair comparisons with Fela’s much larger, far more raucous chorus. Seun ended the performance with Fela fare, which drove the audience into a frenzy, propelling them to within touching distance of Seun. Even Seun himself seemed more animated than before. Fela was in our midst. Or was he?

Seun Kuti performs at Terrakulture, Victoria Island, Lagos on the 2nd Saturday of every month; 8pm – midnight?