Kuti, Fela

Kuti, Fela: Zombie [Vinyl LP]

Shakara is one of the early 1970's albums which highlights Fela's Afrobeat as it transitioned from foetal stage to something approaching full-grown form. Shakara includes three of Afrobeat's signature ingredients: Two guitars - part melody, part rhythm. Fela's Broken English lyrics extend his music's audience beyond Yoruba speakers and make his words understandable across Anglophone Africa. And female backing vocalists echo Fela's lead vocals in what was to become Afrobeat's trademark call-and-response pattern.

TDTMN' sees Fela explaining the role of the teacher in any society with the concept that everything we consider as problems, and everything we accept as good in life, begin with what we are taught. With production help coming from the extremely talented and prolific Wally Badarou, these songs have Fela's most full-bodied sound to date and a horn section that's much hotter and brassier than ever before. 'Look and Laugh' is among Fela's most compelling songs and details the attack from Nigerian Soldiers on his home, the Kalakuta Compound, in a detached, almost journalistic way.

In "I.T.T." Fela delivers eviscerating attacks on two of his biggest personal enemies: former Nigerian president General Obasanjo, and the local chief executive of the multi-national corporations Internal Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) and Decca Records, Chief Moshood Abiola. Fela regarded Obasanjo as a crook, an incompetent and a thug, and held him directly responsible for the death of his mother following the army's 1977 sack of Kalakuta Republic. Abiola, he believed, had both cheated him out of royalties and conspired with Obasanjo to silence him after the attack, in order to maintain favourable relations with the regime.

The best known song on Afrodisiac is "Jeun K'oku," a satire about gluttony (an indulgence only available to prosperous Africans). Originally recorded as a single in 1970, it had given Fela his first major hit. In Broken English, the title translates as "chop and quench," which means "eat and die" in Standard English. It is a stonking dance track. The most enduring piece, however, may prove to be the closing "Je'Nwi Temi" ("don't gag me"), a critique of the Nigerian political / military establishment and a defence of free speech

No Agreement' is sometimes overlooked among Fela's 1977 releases, eclipsed by albums such as 'J.J.D. Johnny Just Drop' and 'Sorrow Tears and Blood', yet it is among his best albums of the period. It includes an outstanding Afrika 70 instrumental, "Dog Eat Dog." The track includes a solo by the American trumpeter, Lester Bowie, of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, who was then staying with Fela in Lagos. [Excerpt taken from historian Chris May]

Coffin For Head of State' is among Fela's most courageous responses to the Nigerian army's destruction of Kalakuta on 18 February 1977. During the attack, Fela's mother, aged 78, a veteran of Nigeria's struggle for independence from British colonial rule and an early campaigner for Nigerian women's rights, was thrown out of an upstairs window, fracturing a leg. Fela believed that the assault led to his mother's death 14 months later. [Excerpt taken from historian Chris May]